lynching of murderers, who have unduly escaped the hands of the law;
and which, under a similar paralysis of law in Corsica, broke out in
blood-feuds, whereby the nearest relative of the deceased went about
to slay the murderer. Such taking of justice into private hands is
morally unlawful, as we have proved. (_Ethics_, c. ix., s. iii., n. 4,
p. 171; _Natural Law_, c. viii., s. ii., nn. 2, 3, pp. 308, 309.) It
is a violent outburst of a natural and reasonable sentiment deprived
of its legitimate vent. Unquestionably then there is an apparent and
commonly recognized fairness of retribution in the infliction of
capital punishment for murder. Thus the first condition of appropriate
punishment is satisfied, that it be _manifestly proportioned to the
crime_.

5. Capital punishment is moreover expedient, nay, necessary to the
State. The right to inflict it is one of the essential prerogatives of
government, one of those prerogatives the sum of which, as we have
seen, is a constant quantity everywhere, (s. iv., n. 7, p. 322). No
Government can renounce it. The abolition of capital punishment by law
only makes the power of inflicting it _latent_ in the State (s. iv.,
n. 8, p. 323); it does not and cannot wholly take the power away. You
ask: Is there not hope, that if humanity goes on improving as it has
done, capital punishment will become wholly unnecessary? I answer
that--waiving the question of the prospect of improvement--in a State
mainly consisting of God-fearing, conscientious men, the _infliction_
of capital punishment would rarely be necessary, but the _power to
inflict it_ could never be dispensed with. If men ever become so
ideally virtuous, the right of the State to visit gross crime with
death cannot hurt them, and it will strengthen their virtue, as all
human social virtue will ever need strengthening.