ABSTRACT
A measure that punishments are becoming milder is that clemency and pardons become less necessary. Happy would be the nation in which they were considered harmful! Clemency then, this virtue that was at times a substitute for all the duties of the throne, should be excluded in a perfect legislation where the punishment would be milder and the procedure of adjudication regulated and expeditious. This will come as a hard truth to one who lives in the disorder of a criminal justice system where pardon and reprieve are necessary in proportion to the absurdity of the laws and the atrocity of the sentences. In this case it is one of the better prerogatives of the throne, a very desirable attribute of the sovereign and it is also a tacit disapproval which the beneficent dispensers of public good give to the legal code whose imperfections have been propped up by the prejudices of centuries, the voluminous and imposing edifice of infinite commentaries, the grave apparatus of eternal formalities supported by the most insinuating and least feared half-educated persons. But one may consider that clemency is a virtue of the legislator and not of the administrator of the laws; that it must be reflected in the legal code, not as it is now in particular judgments; that it should show men that to pardon crimes makes punishment no longer inevitable so foments the illusion of impunity; and one is made to believe that, reprieve always being possible, sentences that are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than justice. What will be said then, when the sovereign gives a pardon (that is, a portion of public safety) to a particular individual, which makes a private act of unenlightened beneficence into a public decree of impunity? Let the laws then be unrelenting, and the administrators of the laws unrelenting in particular cases, but let the legislator be milder, charitable, and humane. A wise architect constructs his house on a foundation of self respect—and everyone’s interests amount to the general interest—so he will not be constrained at every moment by partial laws or tumultuous remedies to separate the public good from the interests of individuals or to prop up the image of public health on fear and suspicion. The profound and sensible philosopher leaves men 120and his brothers to enjoy in peace their portion of happiness within the immense system provided by the first Maker, He who gives them joy in this corner of the universe.]]
