UGSB LIBRARY 
 
 5-5-4
 
 
 -

 
 ESSAYS 
 
 PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 
 
 BY CHARLES SPEAR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' TITLES OF JESUS ;' ' ESSAYS ON IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT,' BTC. 
 
 I shall ask for the abolition of the Penalty of Death until I hare the infallibility 
 of human judgment demonstrated to me. The Punishment of Death has always 
 inspired me with feelings of horror since the execrable use made of it during the 
 former Revolution. LAFAYETTE. 
 
 NINTH EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN GREEN, 121 NEWGATE STREET. 
 
 1844.
 
 Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1844, 
 
 BY CHARLES SPEAR, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY 
 
 GEORGE A. CURTIS, 
 
 NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE POUNDRT.
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 is 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 THOMAS C. UPHAM, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN BOWDODT 
 COLLEGE, ME., 
 
 AS 
 
 A TOKEN OF RESPECT AND ESTEEM 
 
 FOR HIS 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR THE CRIMINAL,
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THEODORIC THE GREAT, who was at the head of the Gothic 
 monarchy in Italy, is said to have governed his subjects by 
 the following excellent maxim : ' It is the duty of a benign 
 prince to be disposed to prevent, rather than to punish 
 offences.' Had all rulers been governed by such a prin- 
 ciple, there would have been no necessity for works on the 
 subject of the Punishment of Death. Crimes would have 
 ceased, and the scaffold would long since have passed into 
 oblivion. But few have understood the principle, and fewer 
 still have carried it into practical operation. Such being 
 the condition of society, the author has felt impelled, from a 
 sense of duty, to complete a work expressly devoted to a 
 consideration of the penalty of death. For years, he has 
 thought deeply upon it. A few months ago, by the advice 
 of a few judicious friends, he was induced to take up the 
 subject anew. The labor, at first, appeared somewhat easy 
 to be accomplished, but, on a closer investigation, the sub- 
 ject was found to embrace an immense field, and to lie at 
 the very foundation of the whole social fabric; to be, in 
 fact, the very starting point for every moral reform. For, 
 of what avail will it be for any community to expect to 
 prosper, unless the Sacredness of Human Life is first admit- 
 ted ? Our object has been to establish this great truth, that 
 the criminal, though debased, yet, is a man and a brother ; 
 and, as such, deserves human sympathy. We have sus- 
 tained this by argument, and by a variety of incidents, all 
 showing that there is a chord in every soul that can be 
 made to vibrate. 
 
 1*
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 The work is divided into two parts. One, containing 
 facts and arguments drawn from history and observation ; 
 the other, founded on the Scriptures. 
 
 The author intended to have presented other subjects 
 which seem to have a closeconnection with that of the Pun- 
 ishment of Death. He actually sent forth a prospectus, in 
 the fifteenth edition of his work on the ' Titles of Jesus,' 
 to that effect. Moral Insanity ; the Treatment of Prison- 
 ers ; the Degeneracy of the Press, respecting Criminal Re- 
 ports; all these, and other kindred topics, presented their 
 claims. But he found it impossible, in a work on so limited 
 a plan, to do justice to either ; especially Moral Insanity ; 
 a subject involving many facts, and leading to a series of 
 metaphysical reasoning, and to an investigation of a variety 
 of mental phenomena. Several friends advised him to 
 direct his whole effort, first, to the abolition of the Pun- 
 ishment of Death ; then, in some future labor, to consider 
 such other topics as seemed most intimately connected. 
 
 During our labor, we have been cheered and animated by 
 a few choice friends, to whom we feel largely indebted. 
 Among them, we must place ROBERT RANTOUL, Esq. On 
 learning our intention to write a work on this subject, he 
 kindly offered his aid, and sent us many valuable English 
 publications. All who know anything of the history of 
 legislation in Massachusetts, know how much the public are 
 indebted to him for his invaluable reports. 
 
 We have also freely availed ourselves of the labors of 
 J. O'SULLIVAN, Esq., of New York. He has produced one 
 of the most valuable reports ever issued from any legisla- 
 tive body. 
 
 We cannot express ourselves too warmly to another 
 friend, for the incitements received on this subject, as well 
 as on another, somewhat allied that of war. During two 
 journeys to Maine, we have had the pleasure of interviews 
 with Professor UPHAM, the true friend of humanity, whether 
 debased by Crime, trodden down by Slavery, or crushed by
 
 PREFACE. TU 
 
 War. Indeed, we know not that we should have brought 
 out our work at the present time, had it not been for his 
 encouragement. In our progress, we have frequently 
 availed ourselves of the labors of his mind, which are beau- 
 tifully embodied in his Manual of Peace, a work which, for 
 beauty of style, we have never seen surpassed. 
 
 In writing the essay, entitled, ' Dangerous to Liberty,' we 
 were peculiarly fortunate in meeting with a most thrilling 
 speech, by O'CONNELL, the ' great agitator,' delivered before 
 the London Society for the Diffusion of Information on the 
 subject of Capital Punishment. His voice came to us in 
 solemn tones, across the Atlantic ; for, by a singular coinci- 
 dence, at the very time when we were referring to his 
 speech, he was arraigned upon charges (which occupied 
 seventy hours in reading) for treason ; a capital offence in 
 every government on earth ; an offence considered the most 
 heinous and aggravating of all others, by politicians ; an 
 offence which seems to hold about the same rank among 
 them that heresy does among religionists. No crime is 
 more indefinite. For no one has blood flowed more freely. 
 How finely is this melancholy truth brought out, in reference 
 to the French Revolution, by Lafayette, in the motto upon 
 our title page ! The death-penalty has fallen heavily upon 
 the hero, the martyr, and the scholar! How many have 
 fallen beneath the bloody axe ! With minds far-reaching 
 beyond their age, misunderstood and unappreciated, they 
 have perished. And what a melancholy chapter might be 
 written on the fate of human discoverers ! And what a 
 brilliant chapter, too ; all sparkling with facts in human 
 progress ! 
 
 In the course of our examination of the Scriptures, we 
 spent much time in bringing out the number of offences in 
 the Code of Moses. In the wide range which critics have 
 taken, we found no one who had collated and arranged the 
 offences with reference to their number. Some may think 
 that we have gone too far. An objection may be raised that
 
 V1U PREFACE. 
 
 the expression, ' cut off,' does not mean death in a capital 
 form. A reference to a single passage, respecting the Sab- 
 bath, found in Exodus xxxi. 14, will confirm the view we 
 have adopted. 
 
 To make our work complete, we devoted much time and 
 labor in ascertaining the number of capital offences in the 
 code of the Union, and the codes of the several States. We 
 were kindly assisted here by an attorney of our city, whose 
 name we have mentioned with pleasure, in the notes to the 
 various codes, in the first Appendix. Such an arrangement 
 is not to be found in any work that has come within our 
 own observation. It will be of great service to the reader ; 
 enabling him to turn, at any moment, to see what is a capi- 
 tal offence in the code of the Union, or in either of the twen- 
 ty-six states of our republic. It may tend to the prevention 
 of crime, by thus presenting the law, in this simple form, to 
 the public eye. 
 
 The author has done what he could, considering the state 
 of his health, his opportunities, and the limited plan which 
 he was obliged to mark out, that his work might be within 
 the means of the public generally. His own mind has been 
 informed, and his heart more deeply interested in the gen- 
 eral cause of benevolence. And his fervent prayer is, that 
 the work may be a blessing to others, and be a means, at 
 least, of bringing one wanderer back from crime and degra- 
 dation to the path of righteousness and truth ; ever remem- 
 bering, ' that joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that 
 repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons that 
 need no repentance.' 
 
 Boston, January 1, 1844.
 
 CONTE NTS. 
 
 PART L HISTORY AND OBSERVATION. 
 
 Pag 
 ESSAY I. SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 Suicide Expediency, j 15 
 
 ESSAY II. REVENGEFUL. 
 
 Story of a horse stealer Punishment and revenge Confession of 
 a magistrate Reformation of a boy guilty of highway robbery 
 Sympathy for the degraded, 29 
 
 ESSAY III. SCRUPLES OF JUROES AND WITNESSES. 
 
 Law defeats itself Facts in England Lord Brougham's speech 
 Petitions of jurors and merchants Testimony of Blackstone 
 Anecdote of a juryman Incident of a jury in Plymouth, 
 Mass., ... 36 
 
 ESSAY IV. EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE PEISONER. 
 
 Executions of Boyington Robinson A pirate Two brothers 
 Thistlewood Armstrong Mary Jones, 42 
 
 ESSAY V. EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE SPECTATORS. 
 
 Anecdote of a pick-pocket Testimony of Dr. Dodd E fleet upon 
 . a celebrated banker Description by an English traveller Tes- 
 timony of a witness Testimony of a convict Private execu- 
 tions Execution of Lechler Conduct of an executioner, . 52 
 
 ESSAY VI. EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 Provision in Prussia for the children of criminals Condemned 
 forger and his family The condemned and his child Incident 
 at Massachusetts State Prison Painful fact Hangman and 
 the judge, 67 
 
 ESSAY VII. EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 Rome Russia Bombay Belgium Tuscany Objection of Chee- 
 ver Singular confession of Buonaparte, 76
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSAY VIII. DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 
 
 Connection of subject with human freedom Declaration of rights 
 Suicide-office History No republic founded on inviolability 
 of life Difficulty of denning treason and heresy Emmett and 
 "Washington Danger of the author under some forms of gov- 
 ernment Length of charges against O'Connell Treason in 
 reign of Henry VIII.- Story of Prince David Colonel Dawson 
 Singular fact in reference to Mr. Dorr, in Rhode Island, 
 respecting treason French revolution Robespierre's speech 
 against Capital Punishment Son of God a victim to this law 
 Stories of Colonel Hayne Mrs. Gaunt Lady Lisle Testi- 
 mony of La Fayette, 88 
 
 ESSAY IX. FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 Appeal to Christians Conduct of prisoners Stephen M. Clarke 
 Cheever's argument Petition presented by Lord Brougham 
 Incident at Lechler's execution Execution of a man eighty- 
 three years of age Reformation possible Corinthian church 
 Apostle Peter David, king of Israel, 100 
 
 ESSAY X. IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 The argument Indifference of Paley and Hudson Case of a sur- 
 geon and his servant Confession not a proof Instances in 
 England and in Vermont Complaining for gain Noticed by 
 parliament Burkites Liability of witnesses Difficulty of dis- 
 proving a certain charge Rape Innocent condemned Forty- 
 eight hours for criminals after sentence, in England Property 
 considered more valuable than life Mock charge of a villain 
 Trial of the Knapps Singular remark of Daniel Webster 
 Execution of the innocent Innkeeper A farmer Instances 
 given by Mrs. Child, Smollett and O'Connell, . . . .107 
 
 PART II. SACRED SCRIPTURES. 
 
 ESSAY I CAIN. 
 
 Scriptures Dominion not given to man over man First murder 
 in first family Lamech Abimelech The Sacrifice Murder 
 of Abel Address of Deity Omniscience of Deity Life invio- 
 lable Objection Anecdote of Biron Immutable distinctions 
 Strength of the argument Reflections First and last mur- 
 der, 125 
 
 ESSAY II. COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 Importance of the argument Cheever's view Confounded with 
 Mosaic code Cain's sentence experimental Reply The del- 
 uge The promise Rainbow Translation Septuagint Vul- 
 gate Le Clerc Calvin Upham A prediction Cheever's ridi-
 
 CONTENTS. XL 
 
 cnle Sanctity of life Chapin's view Patriarchal age Illus- 
 tration from Jesus The Kevelator Debate in "Windward 
 Islands, 135 
 
 ESSAY III. MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 Popular appeals to the Mosaic Code Imperfect system Wrong 
 views Its divisions The Avenger Cities of refuge Visit to 
 the cell of Leavitt, the murderer Number of capital offences 
 Sacredness of life Error in civilized codes Statute of Mas- 
 sachusetts Jewish code abolished Moses referred to a higher 
 prophet Sixth- commandment Reasons for Jewish code 
 Voice of God Objections, 156 
 
 ESSAY IV. TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 
 Sermon on the Mount Law of retaliation Present law Story 
 of an executioner The adulteress Law of Moses Feelings 
 to be entertained towards the criminal Anecdote Request to 
 call fire from heaven Peter's request Forgiveness Moses 
 and Christ Objection Sentence of Christ His precepts 
 Objection of Hudson Reply Duty of the Church Objection 
 New Covenant The crucifixion Eulogium upon Howard 
 Prayer-meeting in a murderer's cell Death of Christ, . . 174 
 
 ESSAY V. OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Innovation Claims of antiquity Christ Cheever's view of Cain 
 Inhuman to abolish the law Violence upon a maniac The 
 law a restraint upon the imprisoned Conversation in a prison 
 Save life Expediency Death of Christ Experimenting 
 Anecdote Incident among the Hottentots All sympathy for 
 the criminal Example of Jesus Adulteress Suicide of Colt 
 Criminals beyond moral influences Washingtonian move- 
 ment, 192 
 
 ESSAY VI. ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 Extent of the proposed reform Punishment of Death sustains 
 slavery Experiment of the Reform English philanthropists 
 Mrs. Fry Experiment among the heathen Executions 
 
 Erivate Suicide of Colt Feelings towards the executioner 
 pain Scruples of jurors Anecdotes Progress of society 
 Imprisonment for debt Inefficiency of Capital Punishment 
 Quakers Penn Washingtonianism Incident of Channing 
 Christianity, 204 
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Capital Offences of the Union, 220 
 
 Capital Offences of the several States, 220 
 
 Explanation of phrase, 'without benefit of clergy,' . . .232
 
 3di CONTENTS. 
 
 APPENDIX H. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF KINDNESS, 234 
 
 Mrs. Fry's visit to Newgate, 234 
 
 Conduct of Captain Pillsbury, of "Weathersfield prison, Con- 
 necticut, 235 
 
 Conduct of an agent of the Bible Society in the Mexican pro- 
 vince of Texas, : 236 
 
 Anecdote of "William Ladd, ,237
 
 PART I. 
 
 HISTORY AND OBSERVATION.
 
 ESSAYS, &c. 
 
 i. 
 
 SACEEDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 Suicide Expediency. 
 
 1 The power over human life is the sole prerogative of Him who 
 gare it. Human laws, therefore, are in rebellion against this preroga- 
 tive when they transfer it to human hands.' DR. RUSH. 
 
 OUR first inquiry will be respecting the authority 
 for Capital Punishment. We do not intend to take an 
 extensive view of this part of our subject, for there are 
 many other considerations which would be more inter- 
 esting to the general reader. 
 
 The reader should remember that the great object of 
 our labor will be to show the injustice of Capital Pun- 
 ishments. The disposal of a prisoner is a matter for 
 a work on another plan. Take away first this cruel, 
 sanguinary law, and then let benevolence and justice do 
 their work. 
 
 We wish to establish, clearly, that life is sacred, in- 
 alienable, a gift from Heaven. And even our Declara- 
 tion of Rights admits this great truth. Settle this great 
 question forever, and then society will begin to improve; 
 humanity will be respected, and the criminal will be 
 looked on with pity as a man and a brother. 
 
 It has been said, that society is a compact, and that 
 each individual must give up some portion of his
 
 16 SACREDNESS OP HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 rights to the government under which he lives. Mr. 
 Rantoul contends, however, that there is no such com- 
 pact. ' It belongs to those,' he says, ' who claim for 
 society the rightful power of life and death over its 
 members, as a consequence of the social compact, to 
 show in that compact the express provisions which 
 convey that power. But it cannot be pretended that 
 there are, or ever were, such provisions. It is argued, 
 as boldly as strangely, that this right is to be implied 
 from the nature of the compact. It may seem unne- 
 cessary to reply to such an assumption; but it has 
 often been advanced, and for that reason deserves our 
 notice. In point of fact, there is no social compact 
 actually entered into by the members of society. It is 
 a convenient fiction a mere creature of the imagina- 
 tion a form of expression often used to avoid long 
 and difficult explanations of the real nature of the 
 relation between the body politic and its individual 
 members. This relation is not, strictly speaking, 
 that of a compact. It is not by our voluntary con- 
 sent that we become, each one of us, parties to it. 
 The mere accident of birth first introduced us, and 
 made us subject to its arrangements, before we were, 
 in any sense, free agents. After we had grown to the 
 age of freemen, and had a right to a voice in the com- 
 mon concerns, what alternatives had we then left? 
 Simply these. Resistance to the social compact, as it 
 is called, under the prospect of producing ruin, confu- 
 sion, anarchy, slaughter almost without bounds, and 
 finally ending in a new form of the social compact, 
 much more objectionable than that which had been 
 destroyed, if the resistance should prove successful : 
 should it fail of success, incurring the penalty of trea- 
 son, a cruel death, to such as have not been fortunate
 
 SACREDNESS OP HUMAN LIFE. 17 
 
 enough to fall in the field of battle. Flight from the 
 social compact, that is to say, flight not only from one's 
 home, friends, kindred, language and country, but from 
 among civilized men, perhaps, it may be said, from the 
 fellowship of the human race. Or, lastly, submission 
 to the social compact, as we find it, taking the chance 
 of our feeble endeavors to amend it, or improve the 
 practice under it. To this result, almost every man 
 feels compelled by the circumstances in which he finds 
 himself; circumstances so strong as to force from an 
 inspired apostle the declaration, though he wrote under 
 the tyrant Nero, a monster of depravity, " the powers 
 that be are ordained of God ; whosoever therefore re- 
 sisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God ; and 
 they that resist shall receive unto themselves damna- 
 tion." ' 
 
 But admitting all that the most strenuous advocates 
 contend for, respecting the social compact, the question 
 returns. Can the individual give to society a right 
 which was never conferred on him by his Creator ? 
 Has any one a right to take his own life ? Every 
 Christian,' says Mr. Rantoul, 'must answer, no. A man 
 holds his life as a tenant at will, not indeed of society, 
 who did not and cannot give it, or renew it, and have, 
 therefore, no right to take it away, but of that Almighty 
 Being whose gift life is, who sustains and continues it, 
 to whom it belongs, and who alone has the right to re- 
 claim his gift whenever it shall seem good in his sight. 
 A man may not surrender up his life until he is called 
 for. May he then make a contract with his neighbor, 
 that in such or such a case his neighbor shall kill him? 
 Such a contract, if executed, would involve the one 
 party in the guilt of suicide, and the other in the guilt 
 of murder. If a man may not say to his next neighbor, 
 2*
 
 18 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 " When I have burned your house in the night time, or 
 wrested your purse from you on the highway, or bro- 
 ken into your house in the night, with an iron crow, to 
 take a morsel of meat for my starving child, do you 
 seize me, shut me up a few weeks, and then bring me 
 out and strangle me ; and in like case, if your turn 
 comes first, I will serve you in the same way," would 
 such an agreement between ten neighbors be any more 
 valid or justifiable 1 No. Nor if the number were a 
 hundred, instead of ten, who should form this infernal 
 compact, nor if there should be six hundred thousand 
 or seven hundred thousand, or even fourteen millions, 
 who should so agree, would this increase of the number 
 of partners vary one hair's breadth the moral character 
 of the transaction. If this execution of the contract be 
 not still murder on the one side, and suicide on the 
 other, what precise number of persons must engage in 
 it, in order that what was criminal before may become 
 innocent, not to say virtuous ; and upon what hitherto 
 unheard of principles of morality is an act of murder 
 in an individual, or a small corporation, converted into 
 an act of justice whenever another subscriber has joined 
 the association for mutual sacrifice? It is a familiar 
 fact, in the history of mankind, that great corporations 
 will do, and glory in, what the very individuals com- 
 posing them would shrink from or blush at ; but how 
 does the division of the responsibility transform vice 
 into virtue, or diminish the amount of any given crime? 
 The command, " Thou shall not kill," applies to indi- 
 vidual men as members of an association, quite as 
 peremptorily as in their private capacity.' 
 
