Let us give an instance of this from the _Vicar of Wakefield_. Nothing could be more just, or more happily expressed, than the opening observation we are about to quote. The reasoning which follows, and is intended to support it, is as weak and fantastical as, on so beaten a subject, it well could be. “And it were highly to be wished,” says the Vicar, “that legislative power would thus direct the law rather to reformation than severity; that it would seem convinced that the work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable. Then instead of our present prisons, which find or make men guilty, which enclose wretches for the commission of one crime, and return them, if returned alive, fitted for the perpetration of thousands—we should see, as in other parts of Europe, places of penitence and solitude, where the accused might be attended by such as could give them repentance, if guilty, or new motives to virtue, if innocent. And this, but not the increasing punishment, is the way to mend a state.” Now, if the good Vicar had stopped here, he would have expressed a truth much needed at the time, in a simplicity and elegance of language which could not be improved. But the Vicar enters into abstract reasoning to prove his thesis, grows argumentative, and, at the same time, grows weak. “Nor can I,” he continues, “avoid even questioning the validity of that right which social combinations have assumed of capitally punishing offences of a slight nature. In cases of murder their right is obvious, as it is the duty of us all, from the law of self-defence, to cut off that man who has shown a disregard for the life of another. Against such all nature rises in arms; but it is not so against him who steals my property. Natural law gives me no right to take away his life, as by that the horse he steals is as much his property as mine. If, then, I have any right, it must be from a compact made between us, that he who deprives the other of his horse shall die. _But this is a false compact; because no man has a right to barter his life any more than to take it away, as it is not his own. And, besides, the compact is inadequate, and could be set aside even in a court of modern equity, as there is a great penalty for a trifling inconvenience, since it is far better that two men should live than that one man should ride._ But a compact that is false between two men is equally so between a hundred and a hundred thousand; for as ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.” Logic such as this, even if set forth in Latin, would hardly have earned him his supper and his bed in the University of Padua.