poor; which mocks at everything that was once dear and sacred to
it,--liberty, religion, and glory,--so long as it has not wealth;
which, to obtain it, submits to all outrages, and becomes an
accomplice in all sorts of cowardly actions: and this burning
thirst for pleasure, this irresistible desire to arrive at
luxury,--a symptom of a new period in civilization,--is the
supreme commandment by virtue of which we are to labor for the
abolition of poverty: thus saith the Academy. What becomes,
then, of the doctrine of expiation and abstinence, the morality
of sacrifice, resignation, and happy moderation? What distrust
of the compensation promised in the other life, and what a
contradiction of the Gospel! But, above all, what a
justification of a government which has adopted as its system the
golden key! Why have religious men, Christians, Senecas, given
utterance in concert to so many immoral maxims?

The Academy, completing its thought, will reply to us:--

"Show how the progress of criminal justice, in the prosecution
and punishment of attacks upon persons and property, follows and
marks the ages of civilization from the savage condition up to
that of the best- governed nations."

Is it possible that the criminal lawyers in the Academy of Moral
Sciences foresaw the conclusion of their premises? The fact
whose history is now to be studied, and which the Academy
describes by the words "progress of criminal justice," is simply
the gradual mitigation which manifests itself, both in the
forms of criminal examinations and in the penalties inflicted, in
proportion as civilization increases in liberty, light, and