What must have been, what really was, the effect of political rigour upon a party thus composed? The court triumphed at first: for those who had joined the party from interest withdrew from it; the venal sold themselves; the timid sunk into silence; old republicans, in thus losing their illusions, believed liberty lost without retrieve; Monk corrupted or abandoned his former companions; and Shaftesbury fled to Holland. Fear reigned in all its glory. But at the same time that it struck the vulnerable portion of the party, it deeply and irreconcilably offended forces which it was not its business to attack. If cowards were afraid, brave men became indignant; and if fear brought over to the court some deserters from the popular party, it likewise confirmed the people in their aversion; causing the former to think themselves in error in having attacked power, and proving to the latter their right to do so. The reformers were alienated past return; the passions, kept in check perhaps among the great, grew furious in the rabble; the public mistrust became incurable; and all the friends of national liberty judged themselves in peril. As to the more ambitious of the party, Lord Russell and Sidney were the most unfortunate of the conspirators: they became martyrs for the people; and time soon showed that if fear had borne fruits favourable for power, it had likewise sowed some that were very bitter. Such is, in a political matter, the inevitable condition of the indirect efficacy of punishment. It is not confined to the limits in which it can be of service; it does not restrict its operation to perils which it can combat with success; but in some cases causes the desired effect, and in others one which would rather have been avoided: its influence can neither be diverted nor even foreseen. It is a weapon of unknown power, which, thrown at random, may strike one required point, and at the same time in a hundred others excite new enemies and new dangers.
The want of reflection in men explains everything: but that power which, in order to destroy political factions, calls to its aid the fear of death, commits a strange mistake; for in employing this means, it knows not what it does. It should at least, before having recourse to it, consider what is the nature of the danger it fears, what the interior composition of the factions it combats, and what will be the effects, so variable and complicated, of the punishment of death. If the question was now of such enemies as in the thirteenth century were those of established governments; if political struggles carried physical disorder suddenly into society, and the gatherings of conspirators threatened always to turn into bands of robbers, then fear would be the true weapon. If even, in our day, we dealt with seditions engendered among the multitude, provoked by some brutal passion or some physical interest—by the most pressing, for instance, the most excusable of interests, famine—there, again, I could conceive the employment of the punishment of death. It might, indeed, be needlessly and odiously abused; but it would at least be used with a knowledge of its effects against an evil to which its fear might be properly applied. Parties now, however, are very differently constituted: they unite men of all conditions, rich and poor, idle and industrious, peaceable and disorderly, bound together by numerous and systematic relations. If conspiracies do not obtain entire success, and change the face of empires, they seldom advance so far as they attempt. We live in a society recently overturned, where legitimate and illegitimate interests, honourable and blameable sentiments, just and false ideas, are so mingled, that it is very difficult to strike hard without striking wrong. We are an ancient people entering into a new social order; the errors of inexperience are seen amidst the security of civilisation; all is obscure and confused, without being entirely disorderly or violent. In such a state of men and things, to believe in the efficacy of capital punishment against political danger, and to rely on the fear it inspires as a great means of government, is to mistake both the evil and the remedy, and to employ arms at once old and poisonous, which are no longer of use, and cannot be handled without danger.
I find everywhere the same mistake; and it is by confounding times that means are misunderstood. In the former constitution of society, the moral efficacy of capital punishment was powerfully seconded by its direct and physical efficacy. When it fell upon the chief of an eminent party, known to all its members, and invested with immense power, his personal fall not only dissipated a great danger, but struck terror into the whole faction, and it was said on all hands—How has this man fallen? What! were not all his riches, his credit, his numerous followers, and his strong places, able to defend him? His adversaries are then much to be dreaded! How is it possible to escape their power? How strive against that which has destroyed such a man? Beyond the circle of political conflicts the same phenomenon is visible. The death of Cartouche or Mandrin will be a much greater example, and act much more powerfully upon robbers, than that of an obscure pickpocket. If you descend into the rabble, you will find the same relation between the moral and physical efficacy of punishments; for there the number of the victims makes up for their want of celebrity. Is it surprising that the population of a district should be paralysed with fear when they see their ranks thinned by chastisements, and encounter at every step the instruments or the ruins of this devastating power? Sepulture itself is refused to their remains, and the dead remain above ground to terrify the living.
