27 Jan 1809 . View P 2

Paley? Reason for English practice cases meet for capital punishment depend on circumstances impossible to be defined till after the offence has been committed

"The better of which two methods (continues the Reverend

Doctor) "has been long adopted in this country, where, of those

"who receive sentence of death scarcely one in ten is executed

Such is the statement germ of the practice:

and worse, under the notice of an indication of the

by which the conduct of the authors creators and preservers of this state of

things may have been determined, comes a justification of

it

"And the preference of this to the former method (as if there

"were no other) seems to be founded on the consideration, that

"the selection of proper subjects for capital punishment principally

"depends upon circumstances, about, however easy to perceive

"in each particular case after the crime is committed, it

"is impossible to enumerate or define beforehand; in to

"ascertain however with that exactness which is requisite

in legal description."

"The propriety of inflicting mode of punishment he depends depending depends principally

to upon circumstances which it is impossible to

"enumerate or define beforehand! or at any rate at least to ascertain

"with that exactness which is requisite in legal descriptions!

This is as much as to say that it is impossible for the business

of punishment to be carried or had by powers compleatly arbitrary.

The circumstances in which the propriety of a lot of punishment which has

been inflicted depends — impossible to enumerate or define

beforehand! and yet there some circumstance easy to

perceive after the crime has been is committed! A Nero or

a Caligula, if it were an object with them to find a justification

for their barbarities, would it be possible for them to dwell

as

or wish for a theory that should set them more compleatly at their ease?

3 By the help of this doctrine, which supposes that In the administration of penal law, it is necessary Judges should be invested with arbitrary power the atrocities of Nero & Caligula or any other atrocities may find their justification