Political laws, which are repugnant to the Law of nature and reason, ought not to be adopted. The objects above-mentioned seem to include all that can be necessary for the attention of Law-givers.
If on examination of the frame and tendency of our criminal Laws, both with respect to the principles of reason and State Policy, the Author might be allowed to indulge a hope, that what he brings under the Public Eye on this important subject, would be of use in promoting the good of Mankind, he should consider his labours as very amply rewarded.
The severity of the criminal Laws is not only an object of horror, but the disproportion of the punishments, as will be shewn in the course of this Work, breathes too much the spirit of Draco,[10] who boasted that he punished all crimes with death; because small crimes deserved it, and he could find no higher punishment for the greatest.
Though the ruling principle of our Government is unquestionably, Liberty, it is much to be feared that the rigour which the Laws indiscriminately inflict on slight as well as more atrocious offences, can be ill reconciled to the true distinctions of Morality, and strict notions of Justice, which form the peculiar excellence of those States which are to be characterised as free.
By punishing smaller offences with extraordinary severity, is there not a risque of inuring men to baseness; and of plunging them into the sink of infamy and despair, from whence they seldom fail to rise capital criminals; often to the destruction of their fellow-creatures, and always to their own inevitable perdition?
To suffer the lower orders of the people to be ill educated—to be totally inattentive to those wise regulations of State Policy which might serve to guard and improve their morals; and then to punish them for crimes which have originated in bad habits, has the appearance of a cruelty not less severe than any which is exercised under the most despotic Governments.
There are two Circumstances which ought also to be minutely considered in apportioning the measure of Punishment—the immorality of the action; and its evil tendency.
Nothing contributes in a greater degree to deprave the minds of the people, than the little regard which Laws pay to Morality; by inflicting more severe punishments on offenders who commit, what may be termed, Political Crimes, and crimes against property, than on those who violate religion and virtue.
When we are taught, for instance, by the measure of punishment that it is considered by the Law as a greater crime to coin a sixpence than to kill our father or mother, nature and reason revolt against the proposition.
In offences which are considered by the Legislature as merely personal, and not in the class of public wrongs, the disproportionate punishment is extremely shocking.