Excerpt from The Newgate Calendar, Vol. 1: Comprising Intresting Memoirs of the Most Notorious Characters The penal laws of the British empire are, by foreign writers, charged with being too sanguinary in the cases of lesser offences. They hold that the punishment of death ought to be inflicted only for crimes of the highest magnitude; and philanthropists of our own nation have accorded with their opinion. Such persons as have had no opportunity of inquiring into the subject will hardly credit the assertion that there are above one hundred and sixty offences punished by death, or, as it is denominated, without benefit of clergy. The multiplicity of punishments, it is argued, in many instances defeat their own ends; for the object is alone the prevention of crimes. The Roman empire never flourished so much as during the era of the Portian law, which abrogated the punishment of death; and it fell soon after the revival of the utmost severity of its penal laws. But Rome was not a nation of commerce, or it never could, under such an abrogation, have so long remained the mistress of Europe. In the present state of, society it has become indispensably necessary that offences which, in.

; their nature, are highly injurious to the community, and where no precept will avail, should be punished with the forfeiture of life: but those dreadful examples should be exhibited as seldom as possible; for while, on the one hand, such punishment often proves inadequate to its intended effect, by not being carried into execution; so, on the other, by being often repeated, the minds of the multitude are rendered callous to the dreadful example. The punishment awaiting the crime of murder, from the earliest ages of civilized nations, has been the same as that inflicted by the laws of the British empire, varying alone in the mode of putting the sentence into execution. We find the murderer punished by death in the ancient laws of the Jews, the Romans, and the Athenians; in nations of heathens and idolaters. The Persians, worshipping the sun as their deity, press murderers to death between two stones. Throughout the Chinese empire, and the vast dominions of the East, they arc beheaded; a death in Eng. land esteemed the least dishonourable, but there considered the most ignominious. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.

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