mes, because he knew, that those whom he injured would rather
connive at his escape, than cloud their minds with the horrours of his
death.

All laws against wickedness are ineffectual, unless some will inform,
and some will prosecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere
violations of property, information will always be hated, and
prosecution dreaded. The heart of a good man cannot but recoil at the
thought of punishing a slight injury with death; especially when he
remembers that the thief might have procured safety by another crime,
from which he was restrained only by his remaining virtue.

The obligations to assist the exercise of publick justice are indeed
strong; but they will certainly be overpowered by tenderness for life.
What is punished with severity contrary to our ideas of adequate
retribution, will be seldom discovered; and multitudes will be suffered
to advance from crime to crime, till they deserve death, because, if
they had been sooner prosecuted, they would have suffered death before
they deserved it.

This scheme of invigorating the laws by relaxation, and extirpating
wickedness by lenity, is so remote from common practice, that I might
reasonably fear to expose it to the publick, could it be supported only
by my own observations: I shall, therefore, by ascribing it to its
author, Sir Thomas More, endeavour to procure it that attention, which I
wish always paid to prudence, to justice, and to mercy.[c]

No. 115. TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1751.

_Quaedam parvu quidem; sed non toleranda maritis_. JUV. Sat vi. 184.

Some faults, though small, intolerable grow. DRYDEN.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

I sit down, in pursuance of my late engagement, to recount the remaining
part of the adventures that befel me in my long quest of conjugal
felicity, which, though I have not yet been so happy as to obtain it, I
have at least endeavoured to deserve by unwearied diligence, without
suffering from repeated disappointments any abatement of my hope, or
repression of my activity.

You must have observed in the world a species of mortals who employ
themselves in promoting matrimony, and without any visible motive of
interest or vanity, without any discoverable impulse of malice or
benevolence, without any reason, but that they want objects of attention
and topicks of conversation, are incessantly busy in procuring wives and
husbands. They fill the ears of every single man and woman with some
conven