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date and manner of it in the respective enses, and the suffering caused to survivors.
A man who
suffers death by murder will generally suffer for but a short time, and therefore less than the average of those who die by disease. But he suffers deprivation of any enjoyment he might have had in a more prolonged life, and those to whose enjoyment his prolonged life might have contributed suffer the like deprivation; and there is great and dreadful suffering to relatives and friends in the horror and distress occasioned by such a death in excess of the distress to probably fewer survivors at a later and natural close of life. Add to which the alarm and uneasiness occasioned to many persons who, when they hear of murders, may consider themselves or their friends in danger of being murdered. Such being the account of Imuman suffering resulting from a murder, we are next to take account of that resulting from an execution. The physical pains of death will generally be even less in the man executed than in the man murdered, and far less than in most natural deaths. But in the time intervening between detection and execution there will probably have been much mental suffering from fear, -susceptible, however, of being reduced to a minimum of duration with great public advantage by promptitude on the part of the Officers of Justice and the Courts. Next in the account comes deprivation of any enjoy- ment the murderer might have had in a more prolonged life; but a nuurderer's enjoyment of life-
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may be presumed to be less than most other men's enjoyment of life, and less, therefore, than
that of a man murdered. And the relatives of a murderer, and his friends if he has any, will probably suffer less from his death than the relatives and friends of most men suffer from their death by disease, and much less than they suffer from their death by murder. And indeed the death of a murderer may not improbably relieve his relatives, or friends if
from any, sufferings or from snares and dangers belonging
to his connection with them in life.
It would seem to follow that of the two "lots"
of human suffering, as Bentham would call them, that resulting from an execution is far less than that resulting from a murder. We shall probably much underrate the difference if we take it at one-half.
Taking it so, as an hypothesis for purposes of exposition, the account will then stand thus: A murders B and is not exécuted, but (we will ́sup- pose) imprisoned for life; the consequence of sparing A's life is that C and D murder E and F, and are imprisoned for life; whereas, if A had been executed, C would still have murdered E, but D would not have murdered F. Therefore, three persons are murdered instead of two, and three persons are imprisoned for life instead of two persons being executed. But by the hypo- thesis the one extra murder will have caused at least as much human suffering as the two execu- tions would have caused; whilst the two exeen-
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