In the first place, no man ought to be subject to any penalty, from the
highest to the lowest, but by a trial according to the course of law,
carried on with all that caution and deliberation which has been used in
the best times and precedents of the French jurisprudence, the criminal
law of which country, faulty to be sure in some particulars, was highly
laudable and tender of the lives of men. In restoring order and justice,
everything like retaliation ought to be religiously avoided; and an
example ought to be set of a total alienation from the Jacobin
proceedings in their accursed revolutionary tribunals. Everything like
lumping men in masses, and of forming tables of proscription, ought to
be avoided.
In all these punishments, anything which can be alleged in mitigation of
the offence should be fully considered. Mercy is not a thing opposed to
justice. It is an essential part of it,--as necessary in criminal cases
as in civil affairs equity is to law. It is only for the Jacobins never
to pardon. They have not done it in a single instance.
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