press captains, lieutenants, second lieutenants, midshipmen, pursers, nor many other officers. Why, but that the profits of their places, or the emoluments expected, are sufficient inducements? The business then is, to find money. by impressing suffi cient to make the sailors all volunteers, as well as their officers; and this without any fresh burden upon trade. The second of my premises is, that twenty-five shillings a month, with his share of the salt beef, pork, and peas-pudding, being found sufficient for the subsistence of a hard-working seaman, it will certainly be so for a sedentary scholar or #gentleman. I would then propose to form a treasury, out of which encouragements to seamen should be paid. To fill this treasury, I would impress a number of civil officers, who at present have great sala ries, oblige them to serve in their respective offices for twenty-five shillings a month with their share of mess provisions, and throw the rest of their salaries into the seamen's treasury. If such a press warrant were given me to execute, the first I would press should be a Recorder of Bristol, or a Mr. Justice Foster, because I might have need of his edifying example, to show how much impressing ought to be borne with; for he would certainly find, that though to be reduced to twenty-five shillings a month might be a 'private mischief,, yet that, agreeably to his maxim of law and good policy, it ought to be borne with patience," for preventing a national calamity. Then I would press the rest of the judges; and, opening the red book, I would press every civil officer of government from 50l. a year salary up to 50,000. which would throw an immense sum into our treasury; and these gentlemen could not complain, since they would receive twenty-five shillings a month, and their rations and this without being obliged to fight. Lastly, I think I would impress

66

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ON THE CRIMINAL LAWS AND THE PRAC TICE OF PRIVATEERING.

Letter to Benjamin Vaughan, Esq.

MY DEAR FRIEND.

March, 14, 1785.

AMONG the pamphlets you lately sent me was one, entitled, Thoughts on Executive Justice. In return for that, I send you a French one, on the same subsubject, Observatians concernant l'Execution de l'Article II. de la Declaration sur le Vol. They are both addressed to the judges, but written, as you wil see, in a very different spirit. The English author is for hanging all thieves. The Frenchman is for pro portioning punishments to offences.

If we really believe, as we profess to believe, that! the law of Moses was the law of God, the dictate of Divine wisdom, infinitely superior to human; o what principle do we ordain death as the punish ment of an offence, which according to that law, was only to be punished by a restitution of fourfold? T put a man to death for an offence which does no deserve death, is it not murder? And as the Frenet writer says, Doil-on punir un delit contre le soci par un crime contre la nature!

Superfluous property is the creature of society Simple and mild laws were sufficient to guard the property that was merely necessary. The savage bow, his hatchet, and his coat of skins, were suf ciently secured, without law, by the fear of person resentment and retaliation. When, by virtue of th first laws, part of the society accumulated wealth an grew powerful, they enacted others more severe, an would protect their property at the expense of h manity. This was abusing their power, and com mencing a tyranny. If a savage, before he entere into society, had been told-"Your neighbour, this means, may become owner of a hundred deer but if your brother, or your son, or yourself, having

no deer of your own, and being hungry, should kill one, an infamous death must be the consequence," he would probably have preferred his liberty, and his common right of killing any deer, to all the advantages of society that might be proposed to him.

That it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved: never, that I know of, controverted. Even the sanguinary author of the Thoughts agrees to it, adding well," that the very thought of injured innocence, and much more that of suffering innocence, must awaken all our tenderest and most compassionate feelings, and at the same time raise our highest indignation against the instruments of it. But," he adds, "there is no danger of either, from a strict adherence to the laws."-Really!-is it then impossible to make an unjust law; and if the law itself be unjust, may it not be the very "instrument" which ought to raise the author's and every body's highest indignation!" I see in the last newspapers from London, that a woman is capitally convicted at the Old Bailey, for privately stealing out of a shop some gauze, value fourteen shillings and three pence. Is there any proportion between the injury done by a theft, value fourteen shillings and three pence, and the punishment of a human creature, by death, on a gibbet? Might not that woman, by her labour, have nade the reparation ordained by God in paying four fold? Is not all punishment inflicted beyond the merit of the offence, so much punishment of innocence? In this light, how vast is the annual quantity, of not only injured but suffering innocence, in almost all the civilized states of Europe!

But it seems to have been thought, that this kind of innocence may be punished by way of preventing crimes. I have read, indeed, of a cruel Turk, in Barbary, who whenever he bought a new Christian slave, ordered him immediately to be hung up by the legs, and to receive a hundred blows of a cudgel on the soles of his feet, that the severe sense of the pu nishment, and fear of incurring it thereafter, might

prevent the faults that should merit it. Our author himself would hardly approve entirely of this Turk's conduct in the government of slaves; and yet he ap pears to recommend something like it for the govern ment of English subjects, when he applauds the reply of Judge Burnet to the convict horse-stealer; who, being asked what he had to say why judgment of death should not pass against him, and answering that it was hard to hang a man for only stealing & horse, was told by the judge, "Man thou art not to be hanged only for stealing a horse, but that horses may not be stolen." The man's answer, if candidly examined, will, I imagine, appear reasonable, as being founded on the eternal principles of justice and equity, that punishments should be proportioned to offences; and the judge's reply brutal and unreasonable, though the writer "wishes all judges to carry with them whenever they go the circuit, and to bear it in their minds, as containing a wise reason for all the penal statutes which they are called upon to pu in execution. It at once illustrates," says he, “the true grounds and reasons of all capital punishments whatsoever, namely, that every man's property, a well as his life, may be held sacred and inviolate." Is there then no difference in value between property and life? If I think it right that the crime of murder should be punished with death, not only as an equal punishment of the crime, but to prevent other murders, does it follow that I must approve of inflicting the same punishment for a little invasion on my property by theft? If I am not myself so barbarous, so bloody-minded, and revengeful, as to kill a fellow creature for stealing from me fourteen shillings and threepence, how can I approve of a law that does it! Montesquieu. who was himself a judge, endeavours to impress other maxims. He must have knows what humane judges feel on such occasions, ani what the effects of those feelings; and, so far fror thinking that severe and excessive punishments pre vent crimes, he asserts, as quoted by our French writer, that

"L'atrocité des loix en empéche l'exécution. "Lorsque la peine est sans mesure, on est sɔuvent obligé de lui préférer l'impunité.

"La cause de tous les relâchemens vient de l'impunité des crimes, et non de la moderation des peines."

It is said by those who know Europe generally. that there are more thefts committed and punished Fannually in England, than in all the other nations put together. If this be so, there must be a cause or causes for such a depravity in our common people. May not one be the deficiency of justice and morality in our national government, manifested in our Foppressive conduct to subjects, and unjust wars on four neighbours? View the long persisted in, unjust, monopolizing treatment of Ireland, at length acknowledged! View the plundering government exercised by our merchants in the Indies; the confiscating war made upon the American colonies; and, to say nothing of those upon France and Spain, view the late war upon Holland, which was seen by impar tial Europe in no other light than that of a war of rapine and pillage; the hopes of an immense and easy prey being its only apparent, and probably its true and real motive and encouragement. Justice is as strictly due between neighbour nations, as between neigbour citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang, as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang. After employing your people in robbing the Dutch, is it strange, that, being put out of that employ by peace, they still continue robbing, and rob one another? Piraterie, as the French call it, or privatcering, is the universal bent of the English nation, at home and abroad, wherever settled. No less than seven hundred privateers were, it is said, commissioned in the last war! These were fitted out by merchants, to prey upon other merchants, who had never done them any injury. Is there probably any of those privateering merchants of London, who were so ready to rob the merchants of Amsterdam, that would not as readily plunder another London mer