 Suicide has been maintained by some writers, both 
 in ancient and modern times. We have met with a 
 French author, who, to sustain it, offers the following
 
 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 19 
 
 view: 'I do not,' says he, 'regard as a very serious 
 objection that pretended prohibition of suicide, whence 
 it has been argued that we cannot dispose of human 
 life. After Rousseau's admirable letters on suicide, he 
 must be a bold man who would venture an off-hand 
 opinion on such a serious question. 
 
 ' When my coat straightens me, I throw it off. If 
 my house does not suit me, I quit it. Why should I 
 not abandon life? 
 
 ' It is true, the savage may starve, or freeze, rather 
 than kill himself; but yet he kills his venerable father, 
 with his own hand, to save him from suffering under 
 a decaying constitution, and the pangs of a lingering 
 death. 
 
 ' Besides, to start from a questionable point to estab- 
 lish the point in question, is only to settle one doubt by 
 another. 
 
 ' The objection is a relic of the middle age, when the 
 law punished suicide as a crime. Those punishments 
 have been erased from our statutes. We cannot, 
 therefore, admit that a principle which has been ex- 
 cluded from our criminal legislation, should continue 
 to constitute one of its elements.'* 
 
 This reasoning will appear very singular to an 
 American legislator. The author evidently felt the 
 force of the objection, that man, having not the right 
 
 * ' Je ne considers pas comme une objection bien grave la pretendue 
 defense d'attenter a notre propre vie, d'on 1'on conclut que nous ne 
 pouvons pas davantage disposer de celle de nos semblables. 
 
 ' Lorsqu' on a lu les admirables lettres de Jean Jacques sur le suicide, 
 il devient temeraire de trancher legerement une aussi grave question. 
 
 ' Quand un vetement me gene, je le quitte ; quand une habitation 
 m'mcommode, j'en sors. Pourquoi ne pourrais-je pas sortir de la vie? 
 
 ' On parle du sauvage, qui souvent meurt de faim, de froid, et ne se 
 tue point lui meme. 
 
 ' La chose est possible ; mats on oublie que ce meme sauvage donne,
 
 20 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 to take his own life, could not give it to another ; and 
 to meet it, adopts this strange view. He even goes 
 farther, and endeavors to show that not only suicide is 
 justifiable, but that all religious ideas must be banished 
 from the mind, before we can consistently advocate 
 Capital Punishment. ' It has been objected, that there 
 is atheism in thus cutting off the probationary state of 
 a soul. I should answer this sufficiently, if I should 
 only quote this fundamental maxim of our legislation ; 
 "THE LAW OUGHT TO- BE ATHEISTICAL." This astound- 
 ing proposition M. Urtis thus explains in a note : " Not 
 that I would HERE preach atheism. I only contend, 
 that as the law recognizes religious freedom, it cannot 
 assume as a fundamental principle the doctrines of any 
 particular faith. * * It must regard only the general 
 good of society. No one can tell where such a course 
 will end, if the necessities of society are to be subjected 
 to all the requisitions of theology." '* 
 
 de sa propre main, la mort a son vieux pere, pour lui epargner les 
 souffrances de la caducite, les tourmens d'une longue agonie ! 
 
 ' Au surplus, partir d'un point contestable pour etablir le principe 
 conteste, n'est ce pas prouver la question par la question ? 
 
 'Cette objection est une reminiscence du moyen age. Alors la loi 
 portait des peines contre le suicide. Elles ont ete effacees de nos Codes. 
 On ne peut done admettre, comme element de legislation criminelle, un 
 principe qui en a ete banni. De la Peine de Mort, 2 3.' 
 
 * < II y a de 1'Atheisme, ajoute-t-on, dans ce coup de hache qui enleve 
 un ame au repentir. 
 
 1 Je pourrais pour toute reponse, me borner a citer cette maxime, base 
 de notre droit public, suivant laquelle LA LOI DOIT ETRE ATHEE. 
 He adds in a note : Non que je veuille ICI precher 1'Atheisme. Je 
 veux dire seulement que la loi, admettant la liberte des cultes, ne doit 
 prendre pour base les dogmes d'aucune croyance particuliere. * * Elle 
 ne doit considerer que 1'utilite generate de la societe. On n'en finirait 
 plus s'il fallait subordonner les necessites sociales a toutes les ezigen 
 ces de la theologie. De la Peine de Mort, 26 27.'
 
 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 21 
 
 We do not mean to say that those who advocate 
 Capital Punishment are atheistical in their views; but 
 we do mean, that, to be consistent, they must admit 
 suicide to be justifiable ; for, generally, they contend 
 strictly for human governments, and that, becoming 
 members of a government, we give up a portion of our 
 rights. ' When we surrendered to society the smallest 
 possible portion of our liberty, to enable us the better 
 to retain the aggregate of rights which we did not sur- 
 render, did we concede our title to that life with which 
 our Creator has endowed us? Is it to be conceived 
 that we have consented to hold the tenure of our earthly 
 existence at the discretion or the caprice of a majority, 
 whose erratic legislation no man can calculate before- 
 hand ? While our object was to preserve, as little im- 
 
 We should think, from the following statistics of suicide in France, 
 that the people were not very slow to carry the reasoning of M. Urtis 
 into practice : 
 
 'INCREASE OF SUICIDES IN FRANCE. It appears, from official docu- 
 ments contained in recent Paris papers, that the number of suicides in 
 France increases each year. In the year 1839, they amounted to one 
 thousand seven hundred and forty-seven, being one hundred and sev- 
 enty-one more than in 1838, three hundred and four more than in 1837, 
 and four hundred and seven more than in 1836. The department of 
 the Seine figures for four hundred and eighty-six, nearly one fifth of 
 the entire. Six hundred and eighty-eight females are returned among 
 the suicides. Each period of life, from infancy to old age, has paid its 
 tribute to this malady. There are two children of from eight to nine 
 years of age, two of eleven, one of twelve, two of thirteen, three of 
 fourteen, nine of fifteen, one hundred and forty-seven of sixteen to 
 twenty-one, three hundred and thirty-five of sixty, one hundred and 
 eighty-nine of seventy, and forty-one of eighty. The means most fre- 
 quently used to destroy life are submersion and strangulation. Nine 
 hundred and fifty -eight individuals drowned themselves, eight hundred 
 and sixteen hung themselves, one hundred and eighty-nine suffocated 
 themselves rvith the fumes of charcoal, which appears to be the principal 
 mode resorted to by the Parisians.'
 
 22 SACREDNESS OP HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 paired as might be possible, all our rights, which are 
 all of them comprehended in the right to enjoy life, 
 can we have agreed to forfeit that right to live while 
 God shall spare our lives, which is the essential pre- 
 cedent condition of all our other rights 1 Property may 
 be diminished, and afterwards increased. Liberty may 
 be taken away for a time, and subsequently restored. 
 The wound which is inflicted may be healed, and the 
 wrong we have suffered may be atoned for; but there 
 is no Promethean heat that can rekindle the lamp of 
 life, if once extinguished. Can it be, then, that while 
 property, liberty, and personal security are guarded 
 and hedged in on every side, by the strict provisions 
 of our fundamental constitution, that life is uncondi- 
 tionally thrown into the common stock, not to be for- 
 feited in a specific case, agreed upon beforehand at the 
 organization of our society, but in all such cases as the 
 popular voice may single out and make capital by* 
 law ? Have we entered into any such compact ? 
 
 ' The burthen of proof is wholly upon those who 
 affirm that we have so agreed. Let it be shown that 
 mankind in general, or the inhabitants of this Com- 
 monwealth in particular, have agreed to hold their 
 lives as a conditional grant from the state. Let it be 
 shown that any one individual, understanding the bar- 
 gain, and being free to dissent from it, ever voluntarily 
 placed himself in such a miserable vassalage. Let 
 there, at least, be shown some reason for supposing 
 that any sane man has, of his own accord, bartered 
 away his original right in his own existence, that his 
 government may tyrannize more heavily over him and 
 his fellows, when all the purposes of good govern- 
 ment may be amply secured at so much cheaper a 
 purchase. In no instance can this preposterous sacri-
 
 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 23 
 
 fice be implied. It must be shown by positive proof 
 that it has been made, and until this is undeniably es- 
 tablished, the right of life remains among those reserved 
 rights which we have not yielded up to society. 1 
 
 Beccaria has some good remarks on this subject. 
 ' What right, I ask, have men to cut the throats of their 
 fellow-creatures? Certainly not that on which the sov- 
 ereignty and laws are founded. The laws, as I have 
 said before, are only the sum of the smallest portions 
 of the private liberty of each individual, and represent 
 the general will, which is the aggregate of that of each 
 individual. Did any one ever give to others the right 
 of taking away his life? Is it possible that in the 
 smallest portions of the liberty of each, sacrificed to 
 the good of the public, can be contained the greatest 
 of all goods, life ? If it were so, how shall it be recon- 
 ciled to the maxim which tells us, that a man has no 
 right to kill himself? which he certainly must have, 
 if he could give it away to another.' 
 
 ' The case of a civil ruler and his subject,' says the 
 author of the essays of Philanthropes, ' is much like 
 that of a father and his minor son. If the son behave 
 himself unseemly, the father may correct him. If, 
 after all due admonition and corrections, the son shall 
 prove to be incorrigible, the father may expel him from 
 his family ; and he may disinherit him ; but he must 
 not kill him. All civil governments originated in fami- 
 lies. The father of the family had a natural right of 
 jurisdiction over his descendants, and an acquired right 
 on account of the support and protection afforded them 
 during their infancy and childhood ; and, by the alli- 
 ance or union of many families, it became national. 
 But the stream cannot rise higher than the fountain. 
 If no father have the right to inflict the punishment of
 
 24 SACREDNESS OP HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 death on his minor son for any crime, then a million of 
 fathers would have no right, by themselves or their 
 representatives, to do it. In such case, numbers, power, 
 and substitution, considered either severally or jointly, 
 cannot create or increase a right. And I humbly con- 
 ceive that the rightful jurisdiction of the civil magis- 
 trate over any member of the community never can 
 rise higher than that of a father over his son during 
 his minority.' 
 
 'We maintain,' says Professor Upham, 'that the 
 state, in inflicting Capital Punishments, exercises a 
 power which was never granted it. And for this sim- 
 ple reason, that individuals, who are the source of all 
 the authority lodged in the state, have no power to 
 grant it. No man can gratit to another what he does 
 not possess himself; and as no man has the right to 
 take away his own life, (a principle, upon which wri- 
 ters on moral philosophy, and mankind generally, are 
 more universally agreed than upon almost any other,) 
 it follows that no man has the right to authorize 
 another to take away his life. So that the infliction of 
 Capital Punishments, examining the subject in this 
 direction, is undoubtedly to be regarded as usurpation 
 and tyranny.' 
 
 We have thus looked at one side of our subject. 
 We present now the views of a writer who takes the 
 ground that society has the right to take life : 
 
 'It is said,' he observes, 'by some writers on this 
 subject, that no man has yielded to others, or to the 
 government under which he lives, the right to take 
 away his life ; that it is a measure of legal violence, 
 and not the act of his own consent or free will ; that it 
 usurps the prerogative of Heaven. Stretch the princi- 
 ple a little farther, and allow us to ask in return,
 
 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 26 
 
 whether any villain ever gave up of his own free will 
 the right to imprison him, or to confiscate his property ; 
 and the argument, thus carried to its full extent, anni- 
 hilates every species of punishment. But the laws, 
 the government, do not ask his consent. Their only 
 query is, Does the safety of the public call for a capital 
 sentence ? If it does, they pronounce it ; if it does not, 
 his life is spared.'* 
 
 It would seem, by this reasoning, that we are wholly 
 to be governed by expediency, one of the most dan- 
 gerous principles ever adopted in moral philosophy. 
 ' When the advocates of sanguinary examples are 
 driven from every position of morality, reason, and 
 religion, they entrench themselves behind that of expe- 
 diency. But expediency was the doctrine of PILATE, 
 who, on that principle, which is so much in accept- 
 ance among modern statesmen, put ONE, in whom he 
 " found no fault," to death, in preference to the mur- 
 derer Barabbas. There is no crime in statesmanship, 
 no vice in legislation, no error in the administration of 
 justice, that "expediency" cannot sanction! It is the 
 doctrine invented by knaves to impose upon fools. 
 When men abandon the immutable principles that 
 distinguish right from wrong, and tell us that it is expe- 
 dient to do a thing which it is not right to do, we think 
 very contemptuously of such men's understandings, or 
 very unfavorably of their hearts: for either folly or 
 dishonesty is the source of their actions.' 
 
 ' The question then returns, where does society get 
 its right of putting men to death 1 And the answer is, 
 Nowhere. This pernicious system is to be regarded as 
 one of the thousand usurpations, that have been intro- 
 
 * Christian Spectator, Sept., 1830 p. 509 
 3
 
 26 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 duced by mistake or by cruelty, and which are ren- 
 dered venerable and sacred by lapse of time. Like the 
 use of the rack, the trial by ordeal, the enslavement or 
 destruction of prisoners taken in war, the poisoning of 
 wells and fountains, and other pernicious and unlaw- 
 ful practices, which were once authorized, and per- 
 haps considered essential to the existence of society, 
 the time is coming, when it will be condemned by the 
 good judgment and the humane feelings of mankind, 
 and wholly renounced as both inexpedient and wrong.' 
 We sincerely believe that the only doctrine that will 
 ever secure to man his just rights, will be that of the 
 Inviolability of Human Life. We must begin here. 
 When this is once felt and understood, we may expect 
 an end to tyranny and oppression throughout the world. 
 Life is sacred. It belongs to Him who gave it. It is 
 in the hands of its Author. The voice of God has sent 
 forth his perpetual and universal mandate. Tnou 
 SHALT NOT KILL.' This voice speaks from the very 
 depths of our natures, ' THOU SHALT NOT KILL ! ' That 
 strange union of spirit and body which composes this 
 fearful and unfathomable mystery of our humanity is 
 not to be severed, neither by the hand of a human 
 government, nor by the hand of the individual ; 'for in 
 the image of God made He man.' And that image 
 must not be marred. It must be respected, and ten- 
 derly treated, even in the murderer's own person, 
 though he be crimsoned over with blood. 'Ah!' 
 exclaims M. Lucas, ' the best means of recalling to 
 the guilty culprit the sense of the sacred character of 
 the duty he has violated, is it not to respect it in his 
 own person ? . . . . When he shall behold the 
 society abstaining from putting him to death him, the 
 murderer he will then comprehend that man is indeed
 
 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 27 
 
 forbidden to attack the life of his fellow-man, and then 
 alone will he conceive the thought of all the sanctity 
 of the duty he has violated, all the enormity of the 
 crime he has committed.' 
 
 ' Let the idea of crime, horrible crime,' says Mr. 
 Rantoul, in his report to the Massachusetts Legislature, 
 in February, 1836, 'be indissolubly and universally 
 associated with the voluntary and deliberate destruc- 
 tion of life under whatever pretext. Whoever strength- 
 ens this association in the public mind, does more to 
 prevent murders than any punishment, with whatever 
 aggravation of torture, can effect through fear. The 
 denomination of Friends have always been educated 
 in this idea, and among them murders are unknown. 
 The strongest safeguard of life is its sanctity ; and this 
 sentiment every execution diminishes.' 
 
 We rejoice to find that we are not alone on this sub- 
 ject. A glorious company is rising up in different por- 
 tions of the civilized world, whose talents and virtues 
 will adorn this great doctrine, and hasten its establish- 
 ment throughout the habitable globe. 
 
 ' For the honor of humanity it can be said, that in 
 every age and country, there have been found persons 
 in whom uncorrupted nature has triumphed over cus- 
 tom and law. Else why do we hear of houses being 
 abandoned near to places of public execution 1 Why 
 do we see doors and windows shut, the days and hours 
 of criminal executions ? Why do we hear of aid being 
 secretly afforded to criminals to mitigate or elude the 
 severity of their punishments] Why is the public 
 executioner of the law a subject of such general detesta- 
 tion ? These things are latent struggles of reason, or 
 rather the secret voice of God himself, speaking in the
 
 28 SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 human heart, against the folly and cruelty of public 
 punishments.'* 
 
 Let philanthropists then take courage, and go for- 
 ward in the great and blessed work of ameliorating the 
 condition of the criminal, by doing away those terrible 
 punishments which have only brutalized and har- 
 dened the human heart. It is a great work, and for 
 our encouragement we have the words of the Great 
 Teacher. ' Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
 the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto 
 me.'f 
 
 * Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical. By BENJAMIN RUSH, 
 M. D. p. 162, Philadelphia, 1798. .The writer finds this language, and 
 that of the motto at the head of this essay, ascribed by some writers to 
 Dr. Franklin. A careful ezamination of the works of both Eush and 
 Franklin has enabled the writer to discover the error. There is but a 
 single essay in Franklin's works on penal jurisprudence. The essay 
 from which our quotation was made, was read at a society for promo- 
 ting Political Inquiries, convened at the house of Dr. Franklin, March 
 9, 1787. We mention this fact, because we find that even Livingston 
 himself committed the error to which we have alluded. 
 
 f Matt. xxv. 40.
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 REVENGEFUL. 
 
