confidence to wickednefs, and that we can only be rescued from the talons of robbery by inflexible rigour, and fanguinary juftice. Yet fince the right of fetting an uncertain and arbitrary value upon life has been difputed, and fince experience of paft times gives us little reafon to hope that any reformation will be effected by a periodical havock of our fellow-beings, perhaps it will not be ufelefs to confider what confequences might arise from relaxations of the law, and a more rational and equitable adaptation of penalties to offences. Death is, as one of the ancients obferves, To TŴY pobεpwv pobegwralov, of dreadful things the most dreadful; an evil, beyond which nothing can be threatened by fublunary power, or feared from human enmity or vengeance. This terror fhould, therefore, be referved as the laft refort of authority, as the ftrongest and moft operative of prohibitory fanctions, and placed before the treasure of life, to guard from invafion what cannot be reftored. To equal robbery with murder is to reduce murder to robbery, to confound in common minds the gradations of iniquity, and incite the commiffion of a greater crime to prevent the detection of a lefs. If only murder were punished with death, very few robbers would stain their hands in blood; but when, by the last a&t of cruelty, no new danger is incurred, and greater security may be obtained, upon what principle fhall we bid them forbear? It may be urged, that the fentence is often mitigated to fimple robbery; but furely this is to confess that our laws are unreasonable in our own opinion; and, indeed, it may be obferved, that all but murderers have, at their laft hour, the common fenfations of mankind pleading in their favour. From this conviction of the inequality of the punishment to the offence, proceeds the frequent folicitation of pardons. They who would rejoice at the correction of a thief, are yet fhocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime fhrinks to nothing, compared with his mifery; and severity defeats itself by exciting pity. The gibbet, indeed, certainly difables those who die upon it from infefting the community; but their death feems not to contribute more to the reformation of their affociates, than any other method of feparation. A thief feldom paffes much of his time in recollection or anticipation, but from robbery haftens to riot, and from riot to robbery; nor, when the grave closes upon his companion, has any other care than to find another. The frequency of capital punishments, therefore, rarely hinders the commiffion of a crime, but naturally and commonly prevents its detection, and is, if we proceed only upon prudential principles, chiefly for that reason to be avoided. Whatever may be urged by cafuifts or politicians, the greater part of mankind, as they can never think that to pick the pocket and to pierce the heart is equally criminal, will fcarcely believe that two malefactors fo different in guilt can be justly doomed to the fame punishment; nor is the neceffity of fubmitting the confcience to human laws fo plainly evinced, fo clearly stated, or fo generally allowed, but that the pious, the tender, and the juft, will always fcruple to concur with the community in an act which their private judgment cannot approve. He who knows not how often rigorous laws produce total impunity, and how many crimes are concealed and forgotten for fear of hurrying the offender to that state in which there is no repentance, has converfed very little with mankind. And whatever epithets of reproach or contempt this compaffion may incur from those who confound cruelty with firmness, I know not whether any wife man would wifh it lefs powerful, or less extensive. If those whom the wisdom of our laws has condemned to die, had been detected in their rudiments of robbery, they might, by proper difcipline and useful labour, have been difentangled from their habits, they might have escaped all the temptation to fubfequent crimes, and paffed their days in reparation and penitence, and detected they might all have been, had the profecutors been certain that their lives would have been spared. I believe, every thief will confefs, that he has been more than once feized and dismissed; and that he has fometimes ventured upon capital crimes, because he knew, that those whom he injured would rather connive at his efcape, than cloud their minds with the horrors of his death. All laws against wickedness are ineffectual, unlefs fome will inform, and fome will profecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere violations of property, information will always be hated, and profecution dreaded. The heart of a good man cannot cannot but recoil at the thought of punishing a flight injury with death; especially when he remembers, that the thief might have procured fafety by another crime, from which he was reftrained only by his remaining virtue. The obligations to affift the exercise of publick justice are indeed ftrong; but they will certainly be overpowered by tenderness for life. What is punifhed with severity contrary to our ideas of adequate retribution, will be feldom discovered; and multitudes will be fuffered to advance from crime to crime, till they deserve death, because, if they had been fooner profecuted, they would have fuffered death before they deferved it. This scheme of invigorating the laws by relaxation, and extirpating wickednefs by lenity, is fo remote from common practice, that I might reasonably fear to expose it to the publick, could it be fupported only by my own observations: I fhall, therefore, by afcribing it to its author, Sir Thomas More, endeavour to procure it that attention, which I wish always paid to prudence, to justice, and to mercy. NUMB. 115. TUESDAY, April 23, 1751. Juv. Quadam parva quidem, fed non toleranda maritis. To the RAMBLER. DRYDEN. I SIR, SIT down, in pursuance of my late engagement, to recount the remaining part of the adventures that befel me in my long queft of conjugal felicity, which, though I have not yet been fo happy as to obtain it, I have at least endeavoured to deferve by unwearied diligence, without fuffering from repeated disappointments any abatement of my hope, or repreffion of my activity. You must have obferved in the world a fpecies of mortals who employ themfelves in promoting matrimony, and without any vifible motive of interest or vanity, without any discoverable impulfe of malice or benevolence, without any reafon, but that they want objects of attention and topicks of conversation, are inceffantly bufy in procuring wives and hufbands. They fill the ears of every fingle man and woman with fome convenient match, and when they are informed of your age and fortune, offer a partner for life with the fame readiness, and the fame indifference, as a salesman, when he has taken measure by his eye, fits his customer with a coat. It might be expected that they should foon be dif couraged from this officious interpofition by refent ment |