1785] Essays 5 
maxim that has been long and generally approved; 
never, that I know of, controverted. Even the san- 
guinary author of the Thoughts agrees to it (p. 163), 
adding well, “‘that the very thought of injured inno- 
cence, and much more that of suffering nnocence, 
must awaken all our tenderest and most compas- 
sionate feelings, and at the same time raise our 
highest indignation against the instruments of it. 
But,” he adds, ‘“‘there is no danger of esther, from a 
strict adherence to the laws.” Really! Is it then 
impossible to make an unjust law? and if the law 
itself be unjust, may it not be the very ‘instrument ”’ 
which ought to “raise the author's and everybody's 
highest indignation’? I read, in the last newspaper 
from London, that a woman is capitally convicted at 
the Old Bailey, for privately stealing out of a shop 
some gauze, value fourteen shillings and threepence; 
is there any proportion between the injury done by a 
theft, value fourteen shillings and threepence, and 
the punishment of a human creature, by death, on a 
gibbet? Might not that woman, by her labor, have 
made the reparation ordained by God, in paying 
fourfold? Is not all punishment inflicted beyond 
the merit of the offence, so much punishment of 
innocence? In this light, how vast is the annual 
quantity of not only injured, but suffering innocence, 
in almost all the civilized states of Europe! 
But it seems to have been thought that this kind 
of innocence may be punished by way of prevent- 
ang crimes. I have read, indeed, of a cruel Turk in 
Barbary, who, whenever he bought a new Christian