Punishment

"Furiosus solo furore punitur: Let a madman be punished by his madness alone."

""The execution of an offender is by way of example, ut poena ad paucos, metus ad omnes perveniat" (Co. 3 Inst. 6): but so it is not when a madman is executed: but should be a miserable spectacle, both against law, and of extreme inhumanity and cruelty, and can be of no example to others."

"Multiplicata trasgressione crescat poena inflictis: Let infliction of punishment increase with multiplied crime."

"The wishes of every human man are, that guilt may not be fixed upon any man; but I confess I am one of those who have not the weakness—which weakness, a Judge at least, and a jury, must get rid of, before they fit themselves to fill the respective stations which they are to fill in the administration of the justice of the country— I say, therefore, I am not one of those who wish under false compassion, inconsistent with the administration of criminal justice, that a person on whom guilt is fairly fixed, should escape the punishment which the law annexes to his guilt."

"In dispensing the criminal justice of the country, we have sometimes an arduous task to perform. It is not a pleasant thing, most certainly, to condemn any one of our fellow creatures to punishment; but those who are entrusted with the administration of the criminal justice of a country, must summon up their fortitude, and render justice to the public, as well as justice tempered with mercy to the individual."

". . . —a Court where neither favour nor interest can protect you; but where punishment will be impartially inflicted, according to every man's demerit . . . examples become necessary, pro salute reipuhlicm. It is not in the power of this supreme Court of criminal jurisdiction, considering the venality of the times, to cleanse the Augean stable, and therefore our only consolation must be "est aliquod prodire tenus si non datur ultra.""

"Pane potius molliendce quam exasperandee sunt: Punishments should rather be softened than aggravated."

"Melior est justitia vere prteveniens, quam severe puniens: Justice truly preventing is better than severely punishing."

"Praestat cautela quam medela: Caution is better than cure."

"Prevention is better than cure."

"I shall temper so justice with mercy."

"Mercy seasons justice."

"No legal punishment is inflicted for revenge; all are for correction of the individual delinquent or others. All are pro salute animarum."

"A power to imprison does not give a power to fine. I cannot accede to the proposition that in England in penal jurisdiction the admitted power to award a particular punishment involves the power of awarding every lesser punishment."

"A learned county court judge told me that at first he used to make orders of committal for a short time and he found that the people went to prison. He then lengthened the period, and he found that fewer people went to prison; and he found that the longer the period for which he committed people to prison for not paying, the shorter was the total amount of imprisonment suffered by debtors, because when they were committed for the whole six weeks they moved heaven and earth among their friends to get the funds and pay; whereas if the term was a short one, they underwent the punishment."

"We cannot explore any mode of sentencing a man to imprisonment, who is imprisoned already, but by tacking one imprisonment to the other."

"Violent courses are like to hot waters that may do good in an extremity, but the use of them doth spoil the stomach, and it will require them stronger and stronger, and by little and little they will lessen their own operation."