 Story of a horse-stealer Punishment and revenge Confession of a 
 magistrate Reformation of a boy guilty of highway robbery 
 Sympathy for the degraded. 
 
 'Government has not been slow to punish crime, nor has society 
 suffered for want of dungeons and gibbets. But the prevention of 
 crime, and the reformation of the offender, have nowhere taken rank 
 among the first objects of legislation.' CHANNING. 
 
 DR. FRANKLIN relates the story of a horse-stealer, 
 who, on being asked by his judge what he had to say 
 why sentence of death should not be passed, replied, 
 ' that it was hard to hang a man for only stealing 
 a horse.' ' Man,' replied the judge, thou art not to be 
 hanged only for stealing a horse, but that horses may 
 not be stolen.' This anecdote shows the true nature 
 of Capital Punishment. The good of the offender is 
 always unthought of in its infliction. One great object 
 is entirely disregarded. 
 
 It may be said of our penal code generally, that it is 
 rather retrospective than prospective. The future good 
 of the criminal is not considered. The idea is well 
 expressed in our motto, by Channing. Our prisons 
 should be places of emendation ; not mere gloomy cells, 
 but hospitals to heal the moral disorders of the soul. 
 Until this is done, we cannot expect any beneficial 
 results from the confinement of the culprit. 
 
 ' When we hear of the perpetration of a crime, we are 
 too apt to think only of punishment. What suffering 
 3*
 
 30 REVENGEFUL. 
 
 can be too great for such a wretch ! is the exclamation 
 which bursts from almost every lip. The sentiment is 
 worthy of the unlovely doctrines which produce and 
 cherish it. A more benevolent system would excite a 
 different feeling. What can be done to reclaim the 
 unhappy offender? What means can be taken to 
 enlighten his mind, and meliorate his heart? What 
 discipline is best adapted to his mental and moral dis- 
 order ? What will lead him back to virtue and to hap- 
 piness most speedily, and with the least pain ? Such 
 is the feeling of the mind enlightened by the generous 
 doctrine we have endeavored to establish. Could 
 it but enter the heart of every legislator ; did it 
 but guide the hand that constructs the cell of the poor 
 captive ; did it apportion his pallet of straw and his 
 scanty meal ; did it determine the completeness and 
 the duration of his exclusion from the light of day and 
 the pure breeze of heaven ; did it apply his manacles, 
 (if, disdaining to treat a human being with more indig- 
 nity than is practised towards the most savage brutes, 
 it did not dash his chains to the earth,) what a dif- 
 ferent aspect would these miserable mansions soon 
 assume ! What different inhabitants would they con- 
 tain ! Prisons would not then be the hot-beds of vice, 
 in which the youthful offender grows into the har- 
 dened criminal, and the want of shame succeeds the 
 abolition of principle, but hospitals of the mind, in 
 which its moral disorder is removed by the application 
 of effectual remedies.' 
 
 That Capital Punishment has no good moral effect 
 by way of example, will be shown in the essay on the 
 Influence of Public Executions. 
 
 A very able writer has given us the following defi- 
 nitions of punishment and revenge. According to his
 
 REVENGEFUL. 31 
 
 reasoning, both bear the following definition: 'The 
 infliction of pain in consequence of the violation or 
 neglect of duty.' The question then arises, where 
 is the difference ? ' The real difference consists not in 
 the pain and suffering endured, nor in the person or 
 law that inflicts it, but in the motive with which it is 
 administered.' ' Punishment is prospective, referring 
 to future consequences ; but revenge is retrospective, 
 having reference only to a past offence.' 
 
 Punishment by death originated among savages. 
 Among them, however, it was called by its right name, 
 revenge. ' In the savage state, the murderer is con- 
 sidered the lawful prey of any relative or friend of the 
 slain, who may please to take revenge ; but the com- 
 munity takes no part in the transaction.' Now, society 
 pursues the murderer for the same object. Revenge is 
 still the same, whether inflicted by the hand of the 
 savage, or by the most enlightened government. 
 
 The great object seems to be to inflict evil merely 
 because an evil has taken place. We do not say that 
 all view the matter in this light, but that the commu- 
 nity do generally. For, what are the expressions that 
 we hear when persons are convicted for murder? 
 ' Hang them ! they deserve it ! They did not spare 
 let them not be spared ! Let them die ! ' ' Die and be 
 damned' was the recent answer of one. ' To say, as 
 some do, that we have a right to take away the life of 
 a human being, because he or she hath taken away the 
 life of another, is a fallacious mode of reasoning. It 
 appears like justifying one crime by another. It is 
 comparing ourselves with ourselves ; not with the law of 
 God, which is the standard of moral rectitude. Let us 
 apply this sophistical mode of reasoning to some of the 
 other commandments, say the eighth, ninth, and tenth.
 
 32 REVENGEFUL. 
 
 Have we a right to steal from one who hath been 
 guilty of theft ? Have we a right to bear false witness 
 against one who hath been guilty of perjury ? Or to 
 covet the goods of one who hath coveted the goods of 
 his neighbor ? In this way we might make void, not 
 only the sixth commandment, but also all the rest 
 which respect the duty of man to man. By these com- 
 mandments all theft, all perjury, all covetousness, and 
 all shedding of human blood, are expressly forbidden ! 
 If the sixth commandment had said, " Thou 'shalt not 
 kill, except it be one who hath killed another" or Avords 
 to that effect, it would have given some colorable 
 right to take away the life of the murderer. But as it 
 now stands, and will forever stand, it gives no such 
 right. The badness of the character of the criminal 
 will not justify the violation of the commandment by 
 others. The prohibition is peremptory, decisive, uni- 
 versal, and unconditional.' 
 
 ' The just vengeance of the law,' is an expression 
 which shows the real character of Capital Punishment. 
 When presented, however, in its real import, it is gen- 
 erally disclaimed. Mr. O'Sullivan, speaking on this 
 subject, says, ' Evil in its nature, this spirit of revenge 
 which lies at the root of our laws of Capital Punish- 
 ment, is, however, the fruitful source of abundant 
 retributive evil, in its eventual consequences, to those 
 themselves who yield to its indulgence. Thus is it 
 ever, by an eternal and universal moral law which has 
 no less certain applicability to societies than to indi- 
 viduals. The suicidal reaction of these laws back on 
 the community which frames and enforces them by 
 desecrating the idea of the inviolable sanctity of human 
 life by weakening the force of that instinct against 
 the wilful shedding of the blood of our fellow-man,
 
 REVENGEFUL. 33 
 
 which is the strongest safeguard to the personal secu- 
 rity of us all by sanctioning and suggesting the inflic- 
 tion of death as a rightful punishment for human 
 offences by demoralizing the public heart, and famil- 
 iarizing it with the idea of these cold, formal, and 
 deliberate judicial murders by setting such a high 
 social example of the indulgence of revenge in this 
 world, and of comparative indifference to the too proba- 
 ble fate of the human soul in the next has been, it is 
 believed, sufficiently shown, to claim from all the 
 recognition of the high moral, of which these evil fruits 
 from evil seed afford so signal an illustration.' 
 
 ' It is from an abuse of language,' says Eden on the 
 Principles of Penal Law, ' that we apply the word pun- 
 ishment to human institutions. Vengeance belongeth 
 not to man.' 
 
 But the best proof to show that Capital Punishment 
 is revengeful is the admission of a magistrate to Mr. 
 Livingston. ' He acceded to the propriety of the pro- 
 posed reform, in all cases but murder; which he 
 excepted on the ground of the difficulty of keeping the 
 offender, and the severity of the substitute of solitary 
 confinement. But when these two objections had been 
 satisfactorily answered, he replied by one of the usual 
 exclamations by which some men with what is far 
 worse than merely a shocking levity, heartlessness, and 
 irreflection are wont to dismiss the subject, that the 
 murderer deserves death ! and blood must be shed for 
 blood ! and added, very frankly, "I must confess that 
 there is some little feeling of revenge at the bottom of 
 my opinion on the subject." 'If all other reasoners,' 
 adds Mr. Livingston, ' were equally candid, there 
 would be less difficulty in establishing true doctrines.' 
 ' Passion first made revengeful laws, and revenge once
 
 34 REVENGEFUL. 
 
 incorporated with the system of justice, re-produced its 
 own image, after passion had expired.' 
 
 More might be added in proof of the revengeful 
 nature of Capital Punishment, but it would be unne- 
 cessary. It must be seen that the reformation of the 
 offender is entirely overlooked. And, in all penal 
 inflictions, this should be a great, a paramount object ; 
 and when once the true idea of the Inviolability of 
 Human Life is seen and understood, the life of even 
 the most abandoned will be preserved, and society, 
 instead of cutting off the offender, will endeavor to 
 ameliorate his condition, and restore him to commu- 
 nity. 
 
 What a noble work ! And that it may be accom- 
 plished, will be seen by the illustrations of kind- 
 ness which may be found at the close of the present 
 volume. Mr. Rantoul gives an instance of a boy, who 
 was convicted of highway robbery. ' He was con- 
 victed and sentenced to death, but, in consideration 
 of his age, and other circumstances, his sentence was 
 commuted to imprisonment for life. In the State 
 prison he became a good boy, and was pardoned, and 
 restored to society, to virtue and to usefulness. He 
 acquired a good reputation in the neighborhood where 
 he lived, and died a Christian death among his friends, 
 in March, 1835.' 
 
 1 It has been said, but it is the language of unreflect- 
 ing levity, that the criminal convicted of a capital 
 offence, under our laws, is generally depraved and 
 worthless, and that, therefore, the sacrifice of a few 
 such lives is of very little consequence to society, 
 and it is not an object fit to engage the attention of 
 the government of a great state, even if these laws 
 might be repealed without injury. It is impossible
 
 REVENGEFUL. 36 
 
 that any legislator can entertain so inhuman a sen- 
 timent. Felons, however fallen, still are men, and 
 have the better title to commiseration the more deeply 
 they are sunk in guilt. If these wretches were princes, 
 says Goldsmith, there would be thousands ready to 
 offer their ministry ; but the heart that is buried hi a 
 dungeon is as precious as that seated on a throne. 
 Suppose that one only may be caught up from the gulf 
 of vice, misery and perdition, and restored to repent- 
 ance, virtue and usefulness, this would be gain enough 
 to reward all the exertions that may be made to effect 
 the reform, for there is upon earth no gem so precious 
 as the human soul.'* 
 
 * See Reports on the Abolition of Capital Punishment, by Mr. RAN- 
 T00L and others. Reprinted by order of the House of Representatives; 
 from the Documents of 1835 and 1836.
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 SCRUPLES OF JURORS AND WITNESSES. 
 
 Law defeats itself Facts in England Lord Brougham's speech 
 Petitions of jurors and merchants Testimony of Blackstone 
 Anecdote of a juryman Incident of a jury in Plymouth, Mass, 
 
 ' "Witnesses are unwilling to testify, and jurors are unwilling to con- 
 vict, where the sentence is death.' UPHAM. 
 
 WE have met with a great many facts, showing the 
 difficulty of procuring correct verdicts where the pen- 
 alty was death, not only with reference to jurors, but 
 to witnesses. ' The severity of this law totally defeats 
 its object. Often is there strong evidence in the neigh- 
 borhood where a conflagration has occurred, showing 
 that it was designedly kindled, and tending to fix the 
 charge upon the incendiary. Yet no complaint is 
 made, no investigation takes place, because the hang- 
 ing, if it should end in that, would be a greater evil 
 than the fire. When a trial is had, which but seldom 
 occurs, all possible latitude is given to the circum- 
 stances which will take the case out of the present 
 narrow limits of arson. From these and some other 
 causes, the la*w is practically obsolete; for, of the many 
 thousand instances of arson committed in the last 
 thirty years, within this state, only one has been pun- 
 ished according to law.' As this essay needs no ab- 
 stract view, we shall confine ourselves to the simple 
 facts in the case. 
 
 : In England, cases like the following often occur in 
 trials for crimes not capital among us, but which serve
 
 SCRUPLES OF JURORS AND WITNESSES. 37 
 
 to illustrate the effect of the motives alluded to upon 
 the minds of jurors. A woman was indicted for steal- 
 ing, in a dwelling-house, two guineas, two half 
 guineas, and forty-four shillings in other money. She 
 confessed the stealing of the money, and the jury found 
 her guilty ; but, as the stealing of such a sum would 
 be punishable with death, they found the value of the 
 money to be thirty-nine shillings only, which saved 
 her from the sentence of death. Another female was 
 indicted for stealing lace, for which she refused to take 
 eight guineas, offering it for sale for twelve. The jury 
 who convicted her of the theft, found the lace to be 
 worth thirty-nine shillings. Two persons indicted for 
 stealing the same goods privately in a shop, five shil- 
 lings stolen in this manner making the offence capital, 
 one of the prisoners was found guilty of thus stealing 
 to the value of five shillings, and the other to the value 
 of four shillings and ten pence.' 
 
 Lord SUFFIELD, speaking on this subject in England, 
 offered the following facts : 
 
 He held in his hand, he said, a list of five hundred and fifty- 
 five perjured verdicts, delivered at the Old Bailey, in fifteen years, 
 beginning with the year 18 14, for the single offence of stealing from 
 dwellings, the value stolen being in these cases sworn above forty 
 shillings, but the verdicts returned being ' to the value of thirty-nine 
 shillings' only. If required, he would produce the name of every 
 one of these five hundred and fifty-five convicts, and show the value 
 proved to have been stolen. It deserved remark, that when the 
 legislature raised the capital indictment to five pounds, in June, 
 1827, the juries at the same lime raised their verdicts to four pounds 
 nineteen shillings; thus still keeping it low enough to save the 
 offender's life. This had happened under the one head of stealing 
 from dwelling houses.* 
 
 * See Selections from the London Morning Herald, vol i. p. 280. 
 
 4
 
 38 SCRUPLES OF JURORS 
 
 One of the last acts by Mr. Brougham, as a com- 
 moner, was to present this very subject. The following 
 is his speech, taken from the London Times : ' Mr. 
 Brougham said he had a petition to present, which he 
 felt greatly honored by having been entrusted with, 
 and to which he begged the particular attention of 
 the House. The petition, which was very ably and 
 clearly expressed, prayed for the abolition of the pun- 
 ishment of death for offences unattended by violence ; 
 and that a distinction might be drawn in our criminal 
 laws between such offences, and offences which were 
 marked by bloodshed or acts of violence. The petition 
 came from householders of the city of London, who 
 were liable to serve on grand juries. It was signed by 
 many who had served, and by no less than sis: persons 
 who had been foremen of grand juries (at the Old 
 Bailey) last year. It was worthy of the attention of the 
 
 And in the same excellent work, vol. i. p. 27, we find the following anec- 
 dote : ' Some years ago, a man was tried at Carnarvon for forgery to 
 a large amount on the Bank of England. The evidence was as satis- 
 factory of the guilt of the prisoner as possible, and brought the charge 
 clearly home to him. The jury, however, acquitted him. The next 
 day, the same individual was tried on another indictment for forgery. 
 Although the evidence in this case was as conclusive as in the for- 
 mer one, the jury acquitted the prisoner. The Judge (Chief Baron 
 RICHARDS,) in addressing the prisoner, expressed himself in these 
 remarkable words: '-'Prisoner at the bar although you have been 
 acquitted by a jury of your countrymen of the crime of forgery, I am 
 as convinced of your guilt as that two and two make four." A short 
 time after the conclusion of the sessions, I met with one of the jury- 
 men, and expressed to him my surprise at the acquittal of the man 
 who had been tried for forgery. He immediately answered me in the 
 following words : " Neither my fellow-jurymen nor myself had the 
 least doubt of the prisoner's guilt ; but we were unwilling to bring in 
 a verdict of guilty, because we were aware the prisoner would have 
 been punished with death a penalty which we conceived to be too 
 severe for the offence." '
 
 A-ND WITNESSES. 39 
 
 House, on account of the reasons it contained, but more 
 especially on account of the authority of the petitioners ; 
 for, who were so competent to speak of the scruples of 
 jurors, as they who had felt those scruples ? ' The 
 petition was signed not only by jitrors, but by eleven 
 hundred merchants, &c., who had served as jurors, 
 or were eligible. His Royal Highness, the Duke of 
 Sussex, in presenting it, said, ' When we see ninety- 
 one names, on the first skin of the petition, of mer- 
 chants and others, whose annual returns in trade 
 amount to no less a sum than ten millions sterling, 
 I think I have stated^o your lordships sufficient to con- 
 vince you that this petition is entitled to great consid- 
 eration and respect. These respectable persons state 
 to your lordships their own private feelings, and the 
 situation to which they are frequently reduced in ful- 
 filling their painful duties.' The following extracts 
 will express their views : 
 
 The petitioners view with deep regret the excessive and indis- 
 criminate severity of the Criminal Laws, which annex to offences 
 of different degrees of moral guilt the punishment of death, and con- 
 found the simple invasion of the rights of property with the most 
 malignant and atrocious crimes against the person and the life of 
 man. 
 
 Your petitioners, as bankers, are deeply interested in the pro- 
 tection of property from forgery, and in the conviction and punish- 
 ment of persons guilty of this crime that your petitioners find, by 
 experience, that the infliction of death, or even the probability of the 
 infliction of death, prevents the prosecution, conviction, and punish- 
 ment of the criminal, and thus endangers the property which it was 
 intended to protect that your petitioners therefore pray that your 
 Honorable House will not withhold from them that protection which 
 they would derive from a more lenient law.* 
 
 * ' A banker said that his name had been forged as the acceptor of 
 a bill of exchange ; and that, recollecting the severity of the law, rather
 
 40 SCRUPLES OF JURORS 
 
 In all criminal cases, the maxim of the constitution 
 of England is, that jurors are judges both of the law 
 and the fact. 
 
