[42] So Seneca, De Ira., i. 16: ‘Nemo prudens punit quia peccatum est, sed ne peccetur. Revocari enim præterita non possunt, futura prohibentur.’ Compare ibid., ii. 31, and Plato, Laws, xi. 934 A.
[43] The same is the philosophy of the nursery-rhyme book:—
‘That’s Jack. Lay a stick on his back.
What’s he done? I cannot say.
We’ll find out to-morrow, and beat him to-day.’
So said also a more serious authority, Periander, tyrant of Corinth, sometimes counted among the Seven Wise Men of Greece: μὴ μόνον τοὺς ἀμαρτάνοντας άλλὰ καὶ τοὺς μέλλοντας κόλαζε. ‘Punish not only those who have done wrong, but those who are going to.’
[44] Judicial Statistics, 1878, xi.
[45] White’s Three Years in Constantinople, ii. 331.
[46] Pierson, Aus Russland’s Vergangenheit, 31, 32.
[47] See Sir G. Staunton’s Penal Code of China, lxxi. 278-9, 285, 345, 367, 381, 449, for tables apportioning punishment to different crimes according to an exact mathematical scale. There is no reason to suppose that this scale was never acted upon, even if it is not observed now, about which there is no good evidence.