New Means to Old Ends 69list of capital offences were not intended to be strictly enforced; instead, 'a
small proportion of each class are singled out, the general character, or the
peculiar aggravations of whose crimes render them fit examples of public
justice'.^69 Others argued that if a crime was capital, those who committed it
should hang. If more crimes were being committed, the way to prevent
further offences was to hang more criminals. This was the main point of
Thoughts on Executive Justice by Rev. Martin Madan. He argued:... if, by severity exercised on the guilty, those who are following the
example of their wickedness and outrage, are deterred by the example of
their sufferings, the two grand purposes of all criminal law are answered:
the one, in the prevention of evil; the other, in the security of the public.^70
Madan and Paley were engaged in a debate with an emerging movement
for criminal justice reform. It was based on the Enlightenment challenge to
the tradition of maximum severity, as exemplified in the writings of Cesare
Beccaria. His famous work, Of Crime and Punishment, appeared in English
in 1767. Believing in human reason and the perfectibility of social institu-
tions, Beccaria argued that for the effective prevention of crime, punish-
ments had to have three key characteristics: certainty, promptness, and
proportionality. Beccaria emphasized that moderate punishments carried
out with certainty and promptness would do more to prevent crime than
severe penalties only haphazardly applied.^71
Much of the work of the best-known English reformers focused on crim-
inal law and punishments. John Howard, Elizabeth Fry, and Jeremy
Bentham concentrated on prisons, while Sir Samuel Romilly worked tire-
lessly to reduce the number of capital statutes.^72 Jonas Hanway and John
Howard approached the issue from an evangelical Christian perspective, as
concerned about sin as crime. Bentham focused on the utility of criminal
punishments - did they work to promote the greatest happiness of the
greatest number?^73 Utilitarian and Christian reformers reflected the eight-
eenth-century belief in the primacy of environmental influences. If criminals
were removed from the evil conditions in which they grew up and the wicked
companions that encouraged them to commit crimes, they could be saved. A
discipline of hard labour and religious instruction would mould criminals
into habits of virtue, hard work, and piety. Instead of being hanged or exiled,
convicts could be returned to society, rehabilitated and redeemed.^74
As the prisoners of Bentham's Panopticon had to believe that they were
under constant observation, the potential criminal on the street had to
believe that he was under constant surveillance and that arrest was inevit-
able. Bentham went so far as to argue that a legislator's 'most extensive, and
most eligible object, is to prevent ... all sorts of offenses whatsoever: in other
words, so to manage, that no offence whatsoever may be committed.'^75 Thus
the law's effectiveness