ABSTRACT
Suicide is a crime that does not seem amenable to punishment because it can only be applied to innocent persons or on a cold and insensible body. If the latter, then punishment makes no more impression on the living than the whipping of a statue. If the former, it is unjust and tyrannical, because the political liberty of men requires that even if suicide were a crime, innocent family members should not be punished. Men love life so much, and all that surrounds them confirms them in this love. All laws that are not sustained by force or, due to the nature of circumstances, are rendered ineffective, should not be promulgated. And as opinion dominates the minds of men, so it obeys the slow and indirect impressions of the legislator and resists those that are direct and violent.
