from Sir Samuel Romilly, Observations on the Criminal Law of England, as It Relates to Capital Punishments, and on the Mode in Which It Is Administered (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1810), pp. 3–28.

Sir Samuel Romilly's observations on the death penalty is a classic of advocacy of humane laws within the framework of a utilitarian rationalism, drawing on the work of eighteenth-century reform writers from Beccaria through Howard to Godwin. There is probably no other country in the world in which so many and so great a variety of human actions are punishable with loss of life as in England. A discretion to fix the doom of every convict, expressly given to the judges, would in all cases be most anxiously and scrupulously exercised; but appoint the punishment by law, and give the judge the power of remitting it, the case immediately assumes a very different complexion. If the restoration of the property stolen, and only a few weeks, or even a few days imprisonment, were the unavoidable consequence of theft, no theft would ever be committed.