Everyday life gives us many examples. The university student,
when he gambles, risks on a single card the last remnant of his
allowance, and prepares for himself a thousand privations. Miners
and workmen at dangerous trades refuse to take warning by the
sight of comrades whom they have seen dying or repeatedly attacked
by disease. M. Despine related that, during the cholera of 1866,
at Bilbao, there were some who set up an imitation of the disease
in order to obtain charitable relief, though in several cases
death ensued. M. Fayet, in an essay on the statistics of accused
persons in France, extending over twenty years, remarked that
specific and proportionately greater criminality was displayed by
notaries and bailiffs, who knew better than any one else the
punishments fixed by law. And in the statistics of capital
punishment at Ferrara, during nine centuries, I discovered the
significant fact that there is a succession of notaries executed
for forgery, frequently at very short intervals, in the same town.
This attests the truth of the observation made by Montesquieu and
Beccaria, as against the deterrent power of the death
penalty, for men grow accustomed to the sight; and this again is
confirmed by the fact mentioned by Mr.
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