With these precautions, the very first foundation of settlement must be to call to a strict account those bloody and merciless offenders.  Without it, government cannot stand a year.  People little consider the utter impossibility of getting those who, having emerged from very low, some from the lowest classes of society, have exercised a power so high, and with such unrelenting and bloody a rage, quietly to fall back into their old ranks, and become humble, peaceable, laborious, and useful members of society.  It never can be.  On the other hand, is it to be believed that any worthy and virtuous subject, restored to the ruins of his house, will with patience see the cold-blooded murderer of his father, mother, wife, or children, or perhaps all of these relations, (such things have been,) nose him in his own village, and insult him with the riches acquired from the plunder of his goods, ready again to head a Jacobin faction to attack his life?  He is unworthy of the name of man who would suffer it.  It is unworthy of the name of a government, which, taking justice out of the private hand, will not exercise it for the injured by the public arm.

I know it sounds plausible, and is readily adopted by those who have little sympathy with the sufferings of others, to wish to jumble the innocent and guilty into one mass by a general indemnity.  This cruel indifference dignifies itself with the name of humanity.

It is extraordinary, that, as the wicked arts of this regicide and tyrannous faction increase in number, variety, and atrocity, the desire of punishing them becomes more and more faint, and the talk of an indemnity towards them every day stronger and stronger.  Our ideas of justice appear to be fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt, when it is grown gigantic.  It is not the point of view in which we are in the habit of viewing guilt.  The crimes we every day punish are really below the penalties we inflict.  The criminals are obscure and feeble.  This is the view in which we see ordinary crimes and criminals.  But when guilt is seen, though but for a time, to be furnished with the arms and to be invested with the robes of power, it seems to assume another nature, and to get, as it were, out of our jurisdiction.  This I fear is the case with many.  But there is another cause full as powerful towards this security to enormous guilt,—­the desire which possesses people who have once obtained power to enjoy it at their ease.  It is not humanity, but laziness and inertness of mind, which produces the desire of this kind of indemnities.  This description of men love general and short methods.  If they punish, they make a promiscuous massacre; if they spare, they make a general act of oblivion.  This is a want of disposition to proceed laboriously according to the cases, and according to the rules and principles of justice on each case:  a want of disposition to assort criminals, to discriminate the degrees and modes of guilt, to separate accomplices from principals,