perhaps it will be better to strike it out here and
substitute the word 'pardon.'

Page 239. '_Les commissaires veulent_,' &c. Manslaughter is the killing
a man with design, but in a sudden gust of passion, and where the killer
has not had time to cool. The first offence is not punished capitally,
but the second is. This is the law of England and of all the American
States; and is not a new proposition. Those laws have supposed that a
man, whose passions have so much dominion over him, as to lead him to
repeated acts of murder, is unsafe to society: that it is better he
should be put to death by the law, than others more innocent than
himself on the movements of his impetuous passions.

Ibid. '_Mal-aise d'indiquer la nuance precise,_' &c. In forming a scale
of crimes and punishments, two considerations have principal weight. 1.
The atrocity of the crime. 2. The peculiar circumstances of a country,
which furnish greater temptations to commit it, or greater facilities
for escaping detection, The punishment must be heavier to counterbalance
this. Were the first the only consideration, all nations would form the
same scale. But as the circumstances of a country have influence on
the punishment, and no two countries exist precisely under the same
circumstances, no two countries will form the same scale of crimes and
punishments. For example; in America the inhabitants let their horses go
at large in the uninclosed lands which are so extensive as to maintain
them altogether. It is easy, therefore, to steal them and easy to
escape. Therefore the laws are obliged to oppose these temptations with
a heavier degree of punishment. For this reason the stealing of a horse
in America is punished more severely, than stealing the same value in
any other form. In Europe where horses are confined so securely, that it
is impossible to steal them, that species of theft need not be punished
more severely than any other. In some countries of Europe, stealing
fruit from trees in punished capitally. The reason is, that it being
impossible to lock fruit trees up in coffers, as we do our money, it is
impossible to oppose physical bars to this species of theft. Moral ones
are therefore opposed by the laws. This to an unreflecting American
appears the most enormous of all the abuses of power; because he has
been used to see fruits hanging in such quantities, that if not taken by
men they would rot: he has been used to consider them therefore as of