[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page127]

[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page128]

[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page129]

[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page130]

[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page131]

[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page132]

[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page133]

[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page134]

_Bill for proportioning Crimes and Punishments, in Cases heretofore
Capital_.

Whereas, it frequently happens that wicked and dissolute men, resigning
themselves to the dominion of inordinate passions, commit violations on
the lives, liberties, and property of others, and, the secure enjoyment
of these having principally induced men to enter into society,
government would be defective in its principal purpose, were it not to
restrain such criminal acts, by inflicting due punishments on those who
perpetrate them; but it appears, at the same time, equally deducible
from the purposes of society, that a member thereof, committing
an inferior injury, does not wholly forfeit the protection of his
fellow-citizens, but, after suffering a punishment in proportion to his
offence, is entitled to their protection from all greater pain, so that
it becomes a duty in the legislature to arrange, in a proper scale,
the crimes which it may be necessary for them to repress, and to adjust
thereto a corresponding gradation of punishments.

And whereas, the reformation of offenders, though an object worthy the
attention of the laws, is not effected at all by capital punishments,
which exterminate, instead of reforming, and should be the last
melancholy resource against those whose existence is become inconsistent
with the safety of their fellow-citizens, which also weaken the State,
by cutting off so many who, if reformed, might be restored sound members
to society, who, even under a course of correction, might be rendered
useful in various labors for the public, and would be living and long
continued spectacles to deter others from committing the like offences.

And forasmuch as the experience of all ages and countries hath shown,
that cruel and sanguinary laws defeat their own purpose, by engaging the
benevolence of mankind to withhold prosecutions, to smother