The punishment to which one can be sentenced on a conviction of crime is now generally limited to fine or imprisonment. For graver offenses both may be inflicted: for murder, and in some States for a very few other crimes the penalty is death. The policy of the older States long was to require those whose offenses were directed against property to make good the loss of the injured party. Whipping was also often added, and it was formerly a common mode of punishment throughout the country for all minor offenses. Every colony used it. It was authorized by the original Act of Congress in 1790 on the subject of crimes, and was not abolished for the courts of the United States until 1839. It was provided for in the early statutes of most of the States, and in some still is. Until 1830, it was the only mode of corporal punishment allowed in Connecticut for the general crime of theft. For boys it is often the only punishment that can properly be administered. To fine them is to punish others. To imprison them is, in nine cases out of ten, to degrade them beyond recall. Virginia, in 1898, reverted to it as an alternative to fine or imprisonment in the case of boys under sixteen, provided the consent of his father or guardian be first given. Such a statute seems absolutely unobjectionable from any standpoint. It is often asserted that whipping is a degrading and inhuman invasion of the sanctity of the person. To shut a man up in jail against his will is a worse invasion. But as against neither is the person of a criminal convict sacred. He has justly forfeited his right to be treated like a good citizen. Whether whipping is a degradation or not must depend much on the place of its infliction. The old way in this country, as in England, was to inflict it in public. This puts the convict to unnecessary shame. Let him be whipped in private, and his only real degradation will be from his crime. So inhumanity is needless. A moderate whipping only should be allowed. That is far more humane to most men than a term of jail; that is, it detracts less from their manhood than the long slavery of confinement.