it in other
places or of other persons. For instance I have known five years of
penal servitude imposed for stealing from outside a shop on a second
conviction, when one month would have been more than enough on a first
conviction, and two or three months on a second conviction. For
small offences like these the penalty should always be the same
in character--I mean not excessive imprisonment, and never penal
servitude. As often as a man steals let him be sent to prison, and it
may be for each offence the time of imprisonment should be somewhat
slightly increased, but not the character of the punishment.

Years ago, in my Session days, I remember a poor and, I am afraid,
dishonest client of mine being _transported for life_ (on a second
conviction for larceny) for stealing _a donkey_; but I doubt if that
could happen nowadays. It seems incredible.

Nobody who has carefully noted the innumerable phases of crime which
our criminal courts have continually to deal with, and the infinite
shades of guilt attached to each of those crimes, will fail to come
to the conclusion that one might as well attempt to allocate to its
fitting place each grain of sand, exposed to the currents of a desert
and all other disturbing influences, as endeavour by any scheme or
fixed rule to determine what is the fitting sentence to be endured for
every crime which a person can be proved, under any circumstances, to
have committed.

The course I adopted in practice was this. My first care was never to
pass any sentence inconsistent with any other sentence passed under
similar circumstances for another though similar offence. Then I
proceeded to fix in my own mind what ought to be the outside sentence
that should be awarded for that particular offence had it stood
alone; and from that I deducted every circumstance of mitigation,
provocation, etc., the balance representing the sentence I finally
awarded, confining it purely to the actual guilt of the prisoner.

I have noticed that burglaries with violence are rarely committed
by one man alone, and that when two or more men are concerned in a
murder, one or more of them being afraid that some one, in the hope of
saving himself from the treachery of others, is anxious to shift the
whole guilt of the robbery, with its accompanying violence, on to the
shoulders of his comrades. It is well that this should be so, and that
such dangerous criminals should distrust with fear and hatred their
equally gu