There has never been any pretence that the executioner's occupation is not a degrading one; never in all this country for very many years, at any rate. He is not looked down upon because by his office he inflicts pain. The surgeon in the course of his work inflicts pain, but nobody considers him any the less worthy on that account. A hand might be cut off by either of them in the discharge of his duty; but though the result may be the same to the owner of the hand, the object has been different. The surgeon has amputated the hand to save the man's life; the executioner has cut it off to maim the man. There can be no objection to the infliction of pain on a criminal more than on others if it is incident on a course of treatment which there is good reason to believe will result in his reform; but there is no such reason for belief in the efficacy of flogging.
I do not say that nobody has been the better for a whipping. There are many men who are ordinarily as modest as those of our race usually are, and who say that they were well whipped in their boyhood with great benefit. It might be unsafe to suggest that the argument is not so convincing as it may seem to those who advance it. Sometimes there is a temptation to think that the treatment, if it were really so efficacious in making them virtuous, might with profit have been continued; but there can be no doubt they are firmly convinced that without the thrashings they received they would have been worse than they are. This hardly touches the point, for it is one thing to be whipped by an official who has no interest in the person whipped, and another thing altogether to be chastised by a parent or guardian, or even at his instance. The effect on the integuments may be the same in both cases, but there is a psychological effect which is different. Children know that wrongdoing on their part is sometimes the occasion and the excuse for an exhibition of temper on the part of their parents; and they take their punishment with the best grace they can and keep out of the way next time they misbehave. A whipping in cold blood they do not take in the same spirit; and they are right.
The great objection to any arbitrary punishment is that it may do far more harm than good. Suppose a child is disobedient and obstinate, and the father proceeds to whip it into obedience. If he succeeds the child may, through fear, avoid such conduct in the future; but if the child persists in his obstinacy in spite of the whipping, and gets into that dumb dour state in which he is likely to go off in a fit if the whipping is persisted in, the shoe is on the other foot. The father has to desist through fear, the child having met force with passive resistance is the master, and he retains the impression of his parent's brutality and impotence. It is never wise in the case of children, or of men, to embark on a course of treatment that you cannot continue till your object is gained.