uch as
will humble, not irritate. Nothing will make government more awful to
them than to see that it does not proceed by chance or under the
influence of passion.

It is therefore proposed that no execution should be made until the
number of persons which government thinks fit to try is completed. When
the whole is at once under the eye, an examination ought to be made into
the circumstances of every particular convict; and _six_, at the very
utmost, of the fittest examples may then be selected for execution, who
ought to be brought out and put to death on one and the same day, in six
different places, and in the most solemn manner that can be devised.
Afterwards great care should be taken that their bodies may not be
delivered to their friends, or to others who may make them objects of
compassion or even veneration: some instances of the kind have happened
with regard to the bodies of those killed in the riots. The rest of the
malefactors ought to be either condemned, for larger [longer?] or
shorter terms, to the lighters, houses of correction, service in the
navy, and the like, according to the case.

This small number of executions, and all at one time, though in
different places, is seriously recommended; because it is certain that a
great havoc among criminals hardens rather than subdues the minds of
people inclined to the same crimes, and therefore fails of answering its
purpose as an example. Men who see their lives respected and thought of
value by others come to respect that gift of God themselves. To have
compassion for oneself, or to care, more or less, for one's own life, is
a lesson to be learned just as every other; and I believe it will be
found that conspiracies have been most common and most desperate where
their punishment has been most extensive and most severe.

Besides, the least excess in this way excites a tenderness in the milder
sort of people, which makes them consider government in an harsh and
odious light. The sense of justice in men is overloaded and fatigued
with a long series of executions, or with such a carnage at once as
rather resembles a massacre than a sober execution of the laws. The laws
thus lose their terror in the minds of the wicked, and their reverence
in the minds of the virtuous.

I have ever observed that the execution of one man fixes the attention
and excites awe; the execution of multitudes dissipates and weakens the
effect: but men reason themselves into disapprob