CRIMES OF HIGH TREASON.
The first class of crimes—that is, the worst, because they are the most
injurious to society—are those known as crimes of high treason. Only
tyranny and ignorance, which confound words and ideas of the clearest
meaning, can apply this name, and consequently the heaviest punishment,
to different kinds of crimes, thus rendering men, as in a thousand other
cases, the victims of a word. Every crime, be it ever so private, injures
society; but every crime does not aim at its immediate destruction.
Moral, like physical actions, have their limited sphere of activity, and
are differently circumscribed, like all the movements of nature, by time
and space; and therefore only a sophistical interpretation, which is
generally the philosophy of slavery, can confound what eternal truth has
distinguished by immutable differences.