ther load with chains,
Or banish to Numidia's farthest plains!
My crime, that I, a loyal wife,
In kind compassion sav'd my husband's life. FRANCIS.

Politicians remark, that no oppression is so heavy or lasting as that
which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
The robber may be seized, and the invader repelled, whenever they are
found; they who pretend no right but that of force, may by force be
punished or suppressed. But when plunder bears the name of impost, and
murder is perpetrated by a judicial sentence, fortitude is intimidated,
and wisdom confounded: resistance shrinks from an alliance with
rebellion, and the villain remains secure in the robes of the
magistrate.

Equally dangerous and equally detestable are the cruelties often
exercised in private families, under the venerable sanction of parental
authority; the power which we are taught to honour from the first
moments of reason; which is guarded from insult and violation by all
that can impress awe upon the mind of man; and which therefore may
wanton in cruelty without control, and trample the bounds of right with
innumerable transgressions, before duty and piety will dare to seek
redress, or think themselves at liberty to recur to any other means of
deliverance than supplications by which insolence is elated, and tears
by which cruelty is gratified.

It was for a long time imagined by the Romans, that no son could be the
murderer of his father; and they had therefore no punishment
appropriated to parricide. They seem likewise to have believed with
equal confidence, that no father could be cruel to his child; and
therefore they allowed every man the supreme judicature in his own
house, and put the lives of his offspring into his hands. But experience
informed them by degrees, that they determined too hastily in favour of
human nature; they found that instinct and habit were not able to
contend with avarice or malice; that the nearest relation might be
violated; and that power, to whomsoever intrusted, might be ill
employed. They were therefore obliged to supply and to change their
institutions; to deter the parricide by a new law, and to transfer
capital punishments from the parent to the magistrate.

There are indeed many houses which it is impossible to enter familiarly,
without discovering that parents are by no means exempt from the
intoxications of dominion; and that he who is in no danger of hearing
remonstra