The impolicy of this profuse ordinance of death may also be shown in another way; for if we examine it fully, we shall find that it forms actually a nursery of vice; for at present none will load themselves with the blood of men, who have been guilty of a small theft; and as there is no other punishment decreed, the guilty escape with impunity and are encouraged in vice. We are not mentioning a circumstance that is a refined consequence of minute reasoning; it is one we are sure, that must have occurred to all: for who has not seen masters, upon the discovery of a theft by a servant, decline bringing him to justice and merely dismiss him, because the consequence would be death, if he delivered him to what is called justice; while he would not hesitate delivering him up to the laws, if they breathed a more merciful spirit; for then he would know that the vice of the individual meeting its punishment ere he was hardened in guilt, might recall him to paths of virtue. Nor do these considerations influence the masters alone; it influences all, through whose hands the guilty has to pass in his course to justice. We cannot resist here the temptation of quoting the words of Sir Samuel Romilly, upon this point of the subject, where after stating that during the seven years preceding 1809, 1872 persons were committed to Newgate for privately stealing, he says,
"In how many instances such crimes have been committed, and the persons robbed have not proceeded so far against the offenders as to have them committed to prison: how many of the 1872 thus committed were discharged because those who had suffered by their crimes would not appear to give evidence upon their trial: in how many cases, the witnesses who did appear, withheld the evidence that they could have given: and how numerous were the instances, in which juries found a compassionate verdict in direct contradiction to the plain facts clearly established before them,
