The Opinions Of Different Authors Upon The Punishment Of Death Volume 1

Author : Basil Montagu
Publisher : Rarebooksclub.com
ISBN 13 : 9781230138251
Total Pages : 104 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (382 download)

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Download or read book The Opinions of Different Authors Upon the Punishment of Death Volume 1 written by Basil Montagu and published by Rarebooksclub.com. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1809 edition. Excerpt: ...are very tender of the lives of each other; they seldom shed blood but to retaliate former cruelty. Our Saxon ancestors, fierce as they were in war, had but few executions in times of peace; and in all commencing governments that have the print of nature still strong upon them, scarce any crime is held capital. It is among the citizens of a refined community, that penal laws, which are in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the. poor. Government, while it grows older, seems to acquire the moroseness of age: and, as if our property were become dearer in proportion as it encreased; as if the more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears; all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader. I cannot tell whether it is from the number of our penal laws, or the licentiousness of our people, that this country should show more convicts in a year than half the dominions of Europe united. Perhaps it is owing to both; for they mutually produce each other. When by indiscriminate penal laws, a nation beholds the same punishment affixed to dissimilar degrees of guilt, from perceiving no distinction in the penalty, the people are led to lose all sense of distinction in the crime, and this distinction is the bulwark of all morality: thus the multitude of laws produce new vices, and new vices call for fresh restraints. It were to be wished then, that power, instead of contriving new laws to punish vice; instead of drawing hard the cords of society till a convulsion come to burst them; instead of cutting away wretches as useless, before we have tried their utility; instead of converting correction into vengeance; it were to be wished that we tried the restrictive arts of government, and...