Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/29

Ch. 1. of everity. It is the entiment of an ingenious writer, who eems to have well tudied the prings of human action, that crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty, than by the everity, of punihment. For the exceive everity of laws (ays Montequieu ) hinders their execution: when the punihment urpaes all meaure, the public will frequently out of humanity prefer impunity to it. Thus alo the tatute 1 Mar. ft. 1. c. 1. recites in it's preamble, “ that the tate of every king conits more auredly in the love of the ubject towards their prince, than in the dread of laws made with rigorous pains ; and that laws made for the preervation of the commonwealth without great penalties are more often obeyed and kept, than laws made with extreme punihments.” Happy had it been for the nation, if the ubequent practice of that deluded princes in matters of religion, had been correpondent to thee entiments of herelf and parliament, in matters of tate and government ! We may farther oberve that anguinary laws are a bad ymptom of the ditemper of any tate, or at leat of it's weak contitution. The laws of the Roman kings, and the twelve tables of the decemviri, were full of cruel punihments : the Porcian law, which exempted all citizens from entence of death, ilently abrogated them all. In this period the republic flourihed : under the emperors evere punihments were revived ; and then the empire fell.

is moreover aburd and impolitic to apply the ame punihment to crimes of different malignity. A multitude of anguinary laws (beides the doubt that may be entertained concerning the right of making them) do likewie prove a manifet defect either in the widom of the legilative, or the trength of the executive power. It is a kind of quackery in government, and argues a want of olid kill, to apply the ame univeral remedy, the ultimum upplicium, to every cae of difficulty. It is, it mut be owned, much eaier to extirpate than to amend mankind : Rh