托马斯·马尔萨斯：人口论·摘录 133

Punishment, for example, is totally reprobated. By endeavouring to make examples too impressive and terrible, nations have, indeed, been led into the most barbarous cruelties, but the abuse of any practice is not a good argument against its use. The indefatigable pains taken in this country to find out a murder, and the certainty of its punishment, has powerfully contributed to generate that sentiment which is frequent in the mouths of the common people, that a murder will sooner or later come to light; and the habitual horror in which murder is in consequence held will make a man, in the agony of passion, throw down his knife for fear he should be tempted to use it in the gratification of his revenge. In Italy, where murderers, by flying to a sanctuary, are allowed more frequently to escape, the crime has never been held in the same detestation and has consequently been more frequent. No man, who is at all aware of the operation of moral motives, can doubt for a moment, that if every murder in Italy had been invariably punished, the use of the stiletto in transports of passion would have been comparatively but little known.

出处： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4239
定位：Excerpt 133 · 核对日期：2026-10-19 · 核验：短摘录

公版作品；原文逐字取自 Project Gutenberg，仅摘录段落并附全书链接。

本文本为公版；底本与原文链接见上。 版权

← 返回原文库