Answer. These cases are few. Laws are to be made for the mass of cases.
The object of a convention then, in other cases, would be, that the fugitive might not avoid the difference between exile and the legal punishment of the case. Now in what case would this difference be so important, as to overweigh even the single inconvenience of multiplying compacts?
1. Treason. This, when real, merits the highest punishment. But most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one’s country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government and acts against the oppressions of the government: the latter are virtues; yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former; because real treasons are rare, oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason-laws in all countries.
Reformation of government with our neighbors; being as much wanted now as reformation of religion is, or ever was any where, we should not wish then, to give up to the executioner, the patriot who fails, and flees to us. Treasons then, taking the simulated with the real, are sufficiently punished by exile.
2. Crimes against property; the punishment in most countries, immensely disproportionate to the crime.
In England, and probably in Canada, to steal a horse is death, the first offence; to steal above the value of twelve pence is death, the second offence. All excess of punishment is a crime. To remit a fugitive to excessive punishment is to be accessary to the crime. Ought we to wish for the obligation, or the right to do it? Better, on the whole, to consider these crimes as sufficiently punished by the exile.
There is one crime, however, against property, pressed by its consequences into more particular notice, to wit;
Forgery, whether of coin or paper; and whether paper of public or private obligation. But the fugitive for forgery is punished by exile and confiscation of the property he leaves: to which add by convention, a civil action against the property he carries or acquires, to the amount of the special damage done by his forgery.
The carrying away of the property of another, may also be reasonably made to found a civil action. A convention then may include forgery and the carrying away the property of others, under the head of,
3. Flight from debts.