Petty crime

“ If the unhappy person against whom your laudable vengeance is directed be a thief, think that a thief may have a good nose, good eyes, good ears. It is indispensable to his profession that he be possessed of sagacity, foresight, vigilance; it is more than probable, then, that he is endued with the bodily types or instruments of these qualities to some tolerable degree of perfectness.
4. If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort you, do not confound meanness of crime with diminutiveness of stature. ”

“ The moral aspects of petty crime he never considers at all, nor does he, in fact, reflect upon anything as it is reflected on by the humblest peasant who goes to church, or who in any way feels himself connected as an integral part of that great body-corporate—Society. ”

“ XIX. As for stealing—not that form of it which comes within the range of petty larceny, but the wider and more awful range of felony—it may be safely said, that nearly all public men have steeped themselves to the neck in this crime, and the common people take to it as easily and naturally as birds in a garden take to sweet berries. ”

“ Public sentiment having stigmatized them as utterly depraved, they have no incentive to honesty, and not daring enough to commit any atrocious crime, they become more expert in petty larcenies and like misdemeanors. ”

“ As culprits, however, harden in heart with each repetition of crime, until from petty larceny, the initiating offence, they ascend unscrupulously to the perpetration of felony without benefit of clergy ”

“ I will not otherwise extenuate my offence than by declaring, what I hope will appear to many, and what many circumstances make probable, that I did not intend finally to defraud: nor will it become me to apportion my own punishment, by alleging that my sufferings have been not much less than my guilt; I have fallen from reputation which ought to have made me cautious, and from a fortune which ought to have given me content. I am sunk at once into poverty and scorn; my name and my crime fill the ballads in the streets; the sport of the thoughtless, and the triumph of the wicked! ”

“ Almost invariably there follow degradation, misery, prostitution, theft, and sometimes infanticide! And yet the laws are, as yet, strangers to this crime! Every accomplice of a crime has the punishment of that crime; every receiver is considered as guilty as the thief. That is justice. But when a man wantonly seduces a young, innocent, and pure girl, renders her a mother, abandons her, leaving her but shame, disgrace, despair, and driving her, perchance, to infanticide, a crime for which she forfeits her life, is this man considered as her accomplice? ”

“ I have often spoken of our penal law as wrong in its principle, taking it for granted that the ignorant and miserable men who commit crime do it always from wickedness, and not from the pressure of circumstances which have brutalized the man; wrong in its aim, which is to take vengeance on the offender, and not to do him a good in return for the evil he has done ”

“ Another tentacle taints you with pride, arrogance, contempt, insatiable greed, covetousness, and lust. It brings in its wake envy, jealousy, hatred, and malice, followed by the most atrocious crimes. It breeds temptation, suspicion, dishonesty, ingratitude, and corruption, vitiates your entire morale. It was directly and indirectly the cause of 1,361,593 known crimes in the United States, ranging from murder to petty larceny for the year 1943. It is responsible for physical, mental, and organic disorders of diseases among 95% of your population. ”

“ There are others, again, who as strongly and vigorously urge that felons, of whatever grade, class or character, are made so by circumstances, in which poverty, idleness, inability to obtain work, temptation, and a thousand other things, conspire to be either the direct or indirect causes of the individual falling from the straight path and entering the crooked path of crime. But, from whatever motive, by whatever temptation, whether forced or led, certain it is that both male and female criminals have some peculiar ideas of crime, entertained, perhaps, for reasons only known to themselves. ”

“ I say NO—that if there be blood guiltiness let the offender be punished in accordance with our criminal code; if there be none then is he blameless, and to deprive a person of his property because of a harmless act is a crime. ”

“ ALL mankind being exposed to the attempts of violence or perfidy, detest the crimes of which they may possibly be the victims: all desire that the principal offender and his accomplices may be punished; nevertheless, there is a natural compassion in the human heart, which makes all men detest the cruelty of torturing the accused in order to extort confession. The law has not condemned them, and yet, though uncertain of their crime, you inflict a punishment more horrible than that which they are to suffer when their guilt is confirmed. ”

“ They are not then interested in refusing their esteem to the smuggler, as to one who has committed a theft or a forgery, or other crimes, by which they themselves may suffer; from this evident principle, that a sensible being only interests himself in those evils with which he is acquainted.
Shall this crime then, committed by one who has nothing to lose, go unpunished? ”

“ He knows that he is playing for his life, and plays the game out with his wits about him. Impress, therefore, upon this class of offenders that the crime with which they stand charged is so heinous in the eyes of their fellow-creatures that every effort will be made to bring them to punishment, if their guilt is established, and you at once deprive them of one strong incentive to crime in this particular form—namely, the strong probability of impunity. ”

“ I know how tenaciously one will cling to the outward forms of respectability and of virtue. I know how horribly unscrupulous a criminal at bay, with the chance of setting the dogs of the law on the wrong scent, could be. To relax in my vigilance would be fatal to my innocent client, whose late mistress, the real thief, would forge other proofs of the guilt of the guiltless.
Why did I reason to myself thus? Does not innocence tremble, and lose its self-possession under the remotest suspicion of an offence? ”

“ Again : the violence of passion, or temptation, may sometimes alleviate a crime ; as theft, in case of hunger, is far more worthy of compassion, than when committed through avarice, or to supply one in luxurious excesses. To kill a man upon sudden and violent resentment is less penal, than upon cool deliberate malice. The age, education, and character of the offender ”

