Other related topics at: Authority/Government/State 1,124. Capital Punishment; Crime; Deterrence; Justice "It has always been the practice, when any particular species of robbery becomes prevalent and common, to endeavour its suppression by capital denunciations. Thus, one generation of malefactors is commonly cut off, and their successors are frighted into new expedients; the art of thievery is augmented with greater variety of fraud, and subtilized to higher degrees of dexterity and more occult methods of conveyance. The law then renews the pursuit in the heat of anger, and overtakes the offender again with death. By this practice, capital inflictions are multiplied, and crimes, very different in their degrees of enormity, are equally subjected to the severest punishment that man has the power of exercising upon man." Johnson: Rambler #114 (April 20, 1751) Link 1,125. Capital Punishment; Deterrence; Justice; Moderation; Perspective "To equal robbery with murder is to reduce murder to robbery, to confound in common minds the gradations of iniquity, and incite the commission of a greater crime to prevent the detection of a less. If only murder were punished with death, very few robbers would stain their hands in blood; but when by the last act of cruelty no new danger is incurred and greater security may be obtained, upon what principle shall we bid them forbear?" Johnson: Rambler #114 (April 20, 1751) Link 1848. Capital Punishment; Justice; Revenge He thus treated the point, as to prescription of murder in Scotland. "A jury in England would make allowance for deficiencies of evidence, on account of lapse of time: but a general rule that a crime should not be punished, or tried for the purpose of punishment, after twenty years, is bad: It is cant to talk of the King's advocate delaying a prosecution from malice. How unlikely is it the King's advocate should have malice against persons who commit murder, or should even know them all.—If the son of the murdered man should kill the murderer who got off merely by prescription, I would help him to make his escape; thought, were I upon his jury, I would not acquit him. I would not advise him to commit such an act. On the contrary, I would bid him to submit to the determination of society, because a man is bound to submit to the inconveniences of it, as he enjoys the good: but the young man, though politically wrong, would not be morally wrong. He would have to say, 'Here I am amongst barbarians, who not only refuse to do justice, but encourage the greatest of all crimes. I am therefore in a state of nature: for, so far as there is no law, it is a state of nature: and consequently, upon the eternal and immutable law of justice, which requires that he who sheds man's blood should have his blood shed, I will stab the murderer of my father.'" Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides Link