Its entrance into life is marked with the presage of its fate; and until this is remedied, it is in vain to punish.
Civil government does not exist in executions; but in making such provision for the instruction of youth and the support of age, as to exclude, as much as possible, profligacy from the one and despair from the other.

Instead of this, the resources of a country are lavished upon kings, upon courts, upon hirelings, impostors and prostitutes; and even the poor themselves, with all their wants upon them, are compelled to support the fraud that oppresses them.
Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?
The fact is a proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their condition.

Bred up without morals, and cast upon the world without a prospect, they are the exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity.

The millions that are superfluously wasted upon governments are more than sufficient to reform those evils, and to benefit the condition of every man in a nation, not included within the purlieus of a court.

This I hope to make appear in the progress of this work.
It is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune.