082-262]

9 May 1808

I. Reasons

Ch.II

§.2.

8. Out of the indictments and decisions together, such of them as chance, the substitute for legislative wisdom and probity has preserved, has been distilled in the state in which lawyers see it and repented thieves feel it, all the law there is, except in this or that particular case, against theft: every body ready to hang men for theft in any number: nobody either knowing or caring what theft is, or thinking it worth his while to obtain any such knowledge.

9. And so in regard to murder - and so many other offences for which men are every day put to death, by a Judge to whom the possibility or impossibility of their knowing in time what it is they are destined to be put to death for is matter of such invariable and imperturbable indifference.