No man, who is at all aware of the operation of moral motives, can doubt for a moment, that if every murder in Italy had been invariably punished, the use of the stiletto in transports of passion would have been comparatively but little known.
That human laws either do, or can, proportion the punishment accurately to the offence, no person will have the folly to assert.

From the inscrutability of motives the thing is absolutely impossible, but this imperfection, though it may be called a species of injustice, is no valid argument against human laws.

It is the lot of man, that he will frequently have to choose between two evils; and it is a sufficient reason for the adoption of any institution, that it is the best mode that suggests itself of preventing greater evils.

A continual endeavour should undoubtedly prevail to make these institutions as perfect as the nature of them will admit.

But nothing is so easy as to find fault with human institutions; nothing so difficult as to suggest adequate practical improvements.