_His_ nature is _our_ nature:
and, supposing it possible that _he_ were so far degraded as to be
unsusceptible of any influences but those which address him through the
brutal part of his nature, yet for the sake of ourselves--No! not merely
for ourselves, or for the human race now existing, but for the sake of
human nature, which trancends all existing participators of that nature--
we should remember that the evil of corporal punishment is not to be
measured by the poor transitory criminal, whose memory and offence are
soon to perish: these, in the sum of things, are as nothing: the injury
which can be done him, and the injury which he can do, have so momentary
an existence that they may be safely neglected: but the abiding injury is
to the most august interest which for the mind of man can have any
existence,--viz. to his own nature: to raise and dignify which, I am
persuaded, is the first--last--and holiest command [1] which the
conscience imposes on the philosophic moralist. In countries, where the
traveller has the pain of seeing human creatures performing the labors of
brutes, [2]--surely the sorrow which the spectacle moves, if a wise
sorrow, will not be chiefly directed to the poor degraded individual--too
deeply degraded, probably, to be sensible of his own degradation, but to
the reflection that man's nature is thus exhibited in a state of miserable
abasement; and, what is worst of all, abasement proceeding from man
himself.
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