ABSTRACT
I. In his essay “Murder and the Principles of Punishment”1 H. L. A. Hart refers at two different places, in two distinct contexts, to the mental or subjective factors that operate in the mind of the criminal. This essay was written in 1957, or during the great British debate on capital punishment, which terminated in 1965 in abolition, and the essay is touched by a subdued eloquence that the solemn occasion fired and chastened.
