Thus the punishment must be equal, in
the sense of proportionate to the crime, because its only
function is to destroy it. Others, without this logical
apparatus, are content to rely upon a felt necessity that
suffering should follow wrong-doing.
It is objected that the preventive theory is immoral, because it
overlooks the ill-desert of wrong-doing, and furnishes [43] no
measure of the amount of punishment, except the lawgiver's
subjective opinion in regard to the sufficiency of the amount of
preventive suffering. /1/ In the language of Kant, it treats man
as a thing, not as a person; as a means, not as an end in
himself. It is said to conflict with the sense of justice, and to
violate the fundamental principle of all free communities, that
the members of such communities have equal rights to life,
liberty, and personal security. /2/
In spite of all this, probably most English-speaking lawyers
would accept the preventive theory without hesitation. As to the
violation of equal rights which is charged, it may be replied
that the dogma of equality makes an equation between individuals
only, not between an individual and the community. No society has
ever admitted that it could not sacrifice individual welfare to
its own existence.
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