Other related topics at:
Authority/Government/State
256. Justice; Law
He talked of going to Streatham that night. Taylor:
"You'll be robbed if you do; or you must shoot a highwayman.
Now I would rather be robbed than do that; I would not shoot a
highwayman." Johnson: "But I would rather shoot him in
the instant when he is attempting to rob me, than afterwards
swear against him at the Old-Bailey, to take away his life, after
he has robbed me. 
I am surer I am in the right in the
once case
than in the other. I may be mistaken as to the man, when I
swear: I cannot be mistaken, if I shoot him in the act.
Besides, we feel less reluctance to take away a man's life, when
we are heated by the injury, than to do it at a distance of time
by an oath, after we have cooled." Boswell: "So, Sir,
you would rather act from the motive of private passion, than
that of publick advantage." Johnson: "Nay, Sir, when I
shoot the highwayman I act from both." Boswell: "Very
well, very well. --There is no catching him." Johnson:
"At the same time, one does not know what to say. For perhaps
one may, a year after, hang himself from uneasiness for having
shot a man. Few minds are fit to be trusted with so great a
thing." Boswell: "Then, Sir, you would not shoot him?"
Johnson: "But I might be vexed afterwards for that
too."
Boswell: Life
Link
268. Justice
Talking of the Justitia hulk at Woolwich, in which criminals were
punished, by being confined to labour, he said "I do not see that
they are punished by this; they must have worked equally had
they never been guilty of stealing. They now only work; so,
after all, they have gained; what they stole is clear gain to
them; the confinement is nothing. Every man who works is
confined: the smith to his shop, the tailor to his garret."
Boswell: Life
Link
414. Authority; Government; Justice;
Rebellion
"But there are some who lament the state of the poor Bostonians,
because they cannot all be supposed to have committed acts of
rebellion, yet all are involved in the penalty imposed. [...]
That the innocent should be confounded with the guilty, is,
undoubtedly, an evil; but it is an evil which no care or caution
can prevent. National crimes require national punishments, of
which many must necessarily have their part, who have not
incurred them by personal guilt. If rebels should fortify a
town, the cannon of lawful authority will endanger, equally, the
harmless burghers and the criminal garrison. [...] This
infliction of promiscuous evil may, therefore, be lamented, but
cannot be blamed. The power of lawful government must be
maintained; and the miseries which rebellion produces, can be
charged only on the rebels."
Johnson: The Patriot
Link
425. Justice; Rebellion
"That the same vengeance involves the innocent and guilty, is an
evil to be lamented; but human caution cannot prevent it, nor
human power always redress it. To bring misery on those who have
not deserved it, is part of the aggregated guilt of
rebellion."
Johnson: Taxation No Tyranny
Link
430. Justice; Rebellion
"Nothing can be more noxious to society, than that erroneous
clemency, which, when a rebellion is suppressed, exacts no
forfeiture, and establishes no securities, but leaves the rebels
in their former state. Who would not try the experiment, which
promises advantage without expense? If rebels once obtain a
victory, their wishes are accomplished; if they are defeated,
they suffer little, perhaps less than their conquerors; however
often they play the game, the chance is always in their
favour."
Johnson: Taxation No Tyranny
Link
925. Justice
"Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is
necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct."
Johnson: Rambler #81 (December 25, 1750)
Link
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
1,203. Influence; Justice;
Moderation
"To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to
destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other
test of actions than general opinion; and all are so far
influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often
restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour,
when other principles have lost their power."
Johnson: Rambler #136 (July 6, 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
1,862. Government; Justice; Law
"To embarrass justice by multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by
confidence in judges, seem to be the opposite rocks on which all
civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which
legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage."
Johnson: The King of Prussia (1756)
Link