At such a price is obtained that fear which in former times derived its terrible influence from capital punishment. If you try now to restore the vanished régime, you will not be able to fulfil the conditions; you will not be able to multiply political punishments so as to terrify by their number. A government aiming at such effects would find danger moving against it at the same pace as fear among the people. Society no longer furnishes those victims whose illustrious fall spread terror everywhere. You must act here and there against some obscure wretches, whose names are unheard, and who are known only by their misfortune. And how can you destroy such men? Not by the force of power: the conflict is too unequal. By its justice? Have a care: when interest is personal, and the superiority so immense, justice is very open to suspicion: if doubt is possible, you may count upon its becoming in many minds equivalent to a certainty. And what fear have you then inspired? Not the fear of force, but of iniquity; and a government, in my opinion, can gain nothing from the one without the other.
That, however, is the error which possesses those who, in our day, rely upon the punishment of death: they mistake the nature of the fear they spread, and believe themselves to have proved their strength when they have but made their justice or their wisdom doubtful. Strength is not so easily proved, nor always in the same manner. Two governments have ruled France despotically—the Convention, which reigned by political punishments; and Bonaparte, who made little use of them, and even took pains to avoid them. Both, by different means, were powerful, and dreaded. But was the scaffold the only strength of the Convention? No rational man can believe it: it played its part, just like conflagrations, or falling houses, or ravaging banditti; but in all these the efforts are greater than the energy, and the Convention, consuming itself almost as quickly as its enemies, fell into the abyss from which it issued; for in vain is power great—the crime by which it triumphs destroys it in our day more rapidly than ever. Bonaparte was strong in his turn; but it was not by punishments that he proved his strength, and made it to be feared. He punished some conspiracies, suppressed others, and passed over many more; he even specially passed over those which proceeded from the party opposed to the Revolution. Invested with power by the need of order and justice, and in opposition to the anarchical tyranny of the Jacobins, already worn out, he comprehended well that he must invoke power from the same interests and sentiments which had just procured him the Empire. The need of order within and of victory without the Empire had made the 18th Brumaire, and Bonaparte reigned as he had risen—by order and victory; and when by his faults he had lost or compromised victory in Europe, and security in France, he fell, still full of life, but having ceased to be strong.
If I may use the figure, there is a star which bestows their strength upon governments, and which they are not at liberty to choose or renounce without danger. They are born and live with a nature of their own, but in a situation they have not made, and under conditions they cannot direct; and their skill consists in becoming acquainted with these, and adapting themselves to them. Thus are they powerful—one by war, another by peace; this by severity, and that by gentleness—according as the different means of government have affinity with the especial laws of their destiny. And if they misunderstand these laws, and mistake the means of the government which correspond with them; if they imagine they can attempt indifferently any path they choose, and set in motion such or such a spring according to their fancy; if they consider power as an arsenal of all sorts of arms, equally useful to all comers—then their star abandons them: they hesitate, waver, try in vain a thousand resources, which fail them successively, and feeling themselves growing weaker day by day, are foolishly astonished that a course of conduct which has succeeded so well with others does nothing but increase their embarrassments and perils.
What was the star of the Restoration? Under what native laws was the present government placed? Where were its elements of power, and what means of action were fitted to its position and its nature? I would know this, in order to discover if capital punishment in political matters is really an arm for its use, and which preserves in its hands, both as regards its own interest and that of the people, a salutary efficacy. I cannot help the question becoming so extensive. I shall endeavour to keep within its bounds; but it is very necessary that I follow wherever it conducts me.