 The petitioners go on to say, 
 
 That, in the present state of the law, juries feel extremely reluc- 
 tant to convict, where the penal consequences of the offence excite 
 a conscientious horror on their minds, lest the rigorous performance 
 of their duties as jurors should make them accessory to judicial 
 murder. Hence, in courts of justice, a most unnecessary and pain- 
 ful struggle is occasioned hy the conflict of the feelings of a just 
 humanity with the sense of the obligation of an oath. 
 
 In this petition we learn another fact respecting the 
 reluctance of witnesses : 
 
 That witnesses also are very frequently reluctant to give evi- 
 dence, lest they might hring upon their consciences the stain of 
 blood ; and thus criminals, who, under a more rational and consid- 
 erate code of laws, would meet the punishment due to their crimes, 
 escape with impunity ! For these and other reasons, the peti- 
 tioners pray that the House may take the criminal laws into consid- 
 eration, for the purpose of the revision and amendment of the same, 
 by drawing a distinction between the simple invasion of the rights 
 of property and crimes of violence and blood, and by abolishing the 
 penalty of DEATH in all cases in which the legislative power cannot 
 justify, in the eyes of God and man, that last and dreadful alterna- 
 tive the extermination of the offender ! * 
 
 In addition to this testimony, hear the language of 
 
 Sir William Blackstone, about seventy-five years ago : 
 
 ' So dreadful a list f (of capital punishments) instead 
 
 than divulge the circumstance, he acknowledged the acceptance to oe his, 
 and paid the money} 
 
 * Selections from the London Morning Herald, vol. i. p. 79. 
 
 t At one time, according to Judge STORY, England presented the 
 dark catalogue of one hundred and sixty capital offences. The Selections 
 from the London Morning Herald say two hundred. See vol. i. p. 122.
 
 AND WITNESSES. 41 
 
 of diminishing, increases the number of offenders. The 
 injured, through compassion, will often forbear to pros- 
 ecute ; juries, through compassion, will sometimes for- 
 get their oaths, and either acquit the guilty, or mitigate 
 the nature of the offence ; and judges, through compas- 
 sion, will respite one half the convicts, and recommend 
 them to the royal mercy. Among so many chances of 
 escaping, the needy and hardened offender overlooks 
 the multitude that suffer. He boldly engages in some 
 desperate attempt to relieve his wants, or to supply his 
 vices ; and if, unexpectedly, the hand of justice over- 
 takes him, he deems himself peculiarly unfortunate in 
 falling, at last, a sacrifice to those laws which long 
 impunity had taught him to contemn.' 
 
 Such is the testimony borne by this great and learned 
 judge, to the evil of sanguinary laws, and the tempta- 
 tions which they throw in the way to commit what he 
 elsewhere calls 'pious perjuries.' And if men are 
 tempted to commit c pious perjuries' by the law, the 
 crime is with those who make it, and not on those who 
 pray for such an alteration as may remove that tempta- 
 tion forever.* 
 
 * 'Observe that juryman in a blue coat,' said one of the judges at 
 the Old Bailey to Judge Nares. ' Do you see him ? ' ''Yes.' 'Well, 
 there will be no conviction of death to-day.' And the observation was 
 confirmed by the fact. Works of JEREMY BENTHAM, vol. i. p. 450. 
 Edinburgh; 1843. 
 
 A circumstance which shows the reluctance of jurors to bring in 
 verdicts affecting life, happened in the case of Isaac Leavitt, who was 
 tried for murder in Plymouth, Mass. The jury called up the judge 
 about midnight, to know if they could enter a verdict of manslaughter. 
 The reply was in the negative. They then agreed to bring in a verdict 
 of murder, but unanimously to petition the executive for a commuta- 
 tion of the sentence to imprisonment, which, by the exertions of a phi- 
 lanthropist, whose name is dear to the writer, was afterwards effected.
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE PRISONER 
 
 Executions of Boyington Robinson A pirate Two brothers 
 Thistlewood Armstrong Mary Jones. 
 
 Oh ! what are these, 
 
 Death's ministers, not men, who thus deal death 
 
 Inhumanly to men, and multiply ten thousand fold the sin of him who 
 
 slew 
 
 His brother ; for of whom such massacre 
 Make they but of their brethren, men of men ? ' 
 
 Paradise Lost. Book xi., line 675. 
 
 THE moral effect of public executions may be 
 viewed under three aspects : 
 
 I. Upon the prisoner. 
 
 II. Upon the spectators. 
 
 III. Upon domestic life. 
 
 It will be seen, even by the most superficial reader, 
 that this division opens a wide field, and that, in a 
 work like the present, only a limited view can be pre- 
 sented. 
 
 One would naturally suppose that, when sentence 
 of death was pronounced upon a criminal, and espe- 
 cially when preparation was making for its execution, 
 that he would become very solemn, and that his heart 
 would be opened to any kindly influences that might 
 be presented. Facts prove the contrary. A sort of 
 phrensy seems to pervade the whole mind ; the heart 
 becomes callous, and the criminal has no other feeling 
 than that of revenge against that community by whose
 
 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS. 43 
 
 laws he has been condemned. This is not always the 
 case; we are sometimes told that the prisoner died 
 penitent ! Monstrous law ! At the very moment, then, 
 when reformation has commenced, the individual is 
 cruelly put to death ! What should we think of the 
 physician who should recommend that, when his pa- 
 tient began to recover, he should be murdered ? 
 
 We intend to confine our present labor to a consider- 
 ation of the paralyzing influence of executions upon 
 the prisoner. We cannot do this better than to give 
 a few practical illustrations : 
 . 
 
 EXECUTION OF EOYINGTON. 
 [From the Mobile Commercial Advertiser.] 
 
 He walked to the scaffold with a firm and unwavering step. 
 His whole soul had been steeled and nerved up till the min- 
 isters of the law commenced robing him for death, and fixing 
 the fatal noose. At that moment, he cowered, and sunk into 
 the most abject desperation. A more sudden and fearful transi- 
 tion, perhaps, was never witnessed. Is there no hope ? Must 
 I die ? were answered in the solemn negative. The blood for- 
 sook his cheeks, despair was written in awful marks upon his 
 ashy features, and a scene of horror ensued that beggars descrip- 
 tion. He dashed from the foot of the scaffold among the military. 
 But he was easily secured. Then followed a scene of horror, which 
 we pray may find no parallel hereafter in the execution of the laws. 
 The hopeless agony of the criminal was displayed in obstinate 
 resistance to the performance of the necessary duties of the agents 
 of the law ; and, even when at last suspended from the fatal cord, 
 his desperate clinging to the life he had forfeited, was shown by 
 struggles to free his arms from the pinions, and clutching at the 
 rope. He succeeded in thrusting his hands between the rope and 
 his throat, and thus, resisting and struggling to the last, died 
 despairing, and, for aught that human eye could see, impenitent. 
 The last five minutes of his life were marked by a horror of dying, 
 a prostration of energies, as remarkable as the sternness of nerve 
 and reckless levity of carriage which had signalized him during the
 
 44 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 whole of the trial, and in the interval between condemnation and 
 execution, up to that moment. 
 
 Such was the end of Charles R. S. Boyington a dreadful end 
 of a bloody tale. The horror of the punishment with which it 
 closes, compares fitly, in tragic intensity of interest, with the ter- 
 rible atrocity of the crime. The victim, a gentle and confiding 
 invalid, fell by the hand of an assassin that assassin his professed 
 friend in an open thoroughfare, beneath the walls of the grave- 
 yard, the busy hum of human voices warning him of the neighbor 
 hood of busy life, and the tombs of the dead speaking to the mur 
 derer of the end of life the beginning of eternity.* 
 
 SENTENCE OF PETER ROBINSON, AT NEW BRUNSWICK, FOR THK 
 MURDER OF MR. SUYDAM. 
 
 [From O'Sullivan's Report against the Punishment of Death. N. Y., 1841.] 
 
 After his sentence, the rush was tremendous to see 
 him, the ladies in particular ! Smiling to the crowd, 
 he said to the sheriff: 
 
 ' Remember, you must share the fees with me that you get for 
 hanging me.' And such was his hardened indifference, to the last 
 moment, that, after he was ironed and locked up in his cell, he 
 said to the jailor ' As I am a carpenter, I think I ought to be 
 employed to help build my own gallows, and I could make my own 
 coffin, and give my wife the money. All I ask is a snug platform 
 and a strong rope ; and if Jakey Edmonds goes to heaven, I don't 
 want to go there. I won't have a d d priest come near me.' 
 
 The court ordered that his wife and child might see him, at all 
 times consistent with the prisoner's safety, and in the presence of 
 some of the proper authorities. 
 
 Up to the last moment he jested. 
 
 ' I do solemnly believe,' he once said, ' that I shall burst out a 
 laughing under the gallows. Oh, if they would only let me have 
 
 * It was subsequently ascertained that Boyington was innocent !
 
 UPON THE PRISONER. 45 
 
 the big field to be hung in, and a band of music, I 'd ask no more. 
 When asked by the. gentlemen who made such able and eloquent 
 efforts in his behalf as his counsel, how he thought he would feel 
 at the last moment, ' Well,' said he, coolly, ' I 've tried to imagine 
 how I should feel under the gallows, but I know how I shall feel ; 
 I shall feel pretty much the same as I do now, and the same as I 
 did in the court-house. Did n't I look the judge right in the eye, 
 then? I've always felt the same ; my feelings haven't changed, 
 and they won't change ; for I can't realize anything so very dread- 
 ful about dying, only I should like to have a band of music, the big 
 field, and twenty thousand spectators.' ' I hope,' he said on 
 one occasion, ' that the sheriff won't tickle me with that rope ; if 
 he does I shall be sure to laugh. I hope he '11 grease the rope, so 
 that it '11 come well down under my ear, and then put a fifty-six 
 under, on to my feet, and so pull my head oif at one jerk.' On 
 being asked whether he did not feel sorry that he had killed Mr. 
 Suydam, ' Yes,' he answered, carelessly, ' but not on my own 
 account, nor on his ; but I feel sorry for his wife and children.' 
 
 With respect to his state of preparation for the eternity into 
 which he was about to be plunged, the following extract will con- 
 vey an idea : ' Here the jailer, who had gone out, again returned. 
 Peter cried out, " Here, Conover, this snow storm makes it dreary 
 and feel cold ; pile on the coals, make the stove fire red hot ; I 'm 
 going to a warm place in the next world, and I want to get used to 
 it." "Peter, Peter," said the jailer. " Oh, well," said Peter, " I 
 know I must put on a sober face, because we 're going to have a 
 prayer meeting here presently, and they '11 ask me if I 've thought 
 seriously about my latter end, and I shall say, Oh, yes ; deeply ! 
 deeply !" ' On being told, on one occasion, that he ought to show 
 less levity, and be thinking of more serious matters, if ever he 
 meant to, he laughed, and said, ' Oh, you know I 've got four days 
 to live yet ; and the parsons tell me that the thief on the cross did n't 
 begin to repent till an hour before he died, and yet he went to 
 heaven, they say ; so I 've got plenty of time.' Oh another occa- 
 sion, the following account is given of his language : ' Some cler- 
 gymen went in to see him this afternoon, and after he had told 
 one of them how he had been doing, and how he had felt, the par- 
 son told him that if that was all, he would go to hell for all that. 
 Peter became very indignant, and exclaimed, " Then what am I to 
 do? I ! ve read that book (pointing to the Bible) I 've tried to
 
 46 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 understand it as far as my humble abilities will let me ; I believe 
 what it says ; I 've confessed my crime ; I 've confessed that I 've 
 done wrong ; and 1 've prayed to God to forgive me for it ; and I 
 know nobody else can forgive me if he does not ; I 've forgiven 
 everybody that ever did me wrong, as I hope to be forgiven ; I 
 owe nobody any ill-will in the world ; I have no hard feeling against 
 a human being ; 1 know I must die on Friday next ; I know that 
 the sentence is just ; 1 've suffered too much poverty and misery in 
 this life to care very much about leaving it ; I know I 'm not pro- 
 perly prepared to die, and I pray to God to prepare me before I 
 die ; 1 believe in the Bible, and I believe in God ; and I believe 
 that he 's more merciful than men are. And if, after all this, I am 
 to be sent to hell, why, I think it 's very hard, and I shoul I like to 
 know what I am to do, or what you want me to do. At any rate, 
 I don't want any of your prayers, and I don't want you to come 
 near me again. And if heaven be such a place as this Bible tells 
 me it is, why, I 'm very sure that you won't go there, and that 
 there '11 be very few like you to be found in any part of it." ' 
 
 Tn the case of the execution of Stephen M. Clarke, 
 only seventeen years of age, for setting fire to a build- 
 ing in Newburyport, it was found necessary to force 
 him from his cell, and drag him to the scaffold, amidst 
 a parade of soldiers and martial music ! How dread- 
 ful ! To drag a fellow-being, a mere youth, flush with 
 life, and put him to death in the most cruel manner. 
 Who does not execrate in his heart those laws which 
 require such a horrid spectacle ? 
 
 The law knows no bounds to its cruelty, for we 
 have an account of the execution of a pirate, in Boston, 
 even after his attempt to commit suicide. It appears 
 that he had been narrowly watched, but the sheriff 
 leaving him for a moment, he seized the opportunity, 
 and attempted to take his own life. But so barbarous 
 and stern is the law, that life must be taken by its own 
 ministers. While the wound was flowing fresh, and 
 while life was almost extinct, he was taken in a chair, 
 placed under the gallows, and cruelly murdered !
 
 UPON THE PRISONER. 47 
 
 EXECUTION OF TWO BROTHERS FATAL ACCIDENT. 
 
 From proceedings of a general meeting of the Howard Society, Dublin, 1832.] 
 
 James died without a struggle but, melancholy to relate, the 
 rope by which Alexander was suspended broke, and he was pre- 
 cipitated to the pavement, a distance of nearly forty feet. He fell 
 with the side of his head on his own coffin, which was broken, and 
 rebounded off it a few feet. He was instantly carried in (supposed 
 to be dead) by two officers of the jail. The executioner, also 
 dressed in white, with the part that covered his face daubed over 
 with black, by the assistance of a ladder, soon 'put another and a 
 stronger rope over the block, and with some difficulty again raised 
 the drop in doing which, the unfortunate culprit, then suspended, 
 was pushed as much as possible, to the one side, and lowered a 
 little farther. In about twenty minutes from the time he fell, to the 
 astonishment of the assembled multitude, Alexander again appeared, 
 and walked out on the drop more firmly than before, answering to 
 the prayers of the clergy. He took his place, and the signal being 
 given, the drop was again slipped, but rested on the shoulder of 
 James, who was again pushed aside, and Alexander was launched 
 into eternity, but not suddenly. The board slowly moved down, 
 sliding along James's body. The knot of the rope had shifted 
 round under the chin of Alexander, and he suffered dreadfully for 
 several minutes. His whole body was convulsed ; during the stran- 
 gulation he several times put his feet to the wall, and pushed him- 
 self from it with great force : his clothes burst open, so that his 
 naked breast was seen ; and the cap not being altogether over his 
 face, blood was seen flowing from the wound which he had received 
 on the cheek in the fall. The feelings of the beholders cannot be 
 described they were most agonizing. At length, his hands fell 
 his body was seen to stretch and he hung motionless alongside his 
 brother. After hanging the usual time, they were cut down, and 
 their bodies handed over for dissection. 
 
 EXECUTION AND DECAPITATION OF THISTLEWOOD AND FOUR OTHERS, 
 FOR HIGH TREASON. 
 
 [From the same.] 
 
 At four o'clock in the morning, a number of persons began to 
 assemble near Newgate. Even a guinea was given for a near
 
 48 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 view ! When Ings stepped upon the scaffold he tried to excite 
 three cheers ; he set the example himself, and tried to accompany 
 his voice with a motion of his arms las well as he could in their 
 pinioned state, but this melancholy example of the ill-regulated 
 state of his mind in the awful condition in which he was placed, had 
 no effect upon the immense multitude present, who surveyed the 
 dreadful spectacle before them with becoming silence. Ings imme- 
 diately followed his attempt to cheer by singing aloud the two first 
 lines of the popular song of ' Give me death or liberty. ' 
 
 EXECUTION OF ARMSTRONG, HEARSON, AND BECK. 
 
 [From the same.] 
 
 * * * Hearson, who had joined with great fervor in all 
 the devotional exercises of the morning, surprised all who had seen 
 his previous conduct by the manner in which he behaved, after 
 mounting the scaffold. He took his cap off his head, waved it in a 
 sort of triumph, and began to dance like a maniac in his chains. 
 He recognized some individual who was seated on a housetop oppo- 
 site the scaffold, and immediately shouted out, ' Well done, Will, 
 lad.' A person in the crowd said to him, ' Good by, Curley,' 
 addressing him by the name by which he was known in pugilistic 
 circles, of which both he and Armstrong were great frequenters. 
 This address set him to dancing again. His extraordinary conduct 
 at this crisis of his fate did not appear to arise from any spirit of 
 bravado, but from sudden delirium. He then turned round to the 
 hangman, and complained that he had not an inch of rope. ' Give 
 me rope enough, that I may the sooner be out of misery.' He 
 then burst into a series of ejaculations for mercy to his soul. 
 Armstrong, who was brought last upon the scaffold, was much 
 distressed on seeing the frantic gestures of Hearson. He said to 
 him, ' None of that, George ; it is not sense ; I must say that I am 
 innocent, because I am so ; but I '11 have none of this.' He was 
 then tied up to the beam. About ejght minutes were consumed in 
 these necessary preparations. Exactly at twenty minutes before 
 twelve, the hangman drew their caps over their faces, and that 
 ceremony seemed to be the signal for a thousand voices to utter the 
 fearful cry of ' Murder ! ' and of ' Blood ! '
 
 UPON THE PRISONER. 49 
 
 EXECUTION OF MARY JONES. 
 [From the same.] 
 
 Mary Jones was executed, under the shoplifting act ; it was 
 at the time when press-warrants were issued, on the alarm abo'ut 
 Falkland Islands. The woman's husband icas pressed, their goods 
 seized for some debt of his, and she, with two small children, turned 
 into the streets a-begging. 'T is a circumstance not to be forgotten, 
 that she was very young, (under nineteen,) and most remarkably 
 handsome. She went to a linen draper's shop, took some coarse 
 linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak ; the shopman 
 saw her, and she laid it down. For this she was hanged. Her 
 defence was, ' that she had lived in credit and wanted for nothing, 
 till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her ; but since 
 then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children to eat ; 
 and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done some- 
 thing wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.' The parish offi- 
 cers testified the truth of this story; but it seems there had been a 
 good deal of shoplifting about Ludgate : an example was thought 
 necessary ; and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satis- 
 faction of some shopkeepers in Ludgate-street. When brought to 
 receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved 
 her mind to be in a distracted and desponding state ; and the child 
 was sucking at her breast when she set out for Tyburn [gallows.}* 
 
 We have not presented these scenes to harrow up 
 the mind of the reader, but rather to show the influ- 
 ence of public executions upon the criminal, and the 
 multitudes who attend such scenes. We see that the 
 poor creatures are overwhelmed with their fate that 
 they are not led to view their death in a solemn man- 
 ner, but that, in most instances, they are induced, not- 
 withstanding the efforts of the clergy, to treat the 
 whole matter in a most trifling, indifferent manner. 
 ' Did you not know,' said an assassin upon the wheel, 
 
 
 * Speech of the Right Honorable Sir WILLIAM MEREDITH, Bart., in 
 the House of Commons, May 13, 1777, in Committee, on a Bill creating 
 a new capital felony.
 
 60 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 to his fellow-sufferer, when groaning with agony, ' we 
 were liable to one disorder more than another?' One 
 malefactor, while under exhortation, and in the act of 
 being pinioned, said, ' Look to your own sins, gentle- 
 men ; you have all enough to answer for,' addressing 
 himself to those around him; 'mine are not heavier 
 than your own ; and if they should be found so, neither 
 of you will answer for them.' In this temper and feel- 
 ing he coolly walked to the scaffold, and there suffered 
 the last penalty of the law. 
 
 But let us hear the testimony of one familiar with 
 prisoners. He says, c the valuable time of the male- 
 factor is wholly wasted in encouraging vain hopes 
 of pardon, in receiving visits, and in efforts to keep up 
 a determined carriage to the last day, even on which 
 he flatters himself that it may arrive, and therefore he 
 must not confess. This is the state of mind of nine 
 culprits out of ten until the eve of the fatal morning, 
 when, fatigued, weak, and worn out with his efforts, 
 the mind becomes suddenly depressed with disappoint- 
 ment, corresponding to the condition of the body ; he 
 then falls into a state of stupor and insensibility, from 
 which it is almost a cruelty to attempt to rouse him, as 
 it is too late now to make any beneficial religious 
 impression on him. The next morning, when brought 
 out of his cell to be pinioned, you behold a man already 
 half dead; his countenance has fallen, his eyes are 
 fixed, his lips are deadly pale and quivering, while his 
 whole aspect, in anticipation of the reality, gives you 
 
 the personification of death's counterpart 
 
 Sometimes the affair takes quite another turn, and the 
 malefactor is seized with a phrenzy for death, as being 
 the only road to happiness, when he will smile and talk 
 as if he were the happiest man in existence. This
 
 UPON THE PRISONER. 51 
 
 effect is brought on by the operation of great excite- 
 ment on weak minds.' 
 
 We have in this number taken only one view of 
 our subject : The influence of Capital Punishment 
 upon the prisoner himself. We have seen that no 
 good influences have been produced upon his mind by 
 .his ignominious death. 
 
 In fact, public executions generally produce a sort 
 of stupid brutality. Leadings, who was executed in 
 Albany, is a remarkable illustration of the practical 
 influence of the punishment of death. ' He went to the 
 scaffold perfectly indifferent and reckless, and sunk in 
 such a condition of stupid brutality, as to create on the 
 part of many a disbelief of his soundness of mind. At 
 the solicitation of some of the clergymen, who were 
 laboring in vain to arouse him to some fitter state of 
 preparation for the awful journey to which he was so 
 soon to be despatched, the governor respited him twice, 
 from week to week ; but to no effect. On its being 
 proposed to make an effort to procure a commutation 
 of his sentence, Leadings expressed his hope that it 
 would not be done, declaring his preference for execu- 
 tion over imprisonment in the State Prison. He was, 
 in fact, desirous of having it ever.'* 
 
 * ' Shakspeare has anticipated this picture. Its moral will readily 
 suggest itself to the reader, when he reflects on the number of this 
 class of men from whom these crimes of brutal violence proceed, and 
 on their total insensibility to the terrors of death, which to them bear 
 no comparison with those of a long imprisonment : 
 
 " Master Barnadine, what, hoa ! your friend the hangman ! you 
 must be so eood. sir, to rise, and be put to death : pray, Master Bar- 
 nadine, awake, till you are executed, and sleep afterward." Measure 
 for Measure. Act 4, Scene 3. 
 
 ' The wretch thus addressed is described as a " man that apprehends 
 death no more dreadfully, but as a drunken dream ; careless, reckless, 
 and fearless of what 's past, present or to come.' "
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE SPECTATORS 
 
 Anecdote of a pick-pocket Testimony of Dr. Dodd Effect upon a 
 celebrated banker Description by an English traveller Testimony 
 of a witness 'Testimony of a convict Private executions Exe- 
 cution of Lcchler Conduct of an executioner. 
 
 ' What must men think, when they see wise magistrates and grave 
 ministers of justice, with tranquillity, dragging a criminal to death, and, 
 whilst the wretch trembles with agony, expecting the fatal stroke, the 
 judge, who has condemned him, with the coldest insensibility, and, 
 perhaps, with no small gratification from his authority, quits his tribu- 
 nal to enjoy the comforts and pleasures of life ? ' BECCARIA. 
 
 IT has been remarked, frequently, that the days of 
 public executions, instead of being seasons of solemn 
 reflection and sincere penitence, are seized on as days 
 of obscene jesting, and coarse ribaldry. The loose 
 and the abandoned, who attend, improve the opportu- 
 nity to commit new depredations upon society. A 
 pick-pocket, being asked by the chaplain of Newgate 
 how he could venture on such a deed, at such a time, 
 very frankly replied, ' that executions were the best 
 harvests that he and his associates had; for, when the 
 eyes of the spectators are fixed above, their pockets 
 are unprotected below.' 
 
 In an account of the execution of two persons in 
 England, forty arrests were made for the same crime. 
 ' We constantly,' says the unhappy Dr. Dodd, in his 
 sermon on this subject, himself destined at a subse- 
 quent period (1777) to suffer the same fate, 'hear of
 
 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS. 53 
 
 crimes not less flagitious than those for which the 
 criminal is to die, perpetrated even at the very place 
 and moment of his punishment.' One of the jury 
 that tried and convicted poor Dr. Dodd, was executed 
 on the same gallows, (Tyburn,) for the same offence, 
 (forgery,) within two years afterward. And so, too, it 
 is said of Mr. Fauntleroy, the celebrated banker, who 
 was executed for the same crime, that the idea of com- 
 mitting it first entered his mind while returning home 
 from an execution which he had witnessed, while 
 passing, one morning, along the street in front of New- 
 gate. ' One grown man,' says Mr. E. G. Wakefield, 
 ' of great mental powers and superior education, who 
 was acquitted of a charge of forgery, assured me that 
 the first idea of committing a forgery occurred to him 
 at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing 
 the execution of Fauntleroy.' The Rev. Mr. Roberts, 
 of Bristol, England, presents the astounding fact, that 
 he conversed with one hundred and sixty-seven con- 
 victs under sentence of death, one hundred and sixty- 
 four of whom had witnessed executions. 1 * 
 
 Read the following description, given by a writer in 
 his travels in England. After describing the usual 
 preparations, he says : 
 
 There were present about two thousand persons, of both sexes, 
 and of every age, rank, and character. There was the urchin, who, 
 evidently, had played the truant, to ' see the man hanged.' There 
 was the aged man, white with a succession of forgotten winters, 
 and furnishing, in his collapsed and wasted exterior, only an index 
 to the vital ebb within he had come to treat his dotage with what 
 had never blessed the vision of his youth or prime. He had re- 
 quested his son to attend and protect him ; but his son had been a 
 
 * See a valuable work entitled, 'Necessity of Popular Education.' 
 Appendix, p. 183. By JAMES SIMPSON. Boston, 1836. 
 5*
 
 54 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 rover, and had seen many such sights, and the old man ivondered 
 at his lack of gratitude and affection. There was the pedlar with 
 his wares ; the cake-and-pie man with his quaint cry ; the ballad 
 singer, and a blind man with his clarionet. There was the prosti- 
 tute, with her foul mouth and unblushing flaunt, and troops of 
 drunken sailors, carefully tended by London pick-pockets. Three 
 of the latter class were detected at their trade, and taken to jail 
 from the ground. There were plays and games too pitch and toss 
 and leap-frog ; and anticipations crowning all ! Such was the scene 
 around the gallows. 
 
 After speaking of the appearance of the prisoner, 
 his chains and his coffin, and the priest, ' with white 
 robes and reverend mien,' he says : 
 
 The heart of the reader would sicken at the recital of the par- 
 ticulars ; suffice it that I give an instance or two of the depravity 
 exhibited on the occasion. On the floor of the wagon lay the shoes 
 of the dead man. One of the hopeful class, for whose edification 
 
 the hanging had been done, taking hold of them, observed, ' By , 
 
 they 're dumpers. How I wish I'd seen 'em before he was swung 
 off; I 'd a made him a bid at 'em.' ' They 're a perquisite of Jack 
 Ketch,' remarked a second, both of which sallies were hailed with 
 decided approbation. -While this was proceeding at the wagon, the 
 body, itself, was not unmolested. A bumpkin, kneeling on the 
 back of the frame, reached out his hand to that of the corpse, 
 swinging it round so as to bring the face towards him. He then 
 seized the wrist, and, after examining the cuff, discovered a pin, 
 which he exposed aloft, exclaiming with an oath, ' This will do to 
 pick my teeth after dinner.' Another, equally eager to signalize 
 himself, twisted the body round, and examined the other hand. A 
 cry of derision added chagrin to his disappointment; while the 
 more fortunate explorator, sticking the trophy in the breast of hia 
 coat, was greeted with obstreperous plaudits. The dead man's 
 legs were parted, and his manacles exposed ; and one essayed 
 even to lift the cap, but failed to reach it. Altogether, the scene 
 was so disgustingly brutal, that I cannot choose but shudder at its 
 remembrance, even after the lapse of nine years.
 
 UPON THE SPECTATORS. 55 
 
 Who can read this description, and contend for the 
 moral influence of public executions ? A witness was 
 once asked whether he thought Capital Punishment 
 deterred criminals. He answered : 
 
 I do not During one sitting, as a magistrate, three 
 
 persons were brought before me for uttering forged notes. During 
 the investigation, I discovered that those notes were obtained from 
 a room in which the body of a person, named Wheller, (executed 
 on the preceding day, for the same offence,) then lay, and that the 
 notes in question were delivered for circulation, by a woman with 
 whom he had been living. This is, (he adds,) a strong case, but I 
 have no doubt that it is but one of many others.* 
 
 * Another strikingly similar instance is related by Mr. Livingston, 
 on the authority of a gentleman at a public meeting, in South- 
 ampton, England, as -having been detailed by Mr. Buxton. 'An 
 Irishman, found guilty of issuing forged bank-notes, was executed, 
 and his body delivered to his family. While the widow was lamenting 
 over the corpse, a young man came to her to purchase some forged 
 notes. As soon as she knew his business, forgetting, at once, both her 
 grief and the cause of it, she raised up the dead body of her husband, 
 and pulled from under it a parcel of the very paper, for the circulation 
 of which he had forfeited his life. At that moment an alarm was given 
 of the approach of the police ; and, not knowing where else to conceal 
 the notes, she thrust them into the mouth of the corpse, and there the 
 officers found them.' Mr. Rantoul relates, ' that an execution, which took 
 place at Worcester, for the crime of rape, on the 8th of December, 1825. 
 was shortly afterward followed by an attempt, by a brother of the crimi- 
 nal, to commit the same offence for which his own brother had just lost 
 his life. The cases have been numerous, in which the fact that near 
 relatives have perished on the gallows, has not prevented the perpe- 
 tration of crimes, leading necessarily to the same fate. The notorious 
 Patty Cannon, for instance, who committed numerous murders in Dela- 
 ware, and, who destroyed herself by poison after her arrest, had had a 
 father who was hung for murder, and a brother for horse-stealing. At 
 the execution of the notorious pirate Gibbs, a few years ago, in New 
 York, a witness was present, who declared, positively, that he had seen 
 him hung on a former occasion, for the same crime, at some port in
 
 56 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 We will give the language of a convict who was 
 near being hanged for coining : 
 
 Q. ' Have you often seen an execution V A. ' Yes.' Q. ' Did 
 not it frighten you ?' A. 'No; why should it ?' Q. ' Did it not 
 make you think that the same would happen to yourself?' A. ' Not 
 a bit.' Q. 'What did you think, then.'' A. 'Think] why, 1 
 thought it was a d d shame.' Q. 'Now, when you have been 
 going to run a great risk of being caught and hanged, did the 
 thought never come within your head, that it would be as well to 
 avoid the risk?' A. 'Never.' Q. ' Not when you remembered 
 having seen men hanged for the same thing?' A. ' Oh, I never 
 remembered anything about it ; and if I had, what difference would 
 that make?' We must all take our chance. I never thought it 
 would fall on me, and don't think it ever will.' Q. 'But if it 
 should?' A. 'Why, then, I hope I shall suffer like a man 
 where 's the use of snivelling?' 
 
 But let us hear the testimony of one who was 
 an inmate of Newgate. He says : ' The numerous 
 chances of escape, arising in great part from the 
 nature of the punishment, and from the nature of 
 the punishment independently of the chances of es- 
 cape the calculations of reason, and the delusions 
 of hope excited by fear conspire to render Capital 
 Punishment wholly inefficient for the sole end of pun- 
 ishment, which is to present to all a stronger motive 
 for abstaining from, than the ordinary motives for 
 
 South America. He insisted that he recognized him beyond the possi- 
 bility of mistake, by certain peculiar marks of identity; and when we 
 consider the not infrequent cases which have occurred of resuscitation 
 after hanging (a distinguished physician, now in New York, states 
 that he has, in the course of his life, taken part in three such cases) 
 the story is not incredible. At any rate, there are numerous cases 
 known, in which criminals, who have narrowly escaped death for an 
 attempted crime, have made its repetition the first object of their newly- 
 acquired liberty.'
 
 UPON THE SPECTATORS. 57 
 
 committing, crime. . . . When I entered Newgale, 
 I had not a doubt of the efficacy of public executions, as 
 deterring from crime. By degrees, I came firmly to 
 believe just the contrary. Newgate is the very best place 
 in which to form a sound opinion on the subject ; that 
 is my opinion, deduced from all the facts of the case.' 
 
 Mrs. Fry's opinion corresponds with that of Mr. 
 Wakefield's, just quoted. She says, ' in her early 
 visits to Newgate, she had formed no opinion upon Cap- 
 ital Punishments ; but that her intercourse with the 
 prisoners had led to a decided conviction, on her part, 
 of their evil tendency. The language always is, she 
 stated, as soon as an execution is over, "Surely, we 
 cannot pity him now ; he is in heaven ! " For their 
 persuasion is, that this act of severity obliterates and 
 atones for every former misdeed ; and thus the minds 
 of the prisoners are hardened by the reflection that the 
 time is short, and the supposed reward is permanent. 
 
 ' But what is the effect on the minds of the accom- 
 plices,, without? This too may be calculated. A boy 
 was lately ordered for execution, for snatching a watch 
 from a person, at a funeral in Whitechapel. Two 
 friends of mine, conceiving that he was innocent of the 
 alleged crime, had the courage to go to the house fre- 
 quented by the gang to which he belonged ; there my 
 friends found, two days previous to the execution of 
 their comrade, the gang assembled, engaged in drink- 
 ing, gaming, and licentious conversation. The lad 
 was executed on the Tuesday; on the Wednesday 
 night, my friends revisited this haunt of villany, for 
 the purpose of endeavoring to persuade some of these 
 wretched beings to relinquish their evil course of life ; 
 again the gang were assembled. After the lapse of a 
 week, these gentlemen returned on their mission of
 
 58 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 true humanity ; the gang were assembled, engaged as 
 before in gaming and drunkenness, and in plotting 
 future robberies. This appears, at least, to have been 
 the case ; for, two days after, thirteen of their number 
 were apprehended for crimes committed, subsequent to 
 the execution of their companion. And what became 
 of the remainder of the gang? Another funeral, largely 
 attended, took place in Whitechapel, and there the re- 
 mainder of the band were recognized by a person who 
 knew them well, actively engaged in their iniquitous 
 vocation.' 
 
 Mr. Livingston, speaking on this subject, says, 'The 
 fear of death, therefore, will rarely deter from the 
 commission of great crimes. It is, on the contrary, a 
 remedy peculiarly inapplicable to those offences. Am- 
 bition, which usually inspires the crime of treason, 
 soars above the fear of death ; avarice, which whispers 
 the secret murder, creeps below it ; and the brutal de- 
 basement of the passion that prompts the only other 
 crime thus punished by our law, is proverbially blind 
 to consequences, and regardless of obstacles that im- 
 pede its gratification. Threats of death will never 
 deter men who are actuated by these passions ; many 
 of them affront it in the very commission of the offence, 
 and, therefore, readily incur the lesser risk of suffering 
 it in what they think the impossible event of detec- 
 tion.' 
 
