 compact that is false between two men, is equally so between
an hundred, or an hundred thousand; for as ten millions of circles can never
make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest
foundation to falsehood. It is thus that reason speaks, and untutored nature
says the same thing. Savages that are directed by natural law alone are very
tender of the lives of each other; they seldom shed blood but to retaliate
former cruelty.
    Our Saxon ancestors, fierce as they were in war, had but few executions in
times of peace; and in all commencing governments that have the print of nature
still strong upon them, scarce any crime is held capital.
    It is among the citizens of a refined community that penal laws, which are
in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the poor. Government, while it grows
older, seems to acquire the moroseness of age; and as if our property were
become dearer in proportion as it increased, as if the more enormous our wealth,
the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts
every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader.
    I cannot tell whether it is from the number of our penal laws, or the
licentiousness of our people, that this country should shew more convicts in a
year, than half the dominions of Europe united. Perhaps it is owing to both; for
they mutually produce each other. When by indiscriminate penal laws a nation
beholds the same punishment affixed to dissimilar degrees of guilt, from
perceiving no distinction in the penalty, the people are led to lose all sense
of distinction in the crime, and this distinction is the bulwark of all
morality: thus the multitude of laws produce new vices, and new vices call for
fresh restraints.
    It were to be wished then that power, instead of contriving new laws to
punish vice, instead of drawing hard the cords of society till a convulsion come
to burst them, instead of cutting away wretches as useless, before we have tried
their utility, instead of converting correction into vengeance, it were to be
wished that we tried the restrictive arts of government, and made law the
protector, but not the tyrant of the people. We should then find that creatures,
whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hand of a refiner; we should then
find that wretches, now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a
momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve to sinew the state in times of
danger; that, as their faces are like ours, their
