George Savile Quotes
Men are not hang'd for stealing Horses, but that Horses may not be stolen.
1st Marquees of Halifax. Even in the 18th century, it was realized that capital punishment was not a particularly good deterrent. Savile and others observed that there was a significant vengeance motive for state execution.
George Savile, 1633-1695, Lord Privy Seal of England, Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections, 1750
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This was echoed at the beginning of the republic and is repeated to this day. He was advocating moral education and Bible teaching in the schools.
There is not much difference between England then and America now.
“Catiff” is a Middle English term to describe a lowly, despicable person.
Wade was urging the Prince to abolish the Death by 1000 Cuts {641825} and simply rely on beheading the form of execution for “lesser” crimes. Note that the Prince’s fears and arguments parallel the same given by modern proponents of the Death Penalty—without it criminals would not be controlled and instability would ensue.
There was, and still is in some parts of the world, this belief taht one of the main reasons for capital punioshment with visible and public executions was to deter others from comitting crimes by seeing the example of what happens to the transgressors. For these people, exemplified by this quotation of Dr. Johnson's, public executions are crime prevention. This notion tirned out to have been a fallacy. In England they found that during every public hanging, skilled pickpockets would steal from the onlookers who were tranfixed on the macabre secene--this despite the fact that pickpocketing was a hanging offence.
Although this is generally followed as a legal principle in America, states like Texas have executed felons who most other jurisdictions would see as Coke’s “mad man.”
47 laws were promulgated. Most had a maritime justice tradition. They are often referred to as the "Laws of Oleron."
This is the basis for the practice of Saudi Arabia and a few other nations which are so decried by most nations and religions or the world. Modern Muslims and Muslim nations do not follow this Koranic prescription any more than Christians and Jews follow the Mosaic Law of the Bible regarding punishment that we would today regard as cruel and which has become very unusual.
Most people reading this think at first that if comes out of the Middle Ages, but it is quite contemporary expressing a point of view that holds that the state is but the instrument of and subservient to God as defined by Protestant Fundamentalism.
Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet of Thornhill FRS was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1759 to 1783.
