In the opinion of all moralists, the penalty should be such as to
secure the reformation of the offender, and consequently free
from everything that might cause his degradation. Far be it from
me to combat this blessed tendency of minds and disparage
attempts which would have been the glory of the greatest men of
antiquity. Philanthropy, in spite of the ridicule which
sometimes attaches to its name, will remain, in the eyes of
posterity, the most honorable characteristic of our time: the
abolition of the death penalty, which is merely postponed; the
abolition of the stigma; the studies regarding the effects of the
cellular system; the establishment of workshops in the prisons;
and a multitude of other reforms which I cannot even
name,--give evidence of real progress in our ideas and in our
morals. What the author of Christianity, in an impulse of
sublime love, related of his mystical kingdom, where the
repentant sinner was to be glorified above the just and the
innocent man,--that utopia of Christian charity has become the
aspiration of our sceptical society; and when one thinks of the
unanimity of feeling which prevails in respect to it, he asks
himself with surprise who then prevents this aspiration from
being realized.
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