Mercy

Meaning:

• Mercy is often a beautiful virtue, but occasionally a dangerous one
• It is not pity, or kindness, or humanity; it is a specific form of restraint, by which one remits a punishment that is both deserved and due.
• It is a stopping short of the full penalty merited by wrongdoing

Characteristics: Mercy is often indeed prompted by kindness, or by pity or sympathy, but it is not the same thing as they

Explanation: In a letter to the Emperor Nero on the subject of mercy, Seneca wrote, ‘So that we may not be misled by the plausible name of mercy into doing an opposite wrong, let us enquire what mercy is.’

Examples, illustrations, quotes and statistics:

• Example: Often when appeals are made on behalf of those who, say, are going to be shot for fraud (as in China) or stoned to death for adultery (as in Saudi Arabia), the appeal is not for mercy but for justice, because these activities do not merit such harsh punishment in the first place. In the strictest sense, therefore, the word ‘mercy’ relates only and specifically to withholding a properly deserved punishment
• When we say that Gengis Khan butchered his foes ‘mercilessly’ we are using the term loosely, for we mean that he treated them cruelly or inhumanely – this looser use is now the commonest one
• The opposite of mercy is not strictness – which a virtue too; as Seneca says, ‘one virtue cannot be the opposite of another’ – but cruelty. To punish a malefactor (a person who commits a crime or some other wrong) more severely than he deserves is cruel
• Quote: ‘Let the punishment fit the crime’ – sang the Lord High Executioner; this is the meaning of ‘condign’ (deserved or appropriate to the crime or wrongdoing; fitting and deserved) – in ‘condign punishment’
• Mercy is sometimes described as the support of justice. That is true when laws are unreasonable and unfair, because harsh laws create lawlessness, to prevent which a wise governor will use the opportunity     of their harshness to show his own virtue of clemency (willingness or ability to moderate the severity of a punishment (as a sentence) – lenience)
• Example/ Quote: But the danger of mercy, even in these circumstances, is that it leads to its own undoing. Shakespeare might have given Portia words no less true than sweet to mitigate Shylock’s legal due; but he has Timon tell a yet harder truth when he says, ‘Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.’ There seems to be a consensus on that point.
• Quote: 'Pardon one offence,' says Publilius Syrus, 'and you encourage the commission of many,' Seneca himself, when not praising Nero for his reluctance to sign death warrants ('Oh that I knew not how to write!’ repined the tyrant as he did so; Seneca had a     good line in irony), has a character in his Trojan Woman say,     ‘He who forbids not sin commands it.' & ‘He that spares the bad injures the good’ – Thomas Fuller – entice and encourage wrongdoing and harm people that do good
• Conclusion: The chief reason for being merciful is that we all need mercy ourselves. It is a proper outcome of the pity our fellows prompt in us through our shared humanity, 'To understand all is to forgive all,’ the French say. And as a general rule, what could be kinder or more civilised than to remit the moral debts that others incur, in the interests of a kinder world?     But there is a limit. Those who showed no pity - those who tortured, murdered, beat, gassed, shot, raped and repressed — and those who ordered them to do it, stepped beyond that limit. The long roll-call of such people in recent world history is too well known to need repeating here. Mercy is not merely wasted on them, it is a licence to others who think they might get away with it too. For them, mercy is misplaced: what is required is justice, for the world’s sake.