Were the criminal law done away with in our present state of civilization, religion, ethics and civil procedure would be absolutely inefficacious to prevent anarchy.

It is as imperative to the ordinary citizen to know that if he steals he will be locked up as it is for the child to know that if he puts his hand into the fire it will be burned.

The acquittal of every thief breeds another, and the unpunished murder is an incentive for a dozen similar homicides.
Crimes are either deliberate or the result of accident or impulse.

The last class may rise to a high degree of enormity, such as manslaughter, but these crimes are rarely possible of restraint.

The perpetrator does not stop to consider, even if he be sober enough to think at all, whether his act be moral, whether it will entail any civil liability, or what will be its consequences, if it be a crime.