ion 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 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 on 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
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 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 has 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 temptation 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 cri