1824. April 17

Penal Law

Under the head of pardon, say - mercy grants pardon upon payment of

fees.

punishment: Where the offended ruler is that God which is in heaven, dignity

being infinite, that punishment ought to be, and is, in each instance,

infinite. Where the offended ruler is that God which is on earth, the

punishment ought not to be infinite, it ought only to be next to infinite.

W ere justice alone consulted, such, accordingly would be

the punishment of this sinner. But, in the heart of that God which is upon

earth, and with us, justice has, for her never-failing companion and

appeaser, mercy . Mercy has for her

function

the rendering of no effect to an amount more or less

considerable the decrees of justice. In this, as in all other cases, mercy

has interposed, and, after deducing from what has been ordained by justice

— what has been subtracted from it by mercy, the balance is

what any sentence forms that punishment which

the sentence is about to declare.

Among the ingredients of this rhetoric, is an ingenious irony: that irony of

which the name is sarcasm. In the language of social intercourse, a visit,

in the most frequent signification of the word, is a journey made to a

man 's

residence for motives of kindness — for the

manifestation of kindness, such, as your sentence declares, is the

kindness, the loving kindness, which you, the convict, the offending

sinner, have deserved, and deserve at the hands of that God which is in

heaven, at the hands of his most excellent and most worthy representative

that God which is upon earth and with us at the hands of me whom you see

his representative and servant.