To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Interpretation
Punishing someone based on assumptions about their beliefs is unjust and considered persecution.
In this quote, Thomas B. Macaulay distinguishes between legitimate punishment for actions and unjust persecution based on beliefs or inferred behaviors. He argues that punishing someone for what they might do based on their doctrine or the actions of others who share their beliefs is both irrational and immoral, emphasizing that such persecution stems from unfounded fears rather than actual wrongdoing.
In practice
In a discussion about legal reforms, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of due process.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
This very moment I may, if I desire, become the friend of God.
It is impossible to anticipate all of the misdeeds engendered by the universal conflict of human passions. They multiply at a compound rate with the growth in population and the interlacing of particular interests that cannot be directed with geometrical precision towards the public utility.
I was Catholic. You talk about a minority within a minority within a minority: a black Catholic in Savannah, GA.
Blessed be He, Who came into the world for no other purpose than to suffer.
This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
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