with a half pay list. Justices of the Peace, however unqualified they may be, and whatever disgrace the conduct of individuals brings upon themselves, are not appointed by the influence of a faction. They are not the "thorough paced" ministerialists who "have been recruiting officers for the war, instead of Justices of the Peace;"[105] nor are they the hirelings who promote the revenue from which their own pensions are drawn, by levying ruinous fines upon an unrepresented people, for the slightest infractions on excise laws, or game laws. The punishment of whipping has been already mentioned, with the causes of its being adopted in the back-woods. Perhaps it might be difficult to assign reasons equally satisfactory for resorting to it in the populous city of Dublin. The practice is comparatively humane in America, as it is applied in cases that would be punished with death in Great Britain. The States of Kentucky and Ohio have erected penetentiaries, not for the purpose of punishment alone, but also for the reformation of offenders. The horrible prison scenes witnessed by Howard, Neild, Bennet, Buxton, Fry, and other philanthropists in Britain, have no counterpart in America.[106] We know of no examples here of imprisonment for a debt of a shilling,[107] or for a supposed fraud of
