"The Judge dispenses mercy; mercy is the prerogative of the Crown. The Judge pronounces the law's doom; it is the privilege of the Sovereign to modify and mitigate a sentence according to the circumstances of the case. The crime is not always the measure of guilt. A small crime may involve greater criminality than a great crime; a great crime may have less of guilt in it than a small one. The law cannot measure this—at least our law does so but imperfectly; and public France, provision is made for such a frequent state of things, by the power given to the jury of finding a verdict of "guilty with extenuating circumstances." We do it rudely by the jury's recommendation to mercy. But motives are often misrepresented and misunderstood out of Court, where the facts that call for mitigation are not known. The public look broadly at the crime and take no account of the circumstances of the criminal, and they exclaim against lenity, or against severity, ignorant of the causes that in either case determine the actual amount of criminality."