[Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page121] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page122] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page123] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page124] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page125] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page126] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page127] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page128] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page129] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page130] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page131] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page132] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page133] [Illustration: Bill For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, page134] _Bill for proportioning Crimes and Punishments, in Cases heretofore Capital_. Whereas, it frequently happens that wicked and dissolute men, resigning themselves to the dominion of inordinate passions, commit violations on the lives, liberties, and property of others, and, the secure enjoyment of these having principally induced men to enter into society, government would be defective in its principal purpose, were it not to restrain such criminal acts, by inflicting due punishments on those who perpetrate them; but it appears, at the same time, equally deducible from the purposes of society, that a member thereof, committing an inferior injury, does not wholly forfeit the protection of his fellow-citizens, but, after suffering a punishment in proportion to his offence, is entitled to their protection from all greater pain, so that it becomes a duty in the legislature to arrange, in a proper scale, the crimes which it may be necessary for them to repress, and to adjust thereto a corresponding gradation of punishments. And whereas, the reformation of offenders, though an object worthy the attention of the laws, is not effected at all by capital punishments, which exterminate, instead of reforming, and should be the last melancholy resource against those whose existence is become inconsistent with the safety of their fellow-citizens, which also weaken the State, by cutting off so many who, if reformed, might be restored sound members to society, who, even under a course of correction, might be rendered useful in various labors for the public, and would be living and long continued spectacles to deter others from committing the like offences.