 ' How happens it that, as Hume bears record, the 
 execution of seventy-two thousand "great and petty 
 thieves" in England, during the reign of Henry VIII., 
 was totally inoperative to check the offences for which 
 these human hecatombs were sacrificed, on the altar 
 of this principle of social expediency? And though, 
 in the time of his successor, Elizabeth, " rogues were
 
 UPON THE SPECTATORS. 59 
 
 still trussed up apace," and there was not "one year 
 commonly wherein three or four hundred of them were 
 not devoured and eaten up by the gallows, in one place 
 or another," so that the whole number of executions 
 during her reign was not less than nineteen thousand, 
 yet we find it observed and regretted, " that at the time 
 of doing execution of such as had been attainted of 
 any murder, felony, or other criminal cause, ordained 
 chiefly for terror and example of evil-doers, people 
 persevered in their felonious sleights and devices." 
 Descriptive of the times when the bloody experiment 
 was so fully tested in England, of the influence of 
 Capital Punishment to deter by example from the 
 commission of offences of a minor, and even petty 
 character, Sir Edward Coke writes : " What a lament- 
 able thing it is to see so many Christian men and 
 women strangled on that cursed tree of the gallows ; 
 insomuch that, if, in a large field, a man might see 
 together all the Christians that in one year through- 
 out England come to that untimely, ignominious 
 death, if there were any spark of grace or charity in 
 him, it would make his heart to bleed for pity and 
 compassion." : 
 
 There is one fact which shows that the public are 
 rapidly awaking to the brutalizing influences of execu- 
 tions. We allude to the recommendation to have them 
 more private. This is the law in some of the states.^ 
 Those who urge this, do, in fact, give up the whole 
 ground that Capital Punishments do good,' as an ex- 
 ample. If such spectacles are calculated to strike the 
 mind favorably, or to have a moral influence, why not 
 have them, in the squares of our crowded cities 1 Why 
 
 * See Laws of Maine, Massachusetts and New York, Appendix I.
 
 60 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 not congregate the whole community to witness the 
 scene ? The true answer is ' that it tends to harden 
 and brutalize the hearts of men * to give a rude shock 
 to that natural instinct which prompts them to revolt 
 at the idea of the cold and wilful infliction of death by 
 man upon his fellow-man ; by that shock to derange 
 the action, and to weaken the deep-seated strength of 
 that instinct; and to send away, from that field of 
 blood, which has been thus darkened and accursed by 
 the shadow of the gallows-tree, many a man, far more 
 ready than he came, to yield to the temptations that 
 may beset him, to commit a murder to which he may 
 be urged by any strong impulse of malignity or cu- 
 pidity.' 
 
 ' Every execution,' says Dr. Lushington, in Parlia- 
 ment, 'brings an additional candidate for the hang- 
 man.' 'Wo to society,' exclaims' Lepelletier, in his 
 report to the national assembly, ' if, in that multitude 
 which gazes eagerly on an execution, is found one of 
 those beings predisposed to crime by the perverseness 
 of their propensities ! His instinct, like that of the 
 wild beast, awaits, perhaps, only the sight of blood to 
 awake, and already his heart is hardened to murder, 
 the moment he is quitting the spot wet with the blood 
 which the sword of the law has shed.' 
 
 Yolumes might be written, showing the brutalizing 
 influence of this sanguinary law upon the commu- 
 
 * A single illustration of this truth will alone speak volumes. The 
 celebrated Volney, in a lecture at the Normal School at Paris, related 
 how powerfully he had been affected, during a journey he had made in 
 France, after the conclusion of the ' reign of terror,' by the spectacle of 
 a crowd of children, who, in different provinces, amused themselves 
 with guillotining cats and chickens, to supply the place of the execu- 
 tions which had become less frequent !
 
 UPON THE SPECTATORS. 61 
 
 nity, and especially on those who witness the scene.* 
 The following instance is given by Mr. Livingston. 
 'John Lechler was executed at Lancaster, Pennsyl- 
 vania, and while one old offence was atoned for, more 
 than a dozen new ones were committed, and some of 
 a capital grade. TWENTY-EIGHT PERSONS were commit- 
 ted to jail on Friday night, for divers offences at Lan- 
 caster, such as MURDER, larceny, assault and battery, 
 &e. ; besides many gentlemen lost their pocket-books, 
 though the pick-pockets escaped, or the jail would 
 have overflowed. In the evening, as one Thomas 
 Burns, who was employed as a weaver in the factory 
 near Lancaster, was going home, he was met by one 
 Wilson, with whom he had had some previous misun- 
 derstanding, when Wilson drew a knife, and gave him 
 divers stabs, in sundry places, which are considered 
 mortal. Wilson was apprehended and committed to 
 jail, and had the same irons put on him which had 
 scarcely been laid off long enough by Lechler to get 
 eo/d.'f It appeared, on inquiry, that Wilson was one 
 of the crowd. 
 
 ' Very lately, in the state of Ohio,' says Mr. Ran- 
 toul's report in 1836, already quoted, ' on the day on 
 
 * ' Those -whom it would be desirable to affect solemnly, and from 
 whom we have the most reason to fear crime, made the day of public 
 execution a day of drunkenness and profanity. These, with their at- 
 tendant vices, quarrelling and fighting, were carried to such an extent 
 in Augusta, (at Sager's execution,) that it became necessary for the 
 police to interfere, and the jail, which had just been emptied of a mur- 
 derer, threw open its doors to receive those who came to profit by the 
 solemn scene of a public execution.' Report of Committee to the Legis- 
 lature of Maine, 1835. 
 
 f ' After the execution of Lechler, in Pennsylvania, had gratified the 
 
 people about York and Lancaster, with the spectacle of his death, and 
 
 produced its proper complement of homicide and other crimes, a poor 
 
 wretch was condemned to die in another part of the state, where the 
 
 G
 
 62 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 which a man was executed for the murder of his wife, 
 under circumstances of particular cruelty, another 
 man, near the place of execution, murdered his wife 
 in the same manner; and this is by no means the 
 only instance where the crime seems to have been di- 
 rectly suggested by the punishment intended to pre- 
 vent it.'* 
 
 There is another view that should be taken of this 
 subject, which is, that public executions lead to Jhe 
 
 people had not been indulged with such a spectacle. They collected 
 by thousands, tens of thousands. The victim was brought out all 
 the eyes in the living mass that surrounded the gibbet were fixed on 
 his countenance, and they waited, with strong desire, the expected 
 signal for launching him into eternity. There was a delay. They 
 grew impatient. It was prolonged, and they were outrageous. Cries, 
 like those which precede the tardy rising of the curtain, in a theatre, 
 were heard. Impatient for the delight they expected in seeing a fel- 
 low-creature die, they raised a ferocious cry. But when it was at last 
 announced that a reprieve had left them no hope of witnessing his 
 agonies, their fury knew no bounds ; and the poor maniac (for it was 
 discovered that he was insane) was with difficulty snatched by the 
 officers of justice from the fate which the most violent among them 
 seemed determined to inflict. 
 
 ' The above is taken from Livingston's celebrated work on " The 
 Expediency of Abolishing the Punishment of Death." This eminent 
 legislator adds, "This disgraceful scene took place at Orwigsburgh ; 
 the wretched madman who was so near suffering, was named Zimmer- 
 man. I have the details," he continues, " from a gentleman of the first 
 respectability, in Pennsylvania," and his informant added, "Execu- 
 tions in this state are scenes of riot and every species of wickedness ; 
 twenty, thirty, even forty thousand persons have been in attendance 
 on such occasions. In the country, two or three days are employed 
 in the merry-making, much after the manner of fairs in former 
 days." ' 
 
 * ' A man, by the name of Strang, had been convicted of a foul mur- 
 der, committed on Cherry Hill, in Albany, by shooting in cold blood, 
 and for the vilest purposes, Mr. Whipple, an enterprising and worthy 
 citizen. Levi Kelly, a farmer of .the town of Otsego, living betweeu 
 sixty and seventy miles from Albany, heard of the day when Strang
 
 UPON THE SPECTATORS. 63 
 
 commission of suicide. The frequent recurrence of 
 suicides after such seasons, is a fact well established, 
 and in a form, too, scarcely known to the ancients, 
 i. e., strangulation by suspension.* Mr. Livingston 
 has some good remarks on this subject : ' The most 
 serious and intense reflection has brought my mind to 
 the conclusion, not only that it fails in any repressive 
 effect, but that it promotes the crime. The cause it is 
 not very easy to discover, and still more difficult to 
 
 was to be executed, and soon after expressed to his neighbors a deter- 
 mination to be present at the exhibition. I have been informed that 
 he had then never seen a man put to death. Kelly was a man of re- 
 spectable connexions, and, I believe, of correct morals ; at any rate, 
 he was not distinguished for immorality of any kind. He was, how- 
 ever, known to possess very vindictive passions. He went from Ot- 
 sego to Albany for the sole purpose of seeing Strang executed. On his 
 return he seemed entirely engrossed by the exhibition he had witnessed. 
 He talked of nothing else on the road and at the public houses where 
 they stopped for refreshment. 
 
 ' A man lived in Kelly's house, by the name of Spafford, with whom 
 he had had some little difficulty. In less than a fortnight after Strang 
 was hung, an altercation occurred between Kelly and Spafford, when 
 Kelly seized a loaded gun, and shot Spafford through the heart. For 
 this offence he was tried, convicted, and executed. There was not a 
 particle of evidence that Kelly was insane at the time he perpetrated 
 the horrid act. Here was a case where the spectator hastened to com- 
 mit the same offence, and icith the same weapon, for which he had just 
 seen the terrible punishment of death inflicted. 
 
 ' On the evening of the day on which Kelly was hung, a man by the 
 name of Cooke, in the neighborhood of Cooperstown, who was present 
 at the execution, committed suicide by hanging. Now, may not the 
 philosophical inquirer be permitted to indulge the conjecture that the 
 public execution of Strang. instead of tending to preserve life, led to 
 the destruction of three other lives ? ' 
 
 * O'Sullivan gives the following affecting instance : 'T\vo or three 
 days after the execution of Leadings, a fine boy, of about sixteen years 
 of age, the delight of highly respectable and estimable parents, hung 
 himself from the banisters of the stairs in his father's house, in Al- 
 bany.'
 
 64 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 explain; but I argue from effects and when I see 
 them general in their occurrence after the same event, 
 I must believe that event to be the efficient cause which 
 produces them, although I may not be able to trace 
 exactly their connexion. This difficulty is particularly 
 felt in deducing moral effects from physical causes, or 
 arguing from the operation of moral causes on human 
 actions. The reciprocal operations of the mind and 
 body must always be a mystery to us, although we 
 are daily witnesses to their effects. In nothing is this 
 more apparent, or the cause more deeply hidden, than 
 in that propensity which is produced on the mind to 
 imitate that which has been strongly impressed on the 
 senses, and that, frequently, in cases where the first 
 impression must be that of painful apprehension. It 
 is one of the earliest developments of the understand- 
 ing in childhood. Aided by other impulses, it con- 
 quers the sense of pain and the natural dread of death. 
 The tortures inflicted on themselves by the Fakirs of 
 India ; the privations and strict penance of some mo- 
 nastic orders of Christians; and the self-immolation 
 of the Hindoo widows, may be attributed, in part, to 
 religion, in part to the love of distinction and fear of 
 shame : but no one, nor all of these united, except in 
 the rare cases of a hero or a saint, could produce such 
 extraordinary effects, without, that spirit of imitation 
 to which I have alluded. The lawgiver, therefore, 
 should mark this, as well as every other propensity of 
 human nature; and beware how he repeats in his 
 punishments the very acts he wishes to repress, and 
 makes them examples to follow, rather" than to avoid.' 
 We earnestly and solemnly beseech the advocates 
 of the death-penalty to stop and ponder, to weigh the 
 matter in view of all these facts, and ask themselves
 
 UPON THE SPECTATORS. 65 
 
 whether they can sustain this inhuman law ? The 
 history of the world goes to show that scenes of blood 
 only harden the heart, and brutalize the affections.* 
 
 * See the following account of the conduct of an executioner who 
 cruelly put seven men to death for merely entertaining ' constitutional 
 principles,' in Portugal, under the reign of the usurper, Don Miguel : 
 ' At eight o'clock the mournful procession was formed at the prison oi 
 the Lemoira, about a mile from the place of execution ; the seven un- 
 happy men, with fourteen priests, one on each side of each prisoner, in 
 the centre ; the prisoners bare-footed and bare-headed, dressed in long 
 white habits, with a hood hanging down behind, each bearing a small 
 wooden crucifix in his clasped hands, secured together by bolts at the 
 wrists. They were strongly guarded, both before and behind. At 
 each church they had to pass, the procession stopped to hear an exhor- 
 tation, so that it was near twelve o'clock before they reached the fatal 
 place. One at a time ascended the platform, up a broad flight of steps, 
 accompanied by two priests, as in the procession, and was immediately 
 placed on the seat, with his back to the upright post. The hangman, 
 a miserable wretch, walking with a crutch, then secured the legs, the 
 arms, and body of the unhappy man with cords, and placing a short 
 cord round his neck and round the post, he put the hood over the face, 
 and then, going behind the post, introduced a short thick stick, and, 
 giving it four or five turns, produced strangulation. The body was 
 then untied, and laid at a convenient distance, and another brought up 
 from the foot of the scaffold, until the whole had suffered. The young- 
 est, or least criminal, was executed first ; and, as each occupied fifteen 
 to twenty minutes, the last had to endure, for at least two hours, the 
 horrid sight of the sufferings of his fellow-prisoners. The mind can 
 scarcely imagine a more dreadful state of mental suffering. "When the 
 whole were strangled, the hangman wiped his face, and, seating him- 
 self in the fatal seat, coolly smoked a cigar, regaled himself with a 
 bottle of wine, and then, placing a block of wood under the neck, pro- 
 ceeded to cut off the heads, from which the blood flowed copiously in 
 streams from the platform ; then, collecting the cords, and coolly wiping 
 the hatchet and knife in one of the white dresses, he left the platform, 
 first throwing the. heads and bodies in a heap, over the iron grate be- 
 low. The fire was kindled, and in a few minutes the whole was in a 
 blaze. By six o'clock the whole was burnt to ashes, when a gang of 
 galley-slaves, with irons on their legs, took the ashes in hand-barrows, 
 and threw them into the Tagus.'
 
 66 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS. 
 
 The heart becomes hardened by scenes of rapine 
 and murder, and those who become witnesses of san- 
 guinary punishments only want for provocations of 
 poverty or anger to perpetrate the same crime for 
 which the capital offender is punished. Hence, the 
 corrupting influence of war, as well as of the law 
 which sanctions the Punishment of Death. We are 
 not aware how much the battle field has done to cor- 
 rupt public sentiment. We have not, however, taken 
 up that subject in this work, because, although it is 
 allied to it, yet we preferred to present it in a sepa- 
 rate dissertation.* 
 
 * A wretch, who was executed at Exeter, England, on being 
 removed from the bar, after sentence of death had been passed, 
 exclaimed to the by-standers, ' I have killed many men to please the 
 king, and why should I not kill one to please myself? ' One of the 
 soldiers who was taken up for wantonly shooting a man at Lestwi- 
 thiel, in 1814, on witnessing the horror and agitation of the peaceful 
 townsmen, very coolly observed, ' Here is a pretty fuss about killing 
 one man ; why, I have seen hundreds killed.'
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 Provision in Prussia for the children of criminals Condemned 
 forger and. his family The condemned and his child Incident 
 at Massachusetts State Prison Painful fact Hangman and the 
 judge. 
 
 ' But the wretches, who die, are not the only sufferers. . . . Who 
 knows how many innocent children we may be dooming to ignominy 
 and wretchedness ? Who knows how many widows' hearts we may 
 break with grief; how many grey hairs we may bring with sorrow 
 to the grave ? ' Report of Howard Society in Dublin, 1832. 
 
 WE now approach a portion of our subject which 
 has excited very little feeling in the community, and 
 yet is one of the most tender views that can be pre- 
 sented. We have shown the demoralizing influence 
 of public executions, and the indifference of the pris- 
 oner to his fate. We have seen the brutalizing, dead- 
 ening influence of these scenes upon the spectators. 
 There is another class whom we cannot suppose to be 
 present ; a class who have retired from the public gaze, 
 who have closed their ears to the martial music, the 
 jesting, the coarse ribaldry usually accompanying such 
 scenes ; a class pining in secret anguish over the mis- 
 erable and the fallen culprit. We mean the wife, 
 lamenting, with inexpressible grief, the cruel fate of her 
 husband ; the mother weeping in solitude over her be- 
 loved son ; the distracted sister over a fallen brother ! 
 It has not been the business of history to keep a record 
 of tears shed in private, and of hearts bleeding and
 
 68 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 broken in retirement. But they are not forgotten by 
 the true philanthropist and the Christian.* They are 
 not forgotten by Him who 'looks down from the 
 height of His sanctuary, ... to hear the groaning 
 of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to 
 death.' Oh ! the anguish of their hearts ! Could we 
 get admittance there, what griefs should we see ! It 
 is, indeed, on such occasions, the living who die ! 
 ' There is no killing like that which kills the hearj ! ' 
 This is admirably presented in the following thrilling 
 sketch from Frazer's London Magazine. 
 
 THE CONDEMNED FORGER AND HIS FAMILY. 
 
 The forger had been convicted, and condemned to suffer the 
 dreadful penalty of death. His wife was a sensitive and accom- 
 plished lady, although the wife of a felon. An hour had been ap- 
 pointed for the last earthly interview. Pale and trembling, the 
 wife, with three children, entered, to them, the tomb of a living be- 
 ing, who had been their only love and hope in this world, he whose 
 solicitude to insure their happiness, was the cause of their misery. 
 After an absence, it is natural to rush into the arms of those we 
 love ; but disgrace and consequent shame make strange havoc with 
 the impulses of the heart. 
 
 
 
 * A beautiful instance is given by Prof. Stove, in his Report on Edu- 
 cation in Prussia, &c., of the provision made for the children of crim- 
 inals : ' When I was in Berlin I went into the public prison, and vis- 
 ited every part of the establishment. At last I was introduced to *. 
 very large hall, which was full of children, with their books and teach- 
 ers, and having all the appearance of a common Prussian school-room. 
 1 What,' said I, ' is it possible that all these children are imprisoned here 
 for crime?' 'Oh no,' said my conductor, smiling at my simplicity; 
 but if a parent is imprisoned for crime, and, on that account, his chil- 
 dren are left destitute of the means of education, and liable to grow up in 
 ignorance and crime, the government has them taken here, and main- 
 tained and educated for useful employment.' The thought brought 
 tears to my eyes.
 
