towards the offenders. The
present vicious constitution of society alone is responsible for all
these enormities: the poor sinners are but the helpless victims or
instruments of its disorders, and could not possibly have avoided the
errors into which they have been betrayed. Though they can bear with
crimes, therefore, they cannot reconcile themselves to punishments; and
have an unconquerable antipathy to prisons, gibbets, and houses of
correction, as engines of oppression, and instruments of atrocious
injustice. While the plea of moral necessity is thus artfully brought
forward to convert all the excesses of the poor into innocent
misfortunes, no sort of indulgence is shown to the offences of the
powerful and rich. Their oppressions, and seductions, and debaucheries,
are the theme of many an angry verse; and the indignation and abhorrence
of the reader is relentlessly conjured up against those perturbators of
society, and scourges of mankind.

It is not easy to say, whether the fundamental absurdity of this
doctrine, or the partiality of its application, be entitled to the
severest reprehension. If men are driven to commit crimes, through a
certain moral necessity; other men are compelled, by a similar
necessity, to hate and despise them for their commission. The
indignation of the sufferer is at least as natural as the guilt of him
who makes him suffer; and the good order of society would probably be as
well preserved, if our sympathies were sometimes called forth in behalf
of the former. At all events, the same apology ought certainly to be
admitted for the wealthy, as for the needy offender. They are subject
alike to the overruling influence of necessity, and equally affected by
the miserable condition of society. If it be natural for a poor man to
murder and rob, in order to make himself comfortable, it is no less
natural for a rich man to gormandise and domineer, in order to have the
full use of his riches. Wealth is just as valid an excuse for the one
class of vices, as indigence is for the other. There are many other
peculiarities of false sentiment in the productions of this class of
writers, that are sufficiently deserving of commemoration; but we have
already exceeded our limits in giving these general indications of their
character, and must now hasten back to the consideration of the singular
performance which has given occasion to all this discussion.

The first thing that strikes the reader of Thalaba, i