Ibid. ‘Mal-aise d’indiquer la nuance precise,’ &c.  In forming a scale of crimes and punishments, two considerations have principal weight. 1.  The atrocity of the crime. 2.  The peculiar circumstances of a country, which furnish greater temptations to commit it, or greater facilities for escaping detection, The punishment must be heavier to counterbalance this.  Were the first the only consideration, all nations would form the same scale.  But as the circumstances of a country have influence on the punishment, and no two countries exist precisely under the same circumstances, no two countries will form the same scale of crimes and punishments.  For example; in America the inhabitants let their horses go at large in the uninclosed lands which are so extensive as to maintain them altogether.  It is easy, therefore, to steal them and easy to escape.  Therefore the laws are obliged to oppose these temptations with a heavier degree of punishment.  For this reason the stealing of a horse in America is punished more severely, than stealing the same value in any other form.  In Europe where horses are confined so securely, that it is impossible to steal them, that species of theft need not be punished more severely than any other.  In some countries of Europe, stealing fruit from trees in punished capitally.  The reason is, that it being impossible to lock fruit trees up in coffers, as we do our money, it is impossible to oppose physical bars to this species of theft.  Moral ones are therefore opposed by the laws.  This to an unreflecting American appears the most enormous of all the abuses of power; because he has been used to see fruits hanging in such quantities, that if not taken by men they would rot:  he has been used to consider them therefore as of no value, and as not furnishing materials for the commission of a crime.  This must serve as an apology for the arrangement of crimes and punishments in the scale under our consideration.  A different one would be formed here; and still different ones in Italy, Turkey, China, &c.

Page 240. ‘Les officiers Americains,’ &c. to page 264, ’qui le meritoient.’  I would propose to new-model this section in the following manner, 1.  Give a succinct history of the origin and establishment of the Cincinnati. 2.  Examine whether in its present form it threatens any dangers to the State. 3.  Propose the most practicable method of preventing them.

Having been in America during the period in which this institution was formed, and being then in a situation which gave me opportunities of seeing it in all its stages, I may venture to give M. de Meusnier materials for the first branch of the preceding distribution of the subject.  The second and third he will best execute himself.  I should write its history in the following form.  When on the close of that war which established the independence of America, its army was about to be disbanded, the officers, who, during the course of it, had gone through the