29 Jan y 1809

Peines 18

9 But a supposition involved in this metaphor as above, & which is as above groundless, is that though it may be done after, it is impossible before the crime is committed to give expression to the circumstances that constitute the ground for punishment

What must be confessed, is — True it is that were it the quotation to stop here, and with the

above blank in it unnoticed in it, it the quotation might

be in danger of being charged with infidelity: being an unfaithful one.

For time it is, that the time at which the impossibility of being enumerated

or defined is predicated ascribed to of those circumstances

in the time signified by the word "beforehand": viz.

a length of time preceding the commission of the individual

offence: he it being at the same time in the last preceding page, predicated of the

same circumstances in the prior anterior antecedent page that "after the

"crime is committed it is not only possible but " easy to

" perceive" them, and on the posterior page that, at the same relative period it is

matter of habitual practice to take the general character of

them for the subject of "deliberation". But of these

is a set of general terms which before this or that crime has

been committed are capable of serving to give expression

to the material circumstances of it - the circumstances on which

the propriety or impropriety of punishing the criminal

with death turns depends — of giving expression to those important

circumstances after the crime has been committed —

why the same words should be incapable or

less capable of serving for the giving expression to those

same circumstances before that same individual crime has been committed,

remains to be explained by any person, if

such there be, to whom it appears a practicable task

to find any thing like sense or reason

in this explanation and defence of the policy

with the intelligence of which the Reverend doctor is so much enamoured. so completely satisfied.