The people being, however, gradually seduced, by their irregular desires, to disregard the penalties to which an infringement of the laws exposed them, to become the disciples of violence and iniquity, and to oppress those whom they sound weak and defenceless, it became necessary to devise new regulations, and to strengthen those which already existed, by the denunciation of severer punishments.
Nevertheless, offences against the laws are again frequent, and evil propensities toward irregularities and crimes, do not appear to have been in any considerable degree repressed.
Those crimes which are either committed against, or lead to a forfeiture of the lives of our subjects, have been the objects of our most serious consideration, and their frequency is, to us, a source of much disquietude.
It is, therefore, our pleasure, that all the additional statutes of a recent promulgation, whereby those crimes which formerly were not punished with death, have been rendered capital; or where the penalties of transgression have been in any other manner altered or augmented, shall be taken into consideration and revised by the ministers of state, the inspectors general, and the presidents of the six supreme tribunals, in order that these magistrates may be enabled to make a due report to us upon their fitness and efficacy.
Dated the 14th of the 9th moon of the 18th year of Kaung-hee, A.D. 1679.
