in cold blood upon a criminal, whose passive behaviour, operating with the ignorance of the specta|tors, indicates innocence more than vice, cannot fail of removing the natural obstacles to violence and mur|der in the human mind.6thly. Public punishments make many crimes known to persons who would otherwise have passed through life in a total ignorance of them. They moreover produce such a familiarity, in the minds of spectators, with the crimes for which they are inflicted, that, in some instances, they have been known to excite a propensity for them. It has been remarked, that a certain immorality has always kept pace with pub|lic admonitions in the churches in the eastern states. In proportion as this branch of ecclesiastical discipline has declined, fewer children have been born out of wedlock.7thly. Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death. Let it not be sup|posed, from this circumstance, that it operates more than the fear of death in preventing crimes. On the contrary, like the indiscriminate punishment of death, it not only confounds and levels all crimes, but by increasing the disproportion between crimes and punish|ments, it creates a hatred of all law and govern|ment; and thus disposes to the perpetration of every crime. Laws can only be respected and obeyed, while they bear an exact proportion to crimes.—The law 0