The moral difference is that a
man can be punished for a crime because he is born a citizen; while he can
be constrained because he is born a slave. But one arresting and
tremendous difference towers over all these doubtful or arguable
differences. There is one respect, vital to all our liberties and all our
lives, in which the new restraint would be different from the old
punishment. It is of this that the plutocrats will take advantage.
The Plain Difference
The perfectly plain difference is this. All punishment, even the most
horrible, proceeds upon the assumption that the extent of the evil is
known, and that a certain amount of expiation goes with it. Even if you
hang the man, you cannot hang him twice. Even if you burn him, you cannot
burn him for a month. And in the case of all ordinary imprisonments, the
whole aim of free institutions from the beginning of the world has been to
insist that a man shall be convicted of a definite crime and confined for
a definite period. But the moment you admit this notion of medical
restraint, you must in fairness admit that it may go on as long as the
authorities choose to think (or say) that it ought to go on. The man's
punishment refers to the past, which is supposed to have been investigated,
and which, in some degree at least, has been investigated.
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