ProverbMoralityEnglish origin1885

Let the punishment fit the crime

Meaning: Penalties should be proportional and appropriate to the offense committed.

Who said it? W. S. Gilbert, Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, 1885

Origin: From Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado (1885), in which the Emperor of Japan sings of his "object all sublime": to "let the punishment fit the crime." His inventively grotesque punishments are the joke — W. S. Gilbert was mocking the idea as much as stating it.

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