4. There is in every human breast a strong sense of what the learned call _lex talionis_, and children _tit for tat_. "If a man has done to him what he has done to others, that is the straight course of justice;" so says the canon of Rhadamanthus, quoted by Aristotle. (_Eth_., V., v., 3.) We have argued the fundamental correctness of this rule. (_Ethics_, c. ix., s. iii., n. 2, p. 169.) It appears in the divine direction given to Nod: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, his blood shall be shed." (Gen. ix. 6.) It appears in that popular sentiment, which in some parts of America displays itself in the lynching of murderers, who have unduly escaped the hands of the law; and which, under a similar paralysis of law in Corsica, broke out in blood-feuds, whereby the nearest relative of the deceased went about to slay the murderer. Such taking of justice into private hands is morally unlawful, as we have proved. (_Ethics_, c. ix., s. iii., n. 4, p. 171; _Natural Law_, c. viii., s. ii., nn. 2, 3, pp. 308, 309.) It is a violent outburst of a natural and reasonable sentiment deprived of its legitimate vent. Unquestionably then there is an apparent and commonly recognized fairness of retribution in the infliction of capital punishment for murder. Thus the first condition of appropriate punishment is satisfied, that it be _manifestly proportioned to the crime_. 5. Capital punishment is moreover expedient, nay, necessary to the State. The right to inflict it is one of the essential prerogatives of government, one of those prerogatives the sum of which, as we have seen, is a constant quantity everywhere, (s. iv., n. 7, p. 322). No Government can renounce it. The abolition of capital punishment by law only makes the power of inflicting it _latent_ in the State (s. iv., n. 8, p. 323); it does not and cannot wholly take the power away. You ask: Is there not hope, that if humanity goes on improving as it has done, capital punishment will become wholly unnecessary? I answer that--waiving the question of the prospect of improvement--in a State mainly consisting of God-fearing, conscientious men, the _infliction_ of capital punishment would rarely be necessary, but the _power to inflict it_ could never be dispensed with. If men ever become so ideally virtuous, the right of the State to visit gross crime with death cannot hurt them, and it will strengthen their virtue, as all human social virtue will ever need strengthening.