the unworthy; and either turn on its bad career, or stagger
downwards to ruin and abolition. Does the Hebrew People
prophetically sing "Ou' clo'!" in all thoroughfares, these
eighteen hundred years in vain?

To reward men according to their worth: alas, the perfection of
this, we know, amounts to the millennium! Neither is perfect
punishment, according to the like rule, to be attained,--nor
even, by a legislator of these chaotic days, to be too zealously
attempted. But when he does attempt it,--yes, when he summons
out the Society to sit deliberative on this matter, and consult
the oracles upon it, and solemnly settle it in the name of God;
then, if never before, he should try to be a little in the right
in settling it!--In regard to reward of merit, I do not bethink
me of any attempt whatever, worth calling an attempt, on the part
of modern Governments; which surely is an immense oversight on
their part, and will one day be seen to have been an altogether
fatal one. But as to the punishment of crime, happily this
cannot be quite neglected. When men have a purse and a skin,
they seek salvation at least for these; and the Four Pleas of the
Crown are a thing that must and will be attended to. By
punishment, capital or other, by treadmilling and blind rigor, or
by whitewashing and blind laxity, the extremely disagreeable
offences of theft and murder must be kept down within limits.

And so you take criminal caitiffs, murderers, and the like, and
hang them on gibbets "for an example to deter others." Whereupon
arise friends of humanity, and object. With very great reason,
as I consider, if your hypothesis be correct. What right have
you to hang any poor creature "for an example"? He can turn