on
what reason it is that you think theft ought not to be punished by death:
would you give way to it? or do you propose any other punishment that
will be more useful to the public? for, since death does not restrain
theft, if men thought their lives would be safe, what fear or force could
restrain ill men? On the contrary, they would look on the mitigation of
the punishment as an invitation to commit more crimes.' I answered, 'It
seems to me a very unjust thing to take away a man's life for a little
money, for nothing in the world can be of equal value with a man's life:
and if it be said, "that it is not for the money that one suffers, but
for his breaking the law," I must say, extreme justice is an extreme
injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the
smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes
all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the
killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine
things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion. God has
commanded us not to kill, and shall we kill so easily for a little money?
But if one shall say, that by that law we are only forbid to kill any
except when the laws of the land allow of it, upon the same grounds, laws
may be made, in some cases, to allow of adultery and perjury: for God
having taken from us the right of disposing either of our own or of other
people's lives, if it is pretended that the mutual consent of men in
making laws can authorise man-slaughter in cases in which God has given
us no example, that it frees people from the obligation of the divine
law, and so makes murder a lawful action, what is this, but to give a
preference to human laws before the divine? and, if this is once
admitted, by the same rule men may, in all other things, put what
restrictions they please upon the laws of God. If, by the Mosaical law,
though it was rough and severe, as being a yoke laid on an obstinate and
servile nation, men were only fined, and not put to death for theft, we
cannot imagine, that in this new law of mercy, in which God treats us
with the tenderness of a father, He has given us a greater licence to
cruelty than He did to the Jews. Upon these reasons it is, that I think
putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that
it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and
a murderer should be equally punished; fo