182. It is true that there is such a thing as a national desire for revenge [1] (France and Germany): and, if a state = a nation organised in a certain way, why should it not be 'capable of vindictive passion'? No doubt there is a unity of feeling among the members of a nation which makes them feel any loss of strength, real or apparent, sustained by the nation in its corporate character, as a hurt or disgrace to themselves, which they instinctively desire to revenge. The corporate feeling is so strong that individuals feel themselves severally hurt in the supposed hurt of the nation. But when it is said that a crime is an offence against the state, it is not meant that the body of persons forming the nation feel any hurt in the sense in which the person robbed or wounded does, such a hurt as excites a natural desire for revenge. What is meant is that there is a violation of a system of rights which the nation has, no doubt, an interest in maintaining, but a purely social interest, quite different from the egoistic interest of the individual of which the desire for vengeance is a form. A nation is capable of vindictive feeling, but not so a nation as acting through the medium of a settled, impartial, general law for the maintenance of rights, and that is what we mean when we talk of the state as that against which crimes are committed and which punishes them. [1] 'Happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.' 183. It is true that when a crime of a certain sort, e.g. a cold-blooded murder, has been committed, a popular sympathy with the sufferer is excited, which expresses itself in the wish to 'serve out' the murderer. This has some resemblance to the desire for personal revenge, but is really quite different, because not egoistic. Indignation against wrong done to another has nothing in common with a desire to revenge a wrong done to oneself. It borrows the language of private revenge, just as the love of God borrows the language of sensuous affection. Such indignation is inseparable from the interest in social well-being, and along with it is the chief agent in the establishment and maintenance of legal punishment. Law indeed is necessarily general, while indignation is particular in its reference; and accordingly the treatment of any particular crime, so far as determined by law, cannot correspond with the indignation which the crime excites; but the law merely determines the general category under which the crime falls, and fixes certain limits to the punishment that may be inflicted under that category. Within those limits discretion is left to the judge as to the sentence that he passes, and his sentence is in part influenced by the sort of indignation which in the given state of public sentiment the crime is calculated to excite; though generally much more by his opinion as to the amount of terror required for the prevention of prevalent crime. Now what is it in punishment that this indignation demands? If