The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.