1821 Sept. 26

To Toreno

Letter IV or V or VI

§ 3 Conditions

Maxims by J.B

*9

*5

1. A pecuniary punishment to a fixt or limited amount is pecuniary ruin to all those who do not possess property to an amount considerably superior, and a licence to all who by themselves or with the assistance of associates or other friends are able /would be able and willing/ to part with the money for the satisfaction of committing the offence. Innumerable if it be good for any thing will be your occasions for making application of this observation. For want of attention to it, I find in one such Article 589, an unlimited licence for the commission of mischief in every imaginable shape given to every man who has a few duros that he can spare. The price is thus fixt, and a very moderate one it is, at which a witness whose testimony is necessary to conviction may be bought off.

Of imprisonment or any other chronical punishment the severity is greater and greater as the individual condemned is older and older: the portion which it occupies of his life is greater and greater, it is more and more likely to be perpetual. Upon this principle, by the help of Tables of mortality a scale of abatement[?] might be made. This observation may be found not altogether inapplicable to the head /the list/ of Relapses in the proposed Code.

Wherever for /to/ two offences to the commission of which a man is tempted by the same motive and the same opportunity but differing in point of mischievousness the same punishment is attached, the punishment operates as a bounty on the commission of the most mischievous.

Should these observations be found to contain any thing in them worth notice, many more might have been /be/ added that would not have been found less so. Here however I /they/ must end. In these upon recollection I perceive that there is nothing that in substance I have said elsewhere: and in particular in those works of mine of which the existence at least in French has[?] is to the Gentlemen in question so well known, and by the existence [of] which if there be any thing good in them so little good effect has been produced: nothing that in a less imperfect form I will not submitt to the /your/ Spanish Nation, if your rulers will leave it possible to me.