hem into trouble.

How many innocent people have we known that have been punished, and this
without the judge's fault; and how many that have not arrived at our
knowledge? This happened in my time: certain men were condemned to die
for a murder committed; their sentence, if not pronounced, at least
determined and concluded on. The judges, just in the nick, are informed
by the officers of an inferior court hard by, that they have some men in
custody, who have directly confessed the murder, and made an indubitable
discovery of all the particulars of the fact. Yet it was gravely
deliberated whether or not they ought to suspend the execution of the
sentence already passed upon the first accused: they considered the
novelty of the example judicially, and the consequence of reversing
judgments; that the sentence was passed, and the judges deprived of
repentance; and in the result, these poor devils were sacrificed by the
forms of justice. Philip, or some other, provided against a like
inconvenience after this manner. He had condemned a man in a great fine
towards another by an absolute judgment. The truth some time after being
discovered, he found that he had passed an unjust sentence. On one side
was the reason of the cause; on the other side, the reason of the
judicial forms: he in some sort satisfied both, leaving the sentence in
the state it was, and out of his own purse recompensing the condemned
party. But he had to do with a reparable affair; my men were irreparably
hanged. How many condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes
themselves?

All which makes me remember the ancient opinions, "That 'tis of necessity
a man must do wrong by retail who will do right in gross; and injustice
in little things, who would come to do justice in great: that human
justice is formed after the model of physic, according to which, all that
is useful is also just and honest: and of what is held by the Stoics,
that Nature herself proceeds contrary to justice in most of her works:
and of what is received by the Cyrenaics, that there is nothing just of
itself, but that customs and laws make justice: and what the Theodorians
held that theft, sacrilege, and all sorts of uncleanness, are just in a
sage, if he knows them to be profitable to him." There is no remedy: I
am in the same case that Alcibiades was, that I will never, if I can help
it, put myself into the hands of a man who may determine as to my head,
where my l