In the highest rank of crimes and misdemeanours therefore, we may place those, which are carried into complete execution: and lower in the scale we find those criminal designs, which have proceeded some degrees, but not to the last stage of completion. For the aggravation of a criminal intent is measured by the length to which it goes. In either class that kind of injustice is most notorious, which tends to disturb the common peace of society, and therefore is injurious to greater numbers. Private wrongs follow in the next degree. The greatest of which are those affecting life, and very great, though somewhat inferior in the degrees of enormity, are those, that disturb the peace of families, which is founded on the marriage-contract. And the last description of wrongs are those affecting the property of individuals, either by taking it with open violence, or obtaining or injuring it by fraudulent means. Some are of opinion that a more accurate order of division might have been used; but that which is here followed is the same used by God himself in the delivery of his commandments. For under the name of parents are included not only those, who are naturally such, but sovereign princes, magistrates, and rulers of every description, whose authority is the key-stone of the fabric of society. Next follows the prohibition of murder; the prohibition of adultery, as a violation of the marriage bond; the prohibition of theft, and false evidence: and the catalogue of offences concludes with the prohibition of criminal desires. Among the immediate causes to restrain the commission of a crime, not only the cruelty of the act itself, but all the remote and possible consequences should be taken into the account. If a fire is begun, or the barriers, that keep out the waves, are broken down, the perpetrator brings upon his own head the blood of thousands, and all the guilt of that ruin by which they perish.