text:  It seems probable that in cases of this nature which include crimes so varied in their circumstances that there appears no limit to the degree of guilt incurred--crimes the nature and character of which could not possibly be foreseen or provided for in all their infinite multiplicity of detail; it seems probable that in such cases a large discretion may have been purposely left by the framers of our constitution in order that the degree of guilt on each occasion should be measured by an expansive self-adjusting scale of punishment applied indeed and administered by the judges of the land but regulated and adjusted in each succeeding age by the influence of public opinion and by the spirit and temper of the times