The great men in monarchies are so heavily punished by disgrace, by the loss （though often imaginary） of their fortune, credit, acquaintances, and pleasures, that rigour in respect to them is needless. It can tend only to divest the subject of the affection he has for the person of his prince, and of the respect he ought to have for public posts and employments.
As the instability of the great is natural to a despotic government, so their security is interwoven with the nature of monarchy.
So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame, and endear them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them to have an opportunity of displaying it; which in this part of the world is seldom wanting.
Some branch, perhaps, of their authority, but never hardly the whole, will be disputed; and if they sometimes fight for their crown, they do not fight for their life.
But some may ask when it is proper to punish, and when to pardon. This is a point more easily felt that prescribed. When there is danger in the exercise of clemency, it is visible; nothing so easy as to distinguish it from that imbecility which exposes princes to contempt and to the very incapacity of punishing.
The Emperor Maurice made a resolution never to spill the blood of his subjects. Anastasius64 punished no crimes at all. Isaac Angelus took an oath that no one should be put to death during his reign. Those Greek emperors forgot that it was not for nothing they were entrusted with the sword.
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1. In Mazulipatam it could never be found out that there was such a thing as a written law. See the Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India Company, iv., part I, p. 391. The Indians are regulated in their decisions by certain customs. The Vedan and such books do not contain civil laws, but religious precepts. See Edifying Letters, coll. xiv.
2. C?sar, Cromwell, and many others.
3. Non liquet.
4. Quas actiones ne populus prout vellet institueret, certas solemnesque esse voluerunt — Dig. de Orig. Jur., ii, § 6.
5. In France a person, though sued for more than he owes, loses his costs if he has not offered to pay the exact debt.
6. Discourse on the first decade of Livy, i. 7.
7. This is well explained in Cicero's oration Pro C?cina, towards the end, 100.
8. This was the law at Athens, as appears by Demosthenes. Socrates refused to make use of it.
9. Demosthenes, Pro Corona, p. 494, Frankfort, 1604.
10. See Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, i. Life of Æschines.
11. Plato does not think it right that kings, who, as he says, are priests, should preside at trials where people are condemned to death, to exile, or to imprisonment.
12. See the account of the trial of the Duke de la Valette. It is printed in the Memoirs of Montresor, ii, p. 62.
13. It was afterwards revoked. See the same account, ii. p. 236. It was ordinarily a right of the peerage that a peer criminally accused should be judged by the king, as Francis II in the trial of the Prince of Condé, and Charles VII in the case of the Duc d'Alen?on. To-day, the presence of the king at the trial of a peer, in order to condemn him would seem an act of tyranny
As the instability of the great is natural to a despotic government, so their security is interwoven with the nature of monarchy.
So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame, and endear them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them to have an opportunity of displaying it; which in this part of the world is seldom wanting.
Some branch, perhaps, of their authority, but never hardly the whole, will be disputed; and if they sometimes fight for their crown, they do not fight for their life.
But some may ask when it is proper to punish, and when to pardon. This is a point more easily felt that prescribed. When there is danger in the exercise of clemency, it is visible; nothing so easy as to distinguish it from that imbecility which exposes princes to contempt and to the very incapacity of punishing.
The Emperor Maurice made a resolution never to spill the blood of his subjects. Anastasius64 punished no crimes at all. Isaac Angelus took an oath that no one should be put to death during his reign. Those Greek emperors forgot that it was not for nothing they were entrusted with the sword.
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1. In Mazulipatam it could never be found out that there was such a thing as a written law. See the Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India Company, iv., part I, p. 391. The Indians are regulated in their decisions by certain customs. The Vedan and such books do not contain civil laws, but religious precepts. See Edifying Letters, coll. xiv.
2. C?sar, Cromwell, and many others.
3. Non liquet.
4. Quas actiones ne populus prout vellet institueret, certas solemnesque esse voluerunt — Dig. de Orig. Jur., ii, § 6.
5. In France a person, though sued for more than he owes, loses his costs if he has not offered to pay the exact debt.
6. Discourse on the first decade of Livy, i. 7.
7. This is well explained in Cicero's oration Pro C?cina, towards the end, 100.
8. This was the law at Athens, as appears by Demosthenes. Socrates refused to make use of it.
9. Demosthenes, Pro Corona, p. 494, Frankfort, 1604.
10. See Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, i. Life of Æschines.
11. Plato does not think it right that kings, who, as he says, are priests, should preside at trials where people are condemned to death, to exile, or to imprisonment.
12. See the account of the trial of the Duke de la Valette. It is printed in the Memoirs of Montresor, ii, p. 62.
13. It was afterwards revoked. See the same account, ii. p. 236. It was ordinarily a right of the peerage that a peer criminally accused should be judged by the king, as Francis II in the trial of the Prince of Condé, and Charles VII in the case of the Duc d'Alen?on. To-day, the presence of the king at the trial of a peer, in order to condemn him would seem an act of tyranny