 UPON DOMESTIC LIFE. 69 
 
 'Do you forgive me, Maria V said the husband, keeping aloof 
 from his wife, as if his touch would be pollution. 
 
 ' Would that others would as readily forgive ! ' replied the ago- 
 nized wife, sinking on a seat near to her. 
 
 'Ah, you mean God! Ah, have you prayed for me, Maria? 
 Do you think there is hope for me 1 Speak ! I have been a great 
 sinner a wicked sinner, Maria. Yet do not tell these, your chil- 
 dren, what a bad man their father was. But wherefore are they 
 here 1 Is not my punishment sufficiently heavy without bringing 
 my children to reproach me?' 
 
 The jailor reminded the bewildered man that he had expressed 
 a wish to see them. 
 
 ' Yes true,' he ejaculated ; ' but I have been mad, and have not 
 recovered my senses. Maria, your husband is mad !' 
 
 Maria heard him not ; she was lying senseless on the floor. The 
 children, aged six, and eight, and ten, were crying over her, think- 
 ing that their unhappy and evidently distracted father had been the 
 cause of her death.* 
 
 Both husband and wife had thousands of questions to ask, and 
 more matter to communicate, but the interview was ended. Several 
 hours elapsed ere the wife was restored to perfect consciousness ; 
 and it was late in the evening before her doomed husband could be 
 brought to resume the preparations for his fate that awaited him 
 the following morning. 
 
 ' Shall I not see him once more ?' inquired the wife, as she slowly 
 recovered her recollection ' only once more only one look ! I 
 am now prepared, and can command my feelings.' 
 
 This privilege was denied her, as such interviews rarely answer 
 any purpose but to distract the mind of the one whose business it is 
 to forget the world and all its attractions, and to agonize the feel- 
 ings of the other, who stand in need of all the resolution they pos- 
 sess to sustain the calamities attendant on a catastrophe so fatal to 
 their worldly prospects. 
 
 It was evening before the wife and her children could be con- 
 veyed home ; the latter, while at the prison and on their road, ask- 
 ing their agonized mother a number of questions regarding their 
 father, every one of which penetrated the soul and caused her fur- 
 
 * See Engraving.
 
 70 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 ther anguish. It was the first time the subject of death had been 
 forced on their attention, and they were too young to have anything 
 but a confused notion of it, now they had learned that their father 
 was doomed, in a few hours, to meet it before the public gaze. In 
 all these cases, the truth is that the wife and children of the of- 
 fenders are the only parties really punished. Even the hanging 
 itself falls with a heavier weight of suffering on the sensibilities of 
 an attached wife, than it does on the actual culprit, whose sense of 
 pain has a termination. The wife, tortured with the picture of 
 the scene of strangulation on her imagination, in vain, when worn 
 out with distress of mind, seeks repose ; the excited and deranged 
 nerves keep the fancy at work ; she dreams that they have laid her 
 dead husband, cold and clammy, by her side, and awakes in terror 
 at being so near one whose absence a short time since Avas her only 
 trouble. The hours, as the morning approaches, are counted ; then 
 minutes are watched. The fatal period arrives the clock strikes 
 eight she sees the signal hears the drop fall feels the jerk 
 the sensation of choking and swoons, again to revive to the con- 
 sciousness that all is desolation and misery around her. 
 
 A celebrated writer has finely presented the inter- 
 view of a prisoner and his child, which admirably 
 illustrates the point :* 
 
 LAST INTERVIEW BETWEEN THE CONDEMNED AND HIS CHILD. 
 
 MY child looked rosy and happy, and her large eyes were bright. 
 Oh ! she is so pretty ! I drew her towards me, I raised her in my 
 arms, and, placing her on my knees, kissed her dear hair. I asked, 
 ' AVhy is her mother not with her?' And I learnt that she was 
 very ill, and my poor old mother also. Mary looked at me with 
 astonishment. Caressed, embraced, devoured with kisses, she sub- 
 mitted quietly ; but, from time to time, cast au uneasy look towards 
 her nurse, who was crying in the corner. At length I was able to 
 speak. 
 
 ' Mary !' I exclaimed, ' my own little Mary !' and I pressed her 
 violently against my breast, which was heaving sobs. 
 
 * See ' Last Days of the Condemned,' from the French of Victor 
 Hago. By Sir HESKETH FLEETWOOD, M. P.
 
 UPON DOMESTIC LIFE. 71 
 
 She uttered a little cry, and then said, ' ! you hurt me, sir.' 
 
 'Sir!' 
 
 It is nearly a year since she has seen me, poor child ! She has 
 forgotten me, face, words, voice ; and then, who could know me with 
 this beard, this dress, and this pallor? What ! already effaced from 
 that memory, the only one where I wished to survive ? What ! 
 already no longer a father, am I condemned to hear no more that 
 word, so soft in the language of children, that it cannot remain in 
 the language of men ' Papa 1 ' And yet to have heard it from that 
 sweet mouth once more, only once more, that is all I would have 
 asked in payment for the forty years of life they will take from 
 me. x 
 
 ' Listen, Mary,' said I to her, joining her two little hands in 
 mine. ' Do you know me ?' 
 
 She looked at me with her bright, beautiful eyes, and answered, 
 ' Oh ! no, indeed.' 
 
 'Look at me well,' I repeated. 'What! dost thou not know 
 who I am ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir,' she answered ; ' you are a gentleman.' 
 
 Alas ! while loving one being on earth, loving with all your deep 
 affection, having that being before you, who sees and looks at you, 
 speaks and answers you, and yet knows you not! You wish for 
 consolation, but from this one being, who is the only one that does 
 not know that you require it, because you are going to die ! 
 
 ' Mary,' I continued, ' hast thou a papa 1 ?' 
 
 ' Yes, sir,' said the child. 
 
 ' Well, then, dearest, where is he?' 
 
 She raised her large eyes in astonishment. 
 
 ' Ah ! then you don't know, sir? Papa is dead.' 
 
 Here she began to cry. I nearly let the little angel fall. 
 
 'Dead!' I exclaimed. 'Mary, knowest thou what it is to be 
 dead?' 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered. ' He is in earth and in heaven ;' and she 
 continued of her own accord, ' I pray to God for him, moruuig and 
 evening, a^ mamma's knees.' 
 
 I kissed her on the forehead. 
 
 ' Mary, say to me thy prayer.' 
 
 ' I could not, sir ; a prayer I do not say in the middle of the day. 
 Come to-night to my house, and you shall hear me say it.'
 
 72 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 This was enough. I interrupted her. 
 
 ' Darling Mary, it is I who am thy papa.' 
 
 'You!' returned she. 
 
 I added, ' Wouldst thou like me for thy papa?' 
 
 The child turned away. 
 
 * No, sir, my papa was much prettier.' 
 
 I covered her with kisses and tears. She tried to escape from 
 my arms, crying, ' Sir, you hurt me with your beard.' Then I 
 replaced her on my knees, devouring her with my eyes, and con- 
 tinued 
 
 ' Mary, canst thou read?' 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered, ' I can read very well. Mamma makes 
 me read my letters.' 
 
 ' Well, then, read a little to me,' said I, pointing to a printed 
 paper which she held crumpled in her dimpled hands. 
 
 She shook her pretty head, saying, ' Oh ! dear me, I can only 
 read fables.' 
 
 ' But try, my darling ; come, open your paper.' 
 
 She unfolded the paper and began to spell with her finger, 'Sen 
 sen, t e n c e tence, Sentence.' I snatched it from her hands. 
 It was my own sentence of death she was reading to me ! Her 
 nurse had bought the paper for a penny. To me it had cost more. 
 No words can convey what I felt. My violence had alarmed the 
 child, who was ready to cry. Suddenly she said to me, ' Do give 
 me back my paper ; I want to play with it ! ' I restored her to her 
 nurse. 'Take her hence!' and I fell back in my chair, gloomy, 
 desolate, in despair. Now they may come ; I care for nothing 
 more. The last fibre of my heart is broken. 
 
 Some writer says, that when we see an execution, 
 we should say, there goes my father, my brother, or my 
 son. This is the true Christian spirit. How many 
 executions Avould take place in our world if such a 
 spirit pervaded society 1 
 
 And when the scaffold has done its work, and the 
 unfeeling ministers of justice have left the scene, to 
 mingle once more in the busy crowd, as though a mere 
 ordinary occurrence had happened, what must be the
 
 UPON DOMESTIC LIFE. 73 
 
 feeling, the intense agony of grief of that wife or 
 mother, when the cold, stiffened body is carried to the 
 dissecting room, or brought to the family for burial ? 
 Who can describe the anguish of that hour? How 
 many such scenes have transpired in our fair world ! 
 
 And who can tell whose lot it may be ? How un- 
 certain is human testimony ! How often there may 
 be perjury ! How insinuating is temptation ! How 
 frail our resolutions ! How liable is he that thinketh 
 he standeth to fall ! ' Does the reader,' says a writer, 
 ' startle at the very suggestion, as among the most im- 
 probable of all things? I can tell him the painful fact, 
 that it happened to myself, several years ago, to call, 
 at a distant place, on a gentleman high in probity, and 
 in personal and relative respectability, and to meet at 
 his house, by accident, another gentleman equally so, 
 who would have both started with horror, and kindled 
 into indignation, had any one then predicted what, 
 nevertheless, has since happened, that the very near 
 relative of the one should actually die by the common 
 hangman for forgery, and the equally near relative of 
 the other should be obliged to fly from his country to 
 avoid the same fate.' How many are in prison who 
 felt as secure as the most virtuous ! ' When I look 
 around upon these men,' said the warden of the Mas- 
 sachusetts State Prison to the writer, ' I often think 
 that I might have been one, had I been placed in their 
 circumstances.' 
 
 And even innocence has suffered.* But the mind 
 is overwhelmed at the thought. There the law stands 
 all ghastly and bloody ! There is the judge ready to 
 pronounce the sentence ! There is the cold, unfeeling 
 
 * See Essay X., on the Irremediability of Capital Punishments. 
 
 7
 
 74 EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 
 
 sheriff ready to do its bidding. We have never seen 
 the office of hangman and judge more graphically 
 described than in the following : 
 
 INTERVIEW BETWEEN THE HANGMAN AND THE JUDGE. 
 
 Did your lordship ever attend, at killing time, at the old Bailey 1 
 If not, pray favor me with your company not on the gallows, hut 
 staying in the street amid a crowd that always assemble when I am 
 at work for you and the sheriff. Perhaps it will add to the zest, if 
 you come when I have a young woman to stiffen, supplied by 
 yourself. Will the fluttering of the petticoats, as she swings in 
 the wind, produce a pleasant sound in your ears, my learned mas- 
 ter 1 Fail not to watch the people the men, women, and chil- 
 dren good, had, and indifferent, who have gathered to behold the 
 sacred majesty of the law. You will see such flashing of the eyes 
 and grinding teeth you will hear sighs and groans, and words of 
 rage and hatred, with fierce curses on yourself and me ; and then 
 laughter, such as it is, of an unnatural kind, that they will make 
 you sick ! You wiliyeeZ no why you feel more than your faith- 
 ful journeyman ? We shall go to our breakfasts with good appe- 
 tites and a firm conviction that every hanging but changes many 
 sneaking pilferers into savage robbers, fit for murder. 
 
 A few years ago I was called out of town to hang a little boy 
 who had been convicted of killing with malice aforethought. If 
 guilty, he must have been in the habit of going to executions. 
 Ten thousand came to dabble in the poor creature's blood. This 
 was the youngest fellow-creature I ever handled in the way of 
 business, and a beautiful child he was too, as you have seen by the 
 papers, with a straight nose, large blue eyes, and golden hair. I 
 have no heart, no feelings ; who has in our calling ? But those 
 who came to see me strangle that tender youngster, have hearts 
 and feelings as we once had. Have no, had ; for this, they saw, 
 was fit to make them as hard as your servant or his master. 
 
 They saw that stripling lifted, fainting, on to the gallows, his 
 smooth cheeks of the color of wood ashes, his little limbs trembling, and 
 his bosom heaving sigh after sigh, as if the body and soul were part- 
 ing without my help. 
 
 This was downright murder, for there was scarcely any life to
 
 UPON DOMESTIC LIFE. 75 
 
 take out of him. When I began to pull the cap over his baby face, 
 he pressed his small hands together, (his arms, you know, were 
 corded fast to his body,) and he gav&a beseeching look, just as a 
 calf will lick the butcher's hand. But cattle do not speak ; the 
 creature muttered, 'Pray, sir, don't hurt me.' 'My dear,' an- 
 swered I, ' you should have spoken to my master. I 'm only the 
 journeyman, and must do as I 'm bid.' This made him cry, which 
 seemed to relieve him, and I do think I should have cried myself, 
 if I had not heard shouts from the crowd, ' Poor lamb ! shame, 
 murder!' ' Quick,' said the sheriff. ' Ready,' said I. The rev- 
 erend gentleman gave me the wink ; the drop fell one kick and j 
 he swayed to and fro, dead as the feelings of the Christian people of 
 England. 
 
 The crowd dispersed, some swearing, some weeping, as if hell 
 had broke loose, and some laughing, while they cracked blackguard 
 jokes on you and me, the parson, and the dangling corpse. They 
 had come for the sight ; they would have come to see an angel 
 murdered. They came to get drunk with strong excitement ; they 
 went back reeling and filthy with the hot debauch. They had 
 come to riot in the passions of fear and pity ; they went back, some 
 in a fever of rage, some burning with heat, some hardened in the 
 heart like me, or you ; all sunk down in their own respect, ready 
 to make light of pain and blood, corrupted by the indecent show ; 
 and more fit than ever to make work for us, the judge and the 
 hangman. 
 
 O, wise law-makers ! who think to soften the hearts of the peo- 
 ple ; to make them gentle and good ; to give them a feeling of re- 
 spect for themselves and others, by showing them a sight like 
 this ! English paper. 
 
 INCIDENT OF ROBINSON AND HIS CHILD. 
 
 When the little boy was removed from his cell, he remembered, 
 when too late, that he had not bidden him farewell. He cried out, 
 I did n't wish him good-by ! I shall never see him again in this 
 world.' He burst into tears, sat on the floor of his cell, and wept 
 bitterly over two hours !
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 
 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 Rome Russia Bombay Belgium Tuscany Objection of Chee- 
 ver Singular confession of Buonaparte. 
 
 1 Away with the executioner and the execution, and the very name 
 of its engine ! not merely from the limbs, but from the very thoughts, 
 the eyes, the ears, of Roman citizens ! for not alone the occurrence 
 and the endurance of all these things, but also the liability, the appre- 
 hension, even the mere mention of them, are unworthy of a Roman 
 citizen and a free man ! ' CICERO. 
 
 IN various parts of our labor, we have endeavored to 
 show that the punishment of death tended strongly to 
 weaken the doctrine of the sacredness of human life, 
 arid to destroy the morals of society. We intend now 
 to take still higher ground, and show that community 
 is actually more prosperous and happy where the law 
 has been abolished. A few examples from history 
 must suffice. 
 
 ROME. We are told that, for two centuries and a half, through- 
 out the better age of the Roman republic, that the infliction of the 
 punishment of death was expressly forbidden by the famous Por- 
 cian law, passed in the four hundred and fifty-fourth year of Rome, 
 by the tribune Porcius Lecca.* It is true there were exceptions. 
 The exile of Cicero turned upon the violation of this law, in his 
 infliction of this punishment upon the Catilinarian conspirators. 
 And in the case of Manlius, whose courage had delivered Rome, 
 but who was precipitated from the Tarpeian rock w r hen his ambi- 
 
 * Livy, x. 9. Cicero pro Rabirio, iii. 4: In Verrem, v. 63 ; Sallust, 
 Cat. 51. See Adam's Roman Antiquities.
 
 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 77 
 
 tion aspired to tyranny. And, in respect to its operation, ' The 
 penal laws of the kings and those of the Twelve Tables were nearly 
 abolished during the republic,' says Montesquieu, ' either in conse- 
 quence of the Valerian law, made by Valerius Publicola, shortly 
 after the expulsion of the kings, or else in consequence of the Por- 
 cian law. The republic was not the worse regulated, and no injury 
 was done to the police.' ' In this period,' writes Blackstone, ' the 
 republic flourished : under the emperors severe punishments were 
 revived; and then the empire fell '.' 
 
 RUSSIA. The empress Elizabeth, on ascending the throne, 
 pledged herself never to inflict the punishment of death, and this 
 pledge she kept for twenty years. From that day to the present, 
 only two occasions have occurred in which it has been inflicted ; 
 once, under Catharine, upon a notorious brigand chief, who had 
 long defied the government, and at the commencement of the reign 
 of the present emperor Nicholas, to suppress a rebellion which had 
 filled the streets with blood. Five of the thirty leading nobles 
 were put to death, gather as a political measure than as one of 
 ordinary social justice. ' The Count de Segur, on his return from 
 his embassy at St. Petersburgh, in a letter published in the Moni- 
 teur, in June, 1791, declared that Russia, under the operation of 
 this law, was one of the countries in which the least number of 
 murders was committed, adding that Catharine herself had several 
 times said to him: " We must punish crime without imitating it; 
 the punishment of death is rarely anything but a useless barbarity." ' 
 
 A writer, whom we take to be O'Sullivan, says, ' The Russian 
 representatives in this country, with whom we have conversed, have 
 borne a similar testimony, as to the comparative infrequency of 
 murders, in view of the vast multitudes and rude character of the 
 population ; and stated that all the intelligent public opinion there 
 is perfectly settled on this subject, no one thinking of returning to 
 the death-punishment.'* 
 
 ' Blush ! ye countries of a longer civilization,' says a Russian 
 writer, ' that Russia should teach you the celestial principle of 
 reforming depraved morals, not by the sanguinary execution of 
 
 * For some very able remarks and documents on the subject of the 
 Punishment of Death, see Democratic Review, March and April, 1843. 
 7*
 
 78 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 inexorable justice, but by the mild and divine precepts of heavenly 
 mercy.'* 
 
 The punishment of death was removed a century ago by the 
 empress Elizabeth. 'Experience demonstrates,' she says, 'that 
 the frequent repetition of Capital Punishment never yet made men 
 better. If, therefore, I can show that, in the ordinary state of soci- 
 ety, the death of a citizen is neither useful nor necessary, I shall 
 have pleaded the cause of humanity with success.' 
 
