eir revolutionary
tribunals, where every idea of natural justice and of their own declared
rights of man have been trod under foot with the most insolent
mockery,--all men concerned in the burning and demolition of houses or
churches, with audacious and marked acts of sacrilege and scorn offered
to religion,--in general, all the leaders of Jacobin clubs,--not one of
these should escape a punishment suitable to the nature, quality, and
degree of their offence, by a steady, but a measured justice.

In the first place, no man ought to be subject to any penalty, from the
highest to the lowest, but by a trial according to the course of law,
carried on with all that caution and deliberation which has been used in
the best times and precedents of the French jurisprudence, the criminal
law of which country, faulty to be sure in some particulars, was highly
laudable and tender of the lives of men. In restoring order and justice,
everything like retaliation ought to be religiously avoided; and an
example ought to be set of a total alienation from the Jacobin
proceedings in their accursed revolutionary tribunals. Everything like
lumping men in masses, and of forming tables of proscription, ought to
be avoided.

In all these punishments, anything which can be alleged in mitigation of
the offence should be fully considered. Mercy is not a thing opposed to
justice. It is an essential part of it,--as necessary in criminal cases
as in civil affairs equity is to law. It is only for the Jacobins never
to pardon. They have not done it in a single instance. A council of
mercy ought therefore to be appointed, with powers to report on each
case, to soften the penalty, or entirely to remit it, according to
circumstances.

With these precautions, the very first foundation of settlement must be
to call to a strict account those bloody and merciless offenders.
Without it, government cannot stand a year. People little consider the
utter impossibility of getting those who, having emerged from very low,
some from the lowest classes of society, have exercised a power so high,
and with such unrelenting and bloody a rage, quietly to fall back into
their old ranks, and become humble, peaceable, laborious, and useful
members of society. It never can be. On the other hand, is it to be
believed that any worthy and virtuous subject, restored to the ruins of
his house, will with patience see the cold-blooded murderer of his
father, mother, wife, or child