Ostracism.--It was among the Greeks, as is well known, no punishment.
Only people of great merits achieved it; and so soon as this banishment
from the country was lavished upon bad men, it went entirely into
disuse. An imperial citizen must lament that we, who have a similar
public educational institution,--namely, banishment,--squander it often
upon the very wretchedest rascals, and therefore--with the design of
making one circle or country the spit-box and secreting-vessel of
another--drive out of the country scoundrels who are hardly fit to stay
in it. Thereby is this clearing of the country deprived for the most
part of the honorable and distinguishing feature which it might have
for the man of merit, and an honest man--e. g. a Bahrdt[232]--is almost
ashamed to be invested with such an honor. There should, therefore, be
an imperial police-regulation that only ministers, professors, and
officers of decided worth, like important documents, should be
dismissed and banished. To similar men I would also limit hanging. With
the Romans, in truth, only great heads and lights were interred on the
_way_[233] at the expense of a whole state; but what shall I think of
the Germans, with whom seldom serviceable subjects, but mostly finished
rogues, are buried at public expense, which they call hangman's fees,
having been previously hanged on the gallows by the roadside?--Not even
in his lifetime can a man, unless he has extraordinary, and often
_eccentric_ merits,--although eccentric men fall back into the truth,
as _comets_ do into the _sun_, as fuel,--make his calculations upon
being, in some manner, as the ancients duplicated their noble men in
statues and pictures, hung up in _effigy_ in a thick stone frame....
Let me have an answer; I allow myself to be talked with.