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from relaxations of the law, and a more rational and equitable adaptation of penalties to offences.

Death is, as one of the ancients observes, of dreadful things the most dreadful; an evil, beyond which nothing can be threatened by sublunary power, or feared from human enmity or vengeance. This terror should, therefore, be reserved as the last resort of authority, as the strongest and most operative of prohibitory sanctions, and placed before the treasure of life, to guard from invasion what cannot be restored. To equal robbery with murder, is to reduce murder to robbery; to confound in common minds the gradations of iniquity, and incite the commission of a greater crime to prevent the detection of a less. If only murder were punished with death, very few robbers would stain their hands in blood; but when, by the last act of cruelty, no new danger is incurred, and greater security may be obtained, upon what principle shall we bid them forbear?

It may be urged, that the sentence is often mitigated to simple robbery; but surely this is to confess that our laws are unreasonable in our own opinion; and indeed it may be observed, that all but murderers have, at their last hour, the common sensations of mankind pleading in their favour.

From this conviction of the inequality of the punishment to the offence, proceeds the frequent solicitation of pardons. They who would rejoice at the correction of a thief, are yet shocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime shrinks to nothing compared with his misery; and severity defeats itself by exciting pity.

The gibbet, indeed, certainly disables those who die upon it from infesting the community; but their death seems not to contribute more to the reformation of their associates, than any

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other method of separation. A thief seldom passes much of his time in recollection or anticipation, but from robbery hastens 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 commission 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 casuists and 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 scarcely believe that two malefactors so different in guilt can be justly doomed to the same punishment; nor is the necessity of submitting the conscience to human laws so plainly evinced, so clearly stated, or so generally allowed, but that the pious, the tender, and the just, will always scruple 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 conversed very little with mankind. And, whatever epithets of reproach or contempt this compassion may incur from those who confound cruelty with firmness, I know not whether any wise man would wish it less powerful or less extensive.

If those, whom the wisdom of our laws have condemned to die, had been detected in their rudiments of robbery, they might, by proper discipline and useful labour, have been disentangled from their habits; they might have escaped all the temptations to subsequent crimes, and passed their days in reparation and penitence; and detected they might all have been, had the prosecutors been certain that their lives would have been spared. I

believe every thief will confess, that he has been more than once seized, and dismissed; and that he has sometimes ventured upon capital crimes, because he knew, that those whom he injured would rather connive at his escape, than cloud their minds with the horrors of his death.

All laws against wickedness are ineffectual, unless some will inform, and some will prosecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere violations of property, information will always be hated, and prosecution dreaded. The heart of a good man cannot but recoil at the thought of punishing a slight injury with death; especially when he remembers, that the thief might have procured safety by another crime, from which he was restrained only by his remaining virtue.*

* About five years since, the county of York were deeply interested in the trial of the father of a large family, who, when living in the greatest respectability, was accused of highway robbery.

The trial was in York Castle; the prosecutor was a youth of about 20 years of age, the son of a banker, and the prisoner a stout athletic man, of 50.

The prosecutor had transacted his business as usual at the Market-town; he had received several sums of money in the presence of the prisoner; had dined, and about five o'clock had set out on his return home: it was a fine evening in summer, and he rode gently on: in a solitary lane he was overtaken by the prisoner, who seized him and demanded his pocket-book: in the first agony of surprise and fear, the prosecutor gave him a violent blow with his whip; but the prisoner, who was a very powerful man, dragged him from his horse, knelt down upon him, and took from him his money and account books. In this situation the prosecutor begged very earnestly for his life. As he laid under the prisoner, he watched his countenance, and saw that he was much agitated: he desisted, arose, mounted his horse, and rode away. It was then about seven o'clock in the evening; but the young man was so much exhausted, that he did not reach home till late at night. He immediately stated these circumstances; but the improbability of his having been robbed in open day-light, on a public road, and of his having lost various memorandums, which a robber would scarcely have taken, excited some suspicion respecting the truth of this statement,

As

The obligations to assist the exercise of public justice are indeed strong; but they will certainly be overpowered by tenderness for life. What is punished with severity contrary to our ideas of adequate retribution, will be seldom discovered; and multitudes will be suffered to advance from crime to crime till they deserve death, because, if they had been sooner prosecuted, they would have suffered death before they had deserved it.

This scheme of invigorating the laws by relaxation, and extirpating wickedness by lenity, is so remote from common practice, that I might reasonably fear to expose it to the public, could it be supported only by my own observations; I shall therefore, by ascribing it to its author, Sir Thomas More,

As the Jury were leaving the Box, the young man who had been robbed, begged to be heard. He was so much agitated, that he could scarcely speak; when he recovered himself, he said, " I stand here to plead for your mercy towards a man, who listened to my voice when I begged for mercy from him. If he could have been deaf to my cry, I should now be in my grave, and he in the bosom of a respectable family, with the wife who believed him virtuous, and the children who loved him. It has been proved to you that his connections, his character, his religious persuasion, would all have united to shelter him from suspicion; it has also been proved that I was lame from my birth; that I am feeble; that I had exasperated him by a blow which almost fractured his skull; and that he knew I could identify him; but the kindness of his nature preponderated, it overcame ne the fear of disgrace; and he suffered me to depart, that I might be the cause of his death. If you do not pity his momentary lapse, if you do not respect his return to virtue, it would have been well for me if I had died ! It is me that you will condemn, I shall be the victim of the law, and he gave me my life in vain!"

He was frequently interrupted, during this affecting appeal, by the tears of the Jury, and the general distress of the Court. The prisoner was found Guilty, and was executed. The story is well known in the county of York. The name is suppressed from respect to his friends,

endeavour to procure it that attention which I wish always paid to prudence, to justice, and to mercy.

Rambler, No. 114, April 20th, 1751.

SIR W. BLACKSTONE.

PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1765.

In proportion to the importance of the criminal law, ought also to be the care and attention of the legislature in properly forming and enforcing it. It should be founded upon principles that are permanent, uniform, and universal; and always conformable to the dictates of truth and justice, the feelings of humanity, and the indelible rights of mankind: though it sometimes (provided there be no transgression of these eternal boundaries) may be modified, narrowed, and enlarged, according to the local or occasional necessities of the state which it is meant to govern. And yet, either from a want of attention to these principles in the first concoction of the laws, and adopting in their stead the impetuous dictates of avarice, ambition, and revenge; from retaining the discordant political regulations which successive conquerors or factions have established in the various revolutions of government; from giving a lasting efficacy to sanctions that were intended to be temporary, and made