generated in the society of a prison. Were the offender confined
to the society of able and virtuous men he would probably be more
improved than in solitude. But is this practicable? Mr Godwin's
ingenuity is more frequently employed in finding out evils than
in suggesting practical remedies.

Punishment, for example, is totally reprobated. By
endeavouring to make examples too impressive and terrible,
nations have, indeed, been led into the most barbarous cruelties,
but the abuse of any practice is not a good argument against its
use. The indefatigable pains taken in this country to find out a
murder, and the certainty of its punishment, has powerfully
contributed to generate that sentiment which is frequent in the
mouths of the common people, that a murder will sooner or later
come to light; and the habitual horror in which murder is in
consequence held will make a man, in the agony of passion, throw
down his knife for fear he should be tempted to use it in the
gratification of his revenge. In Italy, where murderers, by
flying to a sanctuary, are allowed more frequently to escape, the
crime has never been held in the same detestation and has
consequently been more frequent. No man, who is at all aware of
the operation of moral motives, can doubt for a moment, that if
every murder in Italy had been invariably punished, the use of
the stiletto in transports of passion would have been
comparatively but little known.

That human laws either do, or can, proportion the punishment
accurately to the offence, no person will have the folly to
assert. From the inscrutability of motives the thing is
absolutely impossible, but this imperfection, though it may be