THE PUNISHMENT OF ASSAULTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 284, 4 October 1867, Page 3

THE PUNISHMENT OF ASSAULTS.

We Jo not identify ourselves .vith the opinions expiessed by our correspondents.)

The s‘ Times ” complains that crimes of linttal violence are too often visited with penalties ludicrously inadequate to their mil atrocity. There is absolutely no ground of reason or sentiment upon which to justify the strange forbearance of the magistrates towards pure and simple cruelty. If the malignity of the motive is tlui essence of crime, what can be more de teslably wicked than an attempt to maim I a poor fel ow who has given no cause of | offence, or the policeman who is doing no- | t bin" hut his duty 1 If on the other hand the heinousness of crime is to he measured hv the amount of distress and alarm it Decisions. what comparison is there between j violent personal assaults and depredations on property ! Yet larceny is punished, as a rule, far more severely than acts which, | if a fatal result ensued, it might be diffic It to distinguish from murder. This is the more unreaso' aide because if there | are any crimes which are capable of being j checked hy the fear of consequences, they j are crimes perpetrated out of sheer brutality and without even the hope of gain There is hut one way to deal with such crimes effectually, and that is to employ | physical pain as a deterrent. The old law of “ metnlintm pro meinhro ” was by no means unsound in principle, though it would he impossible to apply it consistently in modern time . The lash however is not yet obsolete, nor are we among those who desire that it should become so until human creatures with the instinct of wild boasts are obsolete also. It has proved signally efficacious in counteractgarotting, and we see no reason to doubt that, if sanctioned by tbe Legislature, it would counteract the taste for beating and kicking harmless people with in an inch of their lives. In the meantime it would he well that our London Police magistrates should concertmeasures for securing greater uniformity of decision, so that a savage ruffian should not get off with a fine in one court, while his fellow, no worse than himself, is being committed for trial at another.