Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/318

286 master's corn should work in his grounds during their lives in fetters, and with a bell at their neck, fixed to a collar, the prior would have been a considerable gainer by it.

"Terror should be preventively employed against crimes"; very true, but work, on compulsion, and lasting shame, strike more terror than the gallows.

There was, some months ago at London, a malefactor who had been condemned to be transported to America to work there at the sugar works with the negroes. In England any criminal, as in many other countries, may get a petition presented to the king, either to obtain a free pardon or a mitigation of the sentence. This one presented a petition to be hanged, alleging that he mortally hated work, and that he had rather suffer strangling for a minute than to make sugar all his lifetime.

Others may think otherwise; every one to his taste. But it has been already said, and cannot be too often repeated, that a man hanged is good for nothing, and that punishments ought to be useful.

Some years ago, in Turkey, two young men were condemned to be empaled, for having (without taking off their caps), stood to see the procession of the Lama pass by. The Emperor of China, who is a man of very good sense, said, that for his part, he should have condemned them to walk bareheaded, in every public procession, for three months afterwards.

"Proportion punishments to crimes," says the