'The frequency of capital punishments, therefore, rarely hinders the commission of a crime, but naturally and commonly prevents its detection, and is, if we proceed upon prudential principles, chiefly for that reason to be avoided. Whatever may be urged by casuists or politicians, the greater part of mankind, as they can never think that to pick the pocket and to pierce the heart is equally criminal, will scarcely believe that two malefactors so different in guilt can be justly doomed to the same punishment; nor is the necessity of submitting the conscience to human laws so plainly evinced, so clearly stated, or so generally allowed, but that the pious, the tender, the just, will always scruple to concur with the community in an act which their private judgment cannot approve.'
The 'Rambler.'—Vol. II. No. 117.
'Tis sweet thy lab'ring steps to guide
To virtue's heights with wisdom well supplied,
From all the magazines of learning fortified
From thence to look below on human kind,
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind.—Dryden.
'The conveniences described in these lines may perhaps all be found in a well-chosen garret; but surely they cannot be supposed sufficiently important to have operated invariably upon different climates, distant ages, and separate nations.
'Another cause of the gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse, and nothing is plainer than that he who towers to the fifth story is whirled through more space by every circumrotation than another that grovels upon the ground-floor.