“ The representation of guilt with its painful and degrading consequences, has been universally considered to be the best means of warning youth against the danger of temptation;—the benefits to be expected from example are too plainly exhibited by the infliction of punishment to need repetition; and the more generally the effects of crime are shown, and the more the horrors which precede{vi} detection and the deplorable fate of the guilty are made known, the greater is the probability that the atrocity of vice may be abated and the security of the public promoted. ”

“ Then she would not have committed a crime,—a monstrous crime! which really puts all society to the blush.' And the hatter or the furrier would be right,—perfectly right. What is there to criminate this gentleman? Of what complicity, direct or indirect, moral or material, can he be charged? This lucky rogue has seduced a pretty girl, and he it is who has brought her there; he does not deny it ”

“ One could equally well assert of murder, burglary, even abus de confidence in some cases, and other offences, that the perpetrators of them must be so degraded that no amount of brutal punishment could degrade them further. Everybody can regard the crime to which he has a pet aversion more than other crimes as indicating the perpetrator thereof to be outside the pale of humanity. ”

“ The law which ordains confiscations, sets a price on the head of the subject, with the guilty punishes the innocent, and by reducing them to indigence and despair, tempts them to become criminal. Can there be a more melancholy spectacle, than a whole family, overwhelmed with infamy and misery, from the crime of their chief? ”

“ On Titus Oates, and on the Death of Augustin de Thou.
HIGH is an offence committed against the security of the commonwealth, or of the king its representative. It is considered as parricide, and therefore ought not to be extended to offences which bear no analogy to that crime. In making it high-treason to commit a theft in any house belonging to the state, or even to speak seditious words, you lessen the horror which the crime of high-treason ought to inspire. ”

“ I have heard, my lord, the indictment read, wherein I find myself charged with the highest crime, with an enormity I am altogether incapable of; a fact, to the commission of which there goes far more insensibility of heart, more profligacy of morals, than ever fell to my lot; and nothing possibly could have admitted a presumption of this nature but a depravity not inferior to that imputed to me. ”

“ As less reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king’s enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. ”

“ They will come down with their cursed reasoning and tell us that the rank and education of the offender only aggravate the offence; and that, if they allow a man so convicted to escape, in consequence of his high position in life, every humble man found guilty and executed for the same crime—is murdered. ”

“ To think that, in a civilized country, such as we feel proud to term our own, a jailer would turn over the management of affairs to a petty larceny thief of this trusty's caliber; a thing devoid of all feeling, a degenerate in appearance, with a look of villainous treachery in his eye and the mark of depravity and morbidness engraved in every feature. ”

“ Besides, is it just to torment one man for the crime of another? May not the accomplices be found out by the examination of the witnesses, or of the criminal; from the evidence, or from the nature of the crime itself; in short, by all the means that have been used to prove the guilt of the prisoner? The accomplices commonly fly when their comrade is taken. The uncertainty of their fate condemns them to perpetual exile, and frees society from the danger of further injury; whilst the punishment of the criminal, by deterring others, answers the purpose for which it was ordained. ”

“ THE punishment of robbery, not accompanied with violence, should be pecuniary. He who endeavours to enrich himself with the property of another, should be deprived of part of his own. But this crime, alas! is commonly the effect of misery and despair; the crime of that unhappy part of mankind, to whom the right of exclusive property (a terrible, and perhaps unnecessary right) has left but a bare existence. ”

“ The Justices of the Peace decided misdemeanors such as abduction of heiresses, illegal entry, petty thievery, damage to crops, fence-breaking, brawling, personal feuds, drunken pranks, swearing, profanation of the Sabbath, alehouse nuisances, drunkenness, perjury, and malfeasance by officials. They held petty and quarter sessions. Many people were hanged for the felony of theft over 12d. Some bold men accused of felony refused to plead so that they could not be tried and found guilty. They died of heavy weights being placed on their bodies. ”

“ To prevent a discovery of your complicated fraud, and the punishment which must have resulted therefrom, you deliberately contrived the death of the persons you had so grossly injured, and that by means of poison, a mode of destruction against which there is no sure protection; but your guilty design was not fully accomplished.—And, after so extraordinary a lapse of time, you are reserved as a signal example of the justice of that mysterious Providence, which, sooner or later, overtakes guilt like yours ”

“ Yet wretches who have had a London gutter or a workhouse for their only moral training-school, and who have been subsequently nurtured in crime by society’s other licensed agencies of moral corruption, receive ten, fifteen, and sometimes twenty years for thefts and crimes which should, in justice, be expiated by a twelve months’ duration of such punishment. ”

“ Theft is their profession, and gets them the dishonest bread by which they live. These may always read the eighth commandment by leaving the negative out, and then take it in an injunctive sense. Such persons, in prosecuting another for stealing a book, cannot come into court with clean hands. Felons in literature, therefore, appear here with a very bad grace in prosecuting others for the very crime which they themselves are in the habit of committing. ”

“ It was impossible to say in what variety of shapes the noble structure of the human mind might be ruined; and he contended, that the whole course of conduct of the prisoner, subsequently, as well as at the time of the commission of this supposed offence, exhibited him to be the victim of an absurd delusion, driving him to seek notoriety, by whatever means it was obtained, and not a person capable of any crime so dreadful as that alleged against him. ”

“ Manly; I have been prosecuted with a cruelty scarcely to be paralleled. A person avowedly criminal in the same indictment with myself has been brought forth as a capital witness against me; a fact, I believe, totally unexampled. My lords, oppressed as I am with infamy, loaded as I am with distress, sunk under this cruel prosecution, your lordships and the gentlemen of the jury cannot think life a matter of any value to me. ”