"As punishments become more cruel, the minds of men, which like fluids always adjust to the level of their surroundings, become hardened, and the ever lively power of the emotions brings it about that after a hundred years of cruel tortures, the wheel causes no more fear than prison previously did. For a punishment to serve its purpose, it is only necessary that the harm that it inflicts outweighs the benefit that “the criminal can derive from the crime, and into the calculation of this balance, we must add the certainty of punishment and the loss of the good produced by the crime. Anything more than this is superfluous, and therefore tyrannical."