The office of the Alcalde combined administrative and judicial functions and, not seldom, even legislative ones. Colton was oppressed by his power and its responsibility. "Such absolute disposal of questions affecting property and personal liberty," he observes, "never ought to be confided to one man. There is not a judge on any bench in England or the United States whose power is so absolute as that of the Alcalde of Monterey." But he brought to his work in all its details an unflagging zeal and constant personal attention which made his administration unique in the history of the time. In minor matters, where, as he says, "the Alcalde is himself the law," Colton devised methods of appealing to the better instincts of the wrongdoer. "There is a string in every man's breast," he writes, "which, if you can rightly touch, will 'discourse music.'" Colton, we see from his diary, put a sensitive finger on this string in many a heart. His ideas of punishment belong to the present. "It is difficult," he says, "to discriminate between offences which flow from moral hardihood and those which result in a measure from untoward circumstances. There is a wide difference between the two; and an Alcalde under the Mexican law has a large scope in which to exercise his sense of moral justice. Better to err a furlong with mercy than a fathom with cruelty. Unmerited punishment never yet reformed its subject; to suppose it is a libel on the human soul." The following extracts from his account of cases brought before him are representative: "A lad of fourteen years was brought before me today charged with stealing a horse. The evidence of the larceny was conclusive, but what punishment to inflict was the question. We have no house of correction, and to sentence him to the ball and chain on the public works, among hardened culprits, was to cut off all hope of amendment and inflict an indelible stigma on the youth; so I sent for the father, who had no good reputation himself, and placing a riata in his hand, directed him to inflict twenty-four lashes on his thieving boy. He proceeded as far as twelve, when I stopped him; they were enough. They seemed inflicted by one attempting to atone in this form for his own transgressions. 'Inflict the rest, Soto, on your own evil example; if you had been upright yourself, you might expect truth and honesty in your boy. You are more responsible than this lad for his crime; you can never chastise him into the right path, and continue yourself to travel in the wrong.'"