Few would defend the application literally of the retributive "eye-for-an-eye" principle. They know that a man's eye may not be of as much use to him as that which he has destroyed may have been to his victim. It may be like taking gold and offering lead in exchange. Even if the eyes be equal in value it does not in the slightest degree compensate the injured person to know that the person who did him the injury is as blind as he; and as for the community, it is to place two blind men where one was before. Of course nobody has proposed to deal in this manner with the person who blinds another; but many are quite satisfied to act on the principle, and to apply it by way of killing murderers and flogging those who commit assaults. The law has prohibited certain actions as below the standard of conduct permitted to the members of the community. When a man takes life, in order to show him the sacredness of life, it takes his. It is a lesson to him; and there is this to be said for it, that it prevents him from offending again. We all know how much we are the superiors of the poor foreigners in our manners and our powers, for in spite of our modesty, our teachers in the Press are always insisting on the fact, and truth compels us to admit it. Yet these same teachers sometimes confuse us not a little by their methods of defending us when we are charged with doing something which we cannot deny having done. Some necessary severity in war, or some strong actions on the part of those who in our name teach the native races how to live, may have provoked remark on the part of other nations. At once we hear that they have done similar things; but if we are better than they, surely we must prove it by our actions? If we are better than those whom we judge and condemn, why do we treat them as they have treated others?