Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/168

. But what an example does it offer to a nation, to see the interpreters of the laws break their promise of pardon, and on the strength of learned subtleties, and to the scandal of public faith, drag him to punishment who hath accepted of their invitation! Such examples are not uncommon, and this is the reason, that political society is regarded as a complex machine, the springs of which are moved at pleasure by the most dexterous or most powerful.

HE laws forbid suggestive interrogations; that is, according to the civilians, questions which, with regard to the circumstances of the crime, are special when they should be general; or, in other words, those questions which, having an immediate reference to the crime, suggest to the criminal an immediate answer.