18 March 1808

Letter V

§.6. Reasons

Ends of Justice

4. Desistment Causes

It is by natural procedure alone that this, as well as so many other incongruities and inconsistencies, can be prevented from taking place.

The penal like every other branch of the law being a perfect chance and of all medley of design, made at different times by putting patches of statutes upon a ground of jurisprudential law, one consequence is a total want of all proportion as between offences and punishments. If the list of offences was put into one wheel and the list of punishments in another, a lottery thus drawn would afford no inconsiderable chance of a system better adapted in this respect than the present to the ends of justice.

The same Judge who by manufactured nullities is continually occupied in destroying the efficacy of all laws and in particular of all penal laws, shall be seen procuring at the hands of the legislator, additions made without any regard to proportion to the extent of the system of unnecessary and pernicious slaughter already so extensive. The praise of Justice is thus earned by setting up the law, the praise of mercy[?] by beating it down and trampling upon it. The King can do no wrong: the Kings Judges do what they will, whether they build or whether they pull down, can never avoid doing what is right.

The attributes of the divinity cluster round the head of learned barbarity, and encircle it with a ring of glory.