This I fear is the case
with many. But there is another cause full as powerful towards this
security to enormous guilt,--the desire which possesses people who have
once obtained power to enjoy it at their ease. It is not humanity, but
laziness and inertness of mind, which produces the desire of this kind
of indemnities. This description of men love general and short methods.
If they punish, they make a promiscuous massacre; if they spare, they
make a general act of oblivion. This is a want of disposition to proceed
laboriously according to the cases, and according to the rules and
principles of justice on each case: a want of disposition to assort
criminals, to discriminate the degrees and modes of guilt, to separate
accomplices from principals, leaders from followers, seducers from the
seduced, and then, by following the same principles in the same detail,
to class punishments, and to fit them to the nature and kind of the
delinquency. If that were once attempted, we should soon see that the
task was neither infinite nor the execution cruel.
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