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Punishment is punishment, only where it is deserved. We pay the penalty, because we owe it, and for no other reason; and if punishment is inflicted for any other reason whatsoever, than because it is merited by wrong, it is a gross immorality, a crying injustice, an abominable crime, and not what it pretends to be (BRADLEY 2, pp. 24-25).
That Unmerited punishment is an abominable crime, no one disputes. Systems of justice are built on the logic of symmetry, so punishment is balanced against crime on the scales of justice. Any system of justice which balances crime with punishment balks at the illogic of undeserved punishment and would seek to correct such an injustice. However, not all judgments are pronounced at the bar nor punishments meted out by agents of the court. Moreover, to seek the cause for actions only in juridical terms overlooks the subtle logic of the psyche which often confutes the more obvious elements of retributive justice. In human affairs, judgments are frequently made subconsciously and meted out subconsciously. A fascinating case of unmerited punishment occurs in American literature, in one of the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Hawthorne, one of the major nineteenth-century American prose writers, deals with the darker aspects of personality in his tales, novels, and romances, works that often recount Puritan colonial life. These allegorical and symbolic works, while nominally treating the themes of sin, suffering, and redemption, provide what the critic Frederick Crews calls ‘a sure insight into everything that is terrible, uncontrollable, and therefore demoralizing in human nature’ (p. 8). Crews adds further: