The confinement of the debtor was at first a matter that was left to individuals, and its original sanction was custom; later, however, it came under the supervision of the legal system of the State. This suggested the adoption of confinement in connection with other crimes, in which the death penalty appeared too severe a punishment and the exaction of money one that was too light, as well, primarily, as too dependent upon the wealth of the guilty individual. Contributory to this change, was a practice which, similarly to confinement, was also originally an arrangement between individuals, and was rooted in custom. I refer to the holding of individuals as pledges, to the hostage, who gave security with his own person for the promise of another. The hostage is of the nature of a forfeit, guaranteeing in advance the fulfilment of the obligation. For this reason the holding of hostages came to be practised not merely in the case of property contracts but in connection with every possible obligation of a private or a public nature. This development was furthered by the fact that hostages came to be held in times of war, and, as a result, were given also upon the assumption of public duties. In both cases, custody changed from a private arrangement into a public concern. This change made it possible for a judge to impose the penalty of imprisonment whenever the transgression did not appear to warrant death. Imprisonment is a penalty that admits of no fewer degrees than does a fine, and has the advantage of being independent of the irrelevant circumstance of the wealth of the one who is condemned. Moreover, the restriction of arbitrary deprivations of freedom in favour of custody on the part of the political power, makes it possible to hold a suspect whose case requires examination before a judicial verdict can be given. Thus arises the practice of confinement during investigation, an incidental form of legal procedure which is influenced by, and in turn reacts upon, the penalty of imprisonment. Such confinement makes it possible to execute the penalty of imprisonment in the case of those whom investigation shows to be guilty. But this is not its only important result. It also leads to those barbarous methods which, particularly during the early stages of this development, are connected with the infliction of the punishment itself as well as with the preceding inquisitorial activities. The public administration of justice is still affected by the passion for vengeance which comes down from the earlier period of blood-revenge. To this coarser sense of justice a merely quantitative gradation of punishment is not satisfactory; the punishment must rather be made to correspond qualitatively with the crime that has been committed. Hence the many different modes of prison punishment--more numerous even than the modes of inflicting the death penalty--and of the means of torture, which are often conceived with devilish cunning. These means of torture