Though the ruling principle of our Government is unquestionably, _Liberty_, it is much to be feared that the rigour which the Laws indiscriminately inflict on slight as well as more atrocious offences, can be ill reconciled to the true distinctions of Morality, and strict notions of Justice, which form the peculiar excellence of those States which are to be characterised as free. By punishing smaller offences with extraordinary severity, is there not a risque of inuring men to baseness; and of plunging them into the sink of infamy and despair, from whence they seldom fail to rise capital criminals; often to the destruction of their fellow-creatures, and always to their own inevitable perdition? To suffer the lower orders of the people to be ill educated--to be totally inattentive to those wise regulations of State Policy which might serve to guard and improve their morals; and then to punish them for crimes which have originated in bad habits, has the appearance of a cruelty not less severe than any which is exercised under the most despotic Governments. There are two Circumstances which ought also to be minutely considered in apportioning the measure of Punishment--_the immorality of the action; and its evil tendency_. Nothing contributes in a greater degree to deprave the minds of the people, than the little regard which Laws pay to Morality; by inflicting more severe punishments on offenders who commit, what may be termed, _Political Crimes_, and crimes against property, than on those who violate religion and virtue. When we are taught, for instance, by the measure of punishment that it is considered by the Law as a greater crime to coin a sixpence than to kill our father or mother, nature and reason revolt against the proposition. In offences which are considered by the Legislature as merely personal, and not in the class of public wrongs, the disproportionate punishment is extremely shocking. If, for example, a personal assault is committed of the most cruel, aggravated, and violent nature, the offender is seldom punished in any other manner than by fine and imprisonment: but if a delinquent steals from his neighbour secretly more than the value of twelve-pence, the Law dooms him to death. And he can suffer no greater punishment (except the ignominy exercised on his dead body,) if he robs and murders a whole family. Some private wrongs of a flagrant nature are even passed over with impunity: the seduction of a married woman--the destruction of the peace and happiness of families, resulting from alienating a wife's affections, and defiling her person, is not an offence punishable by the Criminal Law; while it is death to rob the person, who has suffered this extensive injury, of a trifle exceeding a shilling.