respect of the rights which it violates and of the terror needed to prevent the recurrence of like offences, to a burglary. It will not follow because the burglary is punished by imprisonment with hard labour that hard labour should be inflicted on the fraudulent banker likewise. The infliction of hard labour is in everyone's apprehension so different to the banker from what it is to the burglar, that its infliction is not needed in order to equalise the terror which the popular imagination associates with the punishment in the two cases. 194. On the same principle may be justified the consideration of extenuating circumstances in the infliction of punishment. In fact, whether under that name or another, they are taken account of in the administration of criminal law among all civilised nations. 'Extenuating circumstances' is not a phrase in use among our lawyers, but in fact the consideration of them does constantly, with the approval of the judge, convert what would otherwise have been conviction for murder into conviction for manslaughter, and when there has been conviction for murder, leads to the commutation of the sentence. This fact is often taken to show that the degree of moral depravity on the part of the criminal, the question of his character and motive, is and must be considered in determining the punishment due to him. In truth, however, 'extenuating circumstances' may very well make a difference in the kind of terror which needs to be associated with a crime in order to the future protection of rights, and under certain conditions the consideration of them may be sufficiently justified on this ground. Suppose a theft by a starving man, or a hare shot by an angry farmer whose corn it is devouring. These are crimes, but crimes under such extenuating circumstances that there is no need to associate very serious terror with them in order to the protection of the essential rights of property. In the latter case the right which the farmer violates is one which perhaps might be disallowed altogether without interference with any right which society is interested in maintaining. In the former case the right violated is a primary and essential one; one which, where there are many starving people, is in fact pretty sure to be protected by the most stringent penalties. And it might be argued that on the principle stated this is as it should be; that, so far from the hunger of the thief being a reason for lightening his punishment, it is a reason for increasing it, in order that the special temptation to steal when far gone in hunger may, if possible, be neutralised by a special terror associated with the commission of the crime under those conditions. But this would be a one-sided application of the principle. It is not the business of the state to protect one order of rights specially, but all rights equally. It ought not therefore to protect a certain order of rights by associating special terror