conspiracies, but of their punishment. This feeling does not surprise me, for I think it well-founded, and I shall proceed to state why. The government strikes, and the people behold the stroke, but neither the one nor the other is assured after the blow of having gained anything by it. I have said enough, I think, to prove that there is here matter for debate. I do not suppose that government wishes to make a habit of killing only because this was done formerly, or that it acts solely to please its own passions, and satisfy its own vengeance. The use of the scaffold cannot become a mere routine; and as to the passions which it is pretended have something to say in it, I leave them out of the question, not only because they are not just, but because they are not true. It is not true that they are so strong, so persevering, and so imperious as they are made to appear. If, after having long suffered, they had sacrificed much; if they had refused themselves the consolations of life and the pleasures of the world; if they had shown themselves inflexible and incurable, nourishing in solitude their melancholy and their hope, I could comprehend, perhaps even excuse, their exigence. But they can be easily turned aside, or made to smile; and their violence has not been able to resist either the continuation of danger or the hope of security. As they do not, then, demand a satisfaction they are so well able to dispense with, they have not the right to appear ardent and severe. Such energy comes too late; and since they have no pretensions to depth, they may at least leave us the advantage of their frivolity. Neither have I anything to question with the laws. They pronounce the punishment of death against political crime, yet I repeat that I do not blame them, that I do not invoke their abolition. I am convinced that the reforms solicited by the sentiments and manners of the time must pass into the conduct of the government, in the routine of its affairs, before being introduced into legislation. So it may be in this matter. {258} Government influences the prosecution of political crimes; it can often stifle them before they grow of sufficient importance to come before the tribunals; it may invest them with more or less gravity; and finally, it has the right of suspending or mitigating the punishments which the law decrees. Is it necessary for it to provoke the application of capital punishment, or to allow it to be inflicted? That is my whole question. The doubt exists in every mind, even in that of the government itself; and for my part I think the doubt is in the right. Chapter II. Physical Efficacy Of Capital Punishment. The necessity of punishments depends upon their efficacy. If a punishment does not attain the end proposed in inflicting it, there can be no question that it is unnecessary.