328 Mr. 'Turner on Crimes and PunlJJjments. 



to have been oppofed of late by all the moft 

 refpeclable writers on government j * and indeed 

 are certainly in nnoft cafes, if not univerfally, 

 abfurd and impolitic. 



Every wife and benevolent man will confider 

 with himfelf, that as life is a blefTing which he 

 cannot give, fo it behoves him carefully to 

 examine his right to take it away. He will 

 confider, that when mankind entered into fo- 

 ciety, they only gave up fuch a portion of their 

 natural liberty, and fubmitted to only fuch a 

 meafure of reftraint, as was efTcntially neceflary 

 to fecure to its merpbers the advantages of fociety j 

 and, therefore, that if this important end can 

 be anfwered without having recourfe to the 

 punifliment of death, there is no right belonging 

 to the magiftrate of infliding fuch a punifliment. f 



* Sir Thomas More, Grotius, La Coke, Beccaria, 

 Montefquieu, Blackltone, Voltaire. 



f This feems to be a better argument than the excellent 

 Marq. Beccaria's upon the fubjcdt, viz, " that no man 

 " has a right to take away his own life in a ftate of nature, 

 *' and therefore cannot give up any fuch right to the magi- 

 " Ihate." (And Confideratlons on C'rini. Law. p. i86.) 

 For, admitting that no man has fuch a right, it mufl be 

 obferved, that his right over himfelf, in a llate of nature^ 

 is not vVhat he gives up, but his right ovcr others, when 

 he enters into fociety. And it will bear a difpute, whether 

 a man, entirely free from controul, has not a right to 

 cftimate his lofs by an injury, at what value he pleafes. 



Now 



