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| | Amendment VIII: James v. Commonwealth |
 | | I have employed some time not very pleasantly, certainly not very profitably, in tracing the punishment ad ludibrium to its source, and have followed this stream until it has sunk in oblivion in the general improvement of society, and the reformation of criminal punishment, and been dried up by Time, that great innovator. |
 | | It must strike all, as a peculiar feature of this offence, that it is of the feminine gender, that it degrades woman to a mere thing, to a nuisance, and does not consider her as a person. |
 | | The object of the framers of the act of 1790, was the abolition of all infamous, disgraceful public punishments--all cruel and unnatural punishments--for all the classes of minor offences and misdemeanor, to which they had been before applied. |
| press-pubs.uchicago.edu /founders/documents/amendVIIIs19.html (3516 words) |
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