Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/164

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and are daily tending to unite with sound policy. Artifice, cabal, and obscure and indirect actions are more easily discovered, and the interest of the whole is better secured against the passions of the individual.

Even the times of ignorance, when private virtue was encouraged by public morality, may afford instruction and example to more enlightened ages. But laws which reward treason, excite clandestine war, and mutual distrust, oppose that necessary union of morality and policy, which is the foundation of happiness and universal peace.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Of Attempts, Accomplices, and Pardon.

THE laws do not punish the intention; nevertheless, an attempt, which manifests the intention of committing a crime, deserves a punishment, though less, perhaps, than if the crime were actually per-