Were the criminal law done away with in our
present state of civilization, religion, ethics and civil
procedure would be absolutely inefficacious to prevent
anarchy. It is as imperative to the ordinary citizen to know
that if he steals he will be locked up as it is for the child
to know that if he puts his hand into the fire it will be
burned. The acquittal of every thief breeds another, and the
unpunished murder is an incentive for a dozen similar
homicides.
Crimes are either deliberate or the result of accident or
impulse. The last class may rise to a high degree of
enormity, such as manslaughter, but these crimes are rarely
possible of restraint. The perpetrator does not stop to
consider, even if he be sober enough to think at all, whether
his act be moral, whether it will entail any civil liability,
or what will be its consequences, if it be a crime. So far as
such acts are concerned those who commit them are hardly
criminals in the ordinary sense, and no influence in the world
is able to prevent them.
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