 Her reign did more to exalt the nation than all the 
 pomps of war and victory achieved by her greatest 
 conquerors. 
 
 BOMBAY. Sir James Mackintosh, in his farewell 
 charge to the grand jury of the supreme court at Bom- 
 bay, July 20, 1811, presents the following facts: 
 
 Since my arrival here, in May, 1804, the punishment of death 
 has not been inflicted by this court. Now, the population subject 
 to our jurisdiction, either locally or personally, cannot be less than 
 two hundred thousand persons. Whether any evil consequence 
 has yet arisen from so unusual (and in British dominions unexam- 
 pled) a circumstance, as the disuse of Capital Punishment, for so 
 long a period as seven years, or among a population so considera- 
 ble, is a question which you are entitled to ask, and to which I 
 have the means of affording you a satisfactory answer. 
 
 From May, 1756, to May, 1763, (seven years,) the capital con- 
 victions amounted to one hundred and forty-one, and the executions 
 were forty-seven. The annual average of persons who suffered 
 death was almost seven, and the annual average of capital crimes 
 ascertained to have been perpetrated , was nearly twenty. 
 
 From May, 1804, to May, 1811, there have been one hundred 
 and nine capital convictions. The annual average, therefore, of 
 capital crimes legally proved to have been perpetrated during that 
 
 * Travels in Kamschatka and Siberia, &c. By PETER DOBELL, coun- 
 cillor of the court of His Imperial Majesty, the emperor of Russia. 
 London, 1830.
 
 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 79 
 
 period, is between fifteen and sixteen. During this period there 
 has been no capital execution. 
 
 But, as the population of this island has much more than doubled 
 during the last fifty years, the annual average of capital convictions 
 ought to have been forty, in order to show the same proportion of 
 criminality with that of the first seven years. And between 1756 
 and 1763 the military force was comparatively small. A few fac- 
 tories or small ports only depended on this government. Between 
 1804 and 1811, five hundred European officers, and probably four 
 thousand European soldiers, were scattered over extensive terri- 
 tories. From May, 1797, to May, 1804, there were eighteen con- 
 victions for murder, of which I omit two, as of a very particular 
 kind. In that period there were twelve capital executions. 
 
 From May, 1804, to May, 1811, there were six convictions for 
 murder, omitting one which was considered by the jury as in sub- 
 stance a case of manslaughter with some aggravation. The mur- 
 ders in the former period were, therefore, very nearly as three to 
 one to those in the latter, in which no capital punishment was 
 inflicted. 
 
 This small experiment has, therefore, been made without any 
 diminution of the security of the lives and property of men. Two 
 hundred thousand men have been governed for seven years without, 
 a Capital Punishment, and without any increase of crimes. If any 
 experience has been acquired, it has been safely and innocently 
 gained.* 
 
 BELGIUM. Capital Punishment has been practically 
 abolished here since 1829. Mr. Hume stated in par- 
 liament, in May, 1837, that, in visiting a prison in 
 which he found several persons who had been con- 
 demned for capital offences, he ' learned from the offi- 
 cer superintending it, that, from his experience, the 
 abolition of Capital Punishment tended greatly to 
 soften the disposition of the mass of the people.' Mr. 
 Ewart, a member of parliament, made the following 
 statement : 
 
 * See a work on the Punishment of Death. By THOMAS WKIGHTSOH, 
 p. 55. London: 1837.
 
 80 
 
 EFFECT OP ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 In 1834, the population of France and Prussia was fifty millions, 
 yet the number of Capital Punishments in those countries in that 
 year amounted to only seventeen ; while, in England and Wales, 
 the population of which was only fifteen millions, the executions 
 were thirty-four. This was a proof that, as the criminal code was 
 less sanguinary, crimes became less frequent. For five years, 
 ending in 1829, the executions in France amounted to three hun- 
 dred and fifty-two, and the trials to one thousand one hundred and 
 eighty-two ; but in the five years ending in 1834, when the punish- 
 ment of death was very much lessened, the executions were one 
 hundred and thirty-one, and the trials one thousand one hundred 
 and thirty-two ; thus showing that, as Capital Punishment de- 
 creased, crimes also decreased. This was shown in the case of 
 Belgium. In the four years ending 1829, the executions were 
 seventeen, and the trials forty-nine ; while, in the four years ending 
 in 1834, there were no executions, and yet trials had decreased, for 
 they were then only forty-one. 
 
 To show that crimes diminish with the abolition of 
 the punishment of death, we present the following, 
 taken from the official tables : 
 
 Abstract of Returns printed for the Chamber of Deputies. 
 
 PERIODS. 
 
 CAPITAL CONVICTIONS. 
 
 EXECUTIONS. 
 
 Five years ending 
 
 Murder. 
 
 Other crimes. 
 
 Total. 
 
 With 1804, . . . 
 
 150 
 
 203 
 
 353 
 
 235 
 
 1809, . . . 
 
 82 
 
 70 
 
 152 
 
 88 
 
 1814, . . . 
 
 64 
 
 49 
 
 113 
 
 71 
 
 1819, . . . 
 
 42 
 
 29 
 
 71 
 
 26 
 
 1824, . . . 
 
 38 
 
 23 
 
 61 
 
 23 
 
 1829, . . . 
 
 34 
 
 40 
 
 74 
 
 22 
 
 1834, . . . 
 
 20 
 
 23 
 
 43 
 
 None. 
 
 M. DUCPETIAUX. the inspector general of prisons, in 
 his statistique de la Peine de Mort, has shown conclu- 
 sively that, with the decrease of executions, the most 
 dangerous and malignant crimes diminish. He takes
 
 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 81 
 
 the seven provinces of Belgium, and presents the fol- 
 lowing result : 
 
 BELGIUM. 
 
 EXKCUTIONS. 
 
 MURDERS. 
 
 In 19 years ending with 1814, 
 In 15 years ending with 1829, 
 In 6 years ending with IS34. 
 
 033 
 72 
 
 None. 
 
 399. or 21 per annum. 
 1 14, or 8 per annum. 
 2". nr 4 |n>r annum. 
 
 We see here that the mitigation of the penal code, 
 instead of emboldening men to commit crime, produces 
 an opposite effect. Violence familiarizes the popular 
 mind with the shedding of blood. Infuse mildness 
 into human morals, and protection is restored to 
 life. 
 
 ENGLAND AND WALES. While writing on this sub- 
 ject, a very important document has just come to hand, 
 which was .presented to the British parliament. It 
 comprises seven tables, and presents abundant proof, 
 to employ the words of the report, ' that the penalty 
 operates much more powerfully as an example of hom- 
 icide for imitation, than as an example of terror to 
 deter ; and is, in fact and truth, a cause of the commis- 
 sion of murder.' 
 
 The first table gives the commitments and executions for murder 
 daring the thirty years ending December, 1842, divided into five 
 periods of six years each. They show that, in the last six years, 
 with only fifty executions, the commitments for murder were fewer 
 by sixty-one, than in the six years ending December, 1836, with 
 seventy-four executions ; fewer by sixty than in the six years end- 
 ing December, 1830, with seventy- five executions ; fewer by fifty- 
 six than in the six years ending December, 1824, with ninety-one 
 executions ; and fewer by ninety-three than in the six years ending 
 with 1818, when the executions amounted to the large number of 
 one hundred and twenty-two.
 
 82 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 The following are the results of Table III. : 
 
 That in the years following the execution of all 
 convicted, the commitments for murder, as 
 compared with those of the previous year, 
 decreased ....... 2 per cent. 
 
 Table IV., shows in the years following com- 
 mutation, the commitments for murder de- 
 creased ....... 35 do. 
 
 Table V., that in the years following acquittals 
 on the ground of insanity, the commitments 
 for murder decreased . . . . 32 do. 
 
 Table VI., that in the years following those in 
 which there were commitments and no con- 
 viction, the commitments decreased . . 23 do. 
 
 TUSCANY. Here we find the most satisfactory proofs 
 of the practical advantages resulting from the abolish- 
 ment of Capital Punishment. The grand duke, Leo- 
 pold, ascended the throne in 1765, and, governed by 
 the enlightened counsels of Beccaria, he commenced, 
 a general reform of the penal code. After showing 
 that ' the proper objects of punishment ' are ' the redress 
 of injury' and ' the correction of the delinquent,' and 
 that he ought to be ' regarded as a child of the state,' 
 and that his ' amendment ought never to be abandoned 
 in despair,' he goes on to decree in the following lan- 
 guage : 
 
 We have resolved to abolish, and by the present law do abolish, for- 
 ever, the punishment of death, which shall not be inflicted on any 
 criminal, present or refusing to appear, or even confessing his 
 crime, or being convicted of any of those crimes which in the laws 
 prior to these we now promulgate, and which we will have to be 
 absolutely and entirely abolished, were styled capital. 
 
 Let us now look at the effects of this experiment. 
 M. Berengcr. in his report to the French Chamber of
 
 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 83 
 
 Deputies, in 1830, says the punishment of death was 
 abolished during a period of twenty-five years in Tus- 
 cany, ' and the mildness of the penal legislation had 
 so improved the character of the people there, that 
 there was a time when the prisons of the Grand Duchy 
 were found entirely empty. Behold enough to prove 
 sufficiently that the abolition of the punishment of 
 death is capable of producing the most salutary effects.' 
 Mr. Livingston says, ' that in Tuscany, where murder 
 was not punished with death, only five had been com- 
 mitted in twenty years ; while in Rome, where that 
 punishment is inflicted with great pomp and parade, 
 sixty murders were committed in the short space of 
 three months, in the city and the vicinity.' 
 
 M. Carmignani, a distinguished professor of crimi- 
 nal law in the University of Paris, also demonstrates 
 the happy effects attending the abolition of the punish- 
 ment of death.* 1 
 
 In a treatise upon public punishments, read to a 
 society that met at the house of FRANKLIN, in the year 
 1787, we find the following: C A gentleman, who 
 resided five years at Pisa, said that only five murders 
 had been perpetrated in his dominions in twenty years 
 since the abolition.'! 
 
 * See the Recueil des Debats, &c. By M. LUCAS. Paris : 1831 ; 
 pp. 19, 149. 
 
 t See the whole treatise in a work entitled 'Essays, Literary, Moral 
 and Philosophical. By BENJAMIN RUSH, M. D.' We had occasion to 
 remark, in our first essay, that the sentiments were attributed, by Liv- 
 ingston and other eminent jurists, to FRANKLIN himself. If it were 
 intentional, it was probably thought to add to their authority, forgetting 
 that the name of RUSH will always be dear to all the lovers of human- 
 ity ; as he was among the first in America to urge the mitigation of 
 our penal code and the abolition of slavery.
 
 84 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 We close our testimonies by citing the words of the 
 grand duke of Tuscany himself, after the experiment 
 had been tried : 
 
 With the utmost satisfaction to our paternal feelings, we have at 
 length perceived that the mitigation of punishment, joined to a most 
 scrupulous attention to prevent crimes, and, also, a great despatch 
 in the trials, together with a certainty of punishment to real delin- 
 quents, has, instead of increasing the number of crimes, considera- 
 bly diminished that of smaller ones, and rendered those of an atro- 
 cious nature very rare.* 
 
 We have been particular in reference to Tuscany, 
 because the experiment has been faithfully tried there, 
 and because the Rev. Mr. Cheever, of New York, in 
 reply to O' Sullivan, has alleged its entire failure. He 
 refers to it in a very triumphant manner. We regret 
 to see such a spirit. We do not impugn his motives, 
 but we mean to make the remark general. Surely, 
 we have had the reign of blood, and chains, and gib- 
 bets long enough. Society is slow enough in making 
 innovations, especially where human life is concerned, 
 which is far less sacred in this speculating age than 
 PROPERTY. But the time will come, when ' a man will 
 be more precious than fine gold, even a man than the 
 golden wedge of Ophir.' Mr. Cheever says, ' The ex- 
 periment proved so unsatisfactory, that the govern- 
 ment restored the penalty of death for the restraint of 
 crime.' To confirm his statement, he presents a letter 
 from a resident on the spot in Florence, near the time 
 when the statute was re-promulgated. 
 
 * See a Selection of articles from the London Morning Herald, vol. 
 ii. pp. 246, 376. Also, a report, in favor of the abolition of the punish- 
 ment of death, to the New York Legislature, p. 104. 1841. By J. 
 O'SFLUVAX.
 
 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 85 
 
 We do not deny that the punishment of death has 
 been restored, neither does his opponent, Mr. O'Sulli- 
 van, in the debate in the tabernacle, at New York. 
 But before Mr. Cheever had triumphed, it would have 
 been as well to have become acquainted with the cir- 
 cumstances. M. Carmignani says, ( that the re-estab- 
 lishment of the punishment was chiefly through the 
 power of the absolute will of Bonaparte, in 1795. And 
 its re-enactment, by his penal code, for Italy, in 1806, 
 was the result of an intrigue of a bigoted and preju- 
 diced clique, in opposition to the wishes of all the mag- 
 istrates, to the views of all the enlightened jurists of 
 the country, and to all the evidence which their recent 
 experience has afforded.' Leopold succeeded to the 
 empire in J790. ' It is infinitely to be regretted,' says 
 O'Sullivan, in his able report, ' that the great reform 
 thus successfully begun by him, should, at about that 
 period, have undergone the fate, of course unavoidable, 
 of being drowned in the deluge of blood poured over 
 all Europe by the national struggles and convulsions 
 of which the French Revolution was the signal ; and 
 that whatever was left of it from that fate, was crushed 
 out by the war-shod heel of the great soldier, whose 
 memory the friends of the cause of liberty and human- 
 ity have so much reason, with the same breath, to bless 
 and to curse.' Here, then, we see the reason of its 
 restoration. It was effected by the absolute will of 
 Bonaparte, the great tyrant, who desolated kingdoms 
 with a word, and who was the means of murdering 
 about six millions of our race ! Mr. Cheever, is, indeed, 
 welcome to rejoice at the re-enactment of the bloody 
 law by such a man. But the real motive is not gene- 
 rally known. We have been so fortunate as to obtain 
 the very language of the tyrant himself. We have
 
 86 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 come into possession of a letter, written by the Hon. 
 EDWARD LIVINGSTON, to the Hon. T. PURINTON, member 
 of the senate of Maine, dated New York. Dec., 1835. 
 After urging several reasons for the abolishment of 
 the punishment of death, he proceeds to meet the very 
 objection urged by Mr. Cheever: 
 
 Why, it may be asked, if the abolition in Tuscany was attended 
 with such beneficial results, why was it not continued ? Why was 
 the punishment of death restored? It was restored because an 
 enlightened and humane sovereign was succeeded by a foreign con- 
 queror. It was known that the code of Leopold was abolished by 
 the French conquest ; but the policy of the conqueror has just been 
 disclosed. A late paper, printed in Paris, has just been sent to me. 
 It contains the review of a work lately published by Louis, the 
 brother of Napoleon, in which the principles of the emperor, on the 
 subject in question, are laid open in the following extract from the 
 work, in which the author gives his reasons for declining the sov- 
 ereignty of Tuscany, which his brother offered him. 
 
 ' In the conference at Mantua, I asked him (the emperor) whether 
 he would permit me to govern the kingdom which he proposed to 
 confide to me, entirely after my own fashion, so far as it regarded 
 the interior, provided 1 left the whole exterior relations to him ? "I 
 understand you," he replied, " and will answer you in the spirit of 
 frankness with which you have spoken. In the interior, as in the 
 exterior, all belonging to me must follow my orders. You wish 
 to act the Medicis at Florence : no ! this cannot be. You, in my 
 place, would act precisely as I do now. The interest of France is 
 the point to which everything must tend ; codes, taxes, and con- 
 scriptions, everything in your kingdom must be to the profit of 
 mine. If I allowed you to make Tuscany happy and tranquil, all 
 travellers from France would envy it." ' 
 
 Thus, we see that the great experiment of Leopold was given 
 up when it had had the result the most glorious for humanity, be- 
 cause it would have made Tuscany happy, and excited the envy of 
 France. 
 
 What a singular reason for restoring the punishment 
 of death ! What a great fact is proved by this confes-
 
 EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 87 
 
 sion ! ' If I allowed you to make Tuscany happy and 
 tranquil, all travellers from France would envy it!' 
 And how did the tyrant intend to prevent that happi- 
 ness ? Was it by continuing the state of things brought 
 about by abolishing Capital Punishment? No. It was 
 by restoring the cruel law/ Everything must be sacri- 
 ficed to France. ' The interest of France is the point to 
 which everything else must lend, CODES, taxes and con- 
 scriptions ! ' Here is revealed the true spirit of those 
 who are governed by human policy, and who strive to 
 build up earthly kingdoms. No matter who perishes 
 so long as the throne stands ! And what tyrant on 
 earth could reign a single moment if the law of the 
 punishment of death were abolished ?
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 
 
 Connection of subject with human freedom Declaration of rights 
 Suicide-office History No republic founded on inviolability of 
 life Difficulty of defining treason and heresy Emmet and 
 Washington Danger of the author under some forms of govern- 
 ment Length of charges against O' Connell Treason in reign 
 of Henry VIII. Story of Prince David Colonel Dawson Sin- 
 gularfact in reference to Mr. Dorr, in Rhode Island, respecting 
 treason French revolution Robespierre's speech against Capital 
 Punishment Son of God a victim to this law Stories of Colonel 
 Hayne Mrs. Gaunt Lady Lisle Testimony of La Fayette. 
 
 ' Those who ask for the adjournment of this proposition have not 
 had the misfortune to see their families dragged to the scaffold. I am, 
 for my part, the enemy of the punishment of death, and, above all, 
 the enemy of the punishment of death in political matters.' 
 
 LA FAYETTE. 
 
 FEW persons are aware of the inseparable connection 
 between the doctrine of the Inviolability of Human 
 Life and religious and civil freedom. There is no per- 
 manent security for any sect or party in a state of 
 society where this sentiment is not acknowledged. 
 Even the most innocent* may be condemned, espe- 
 cially during periods of great excitement. We feel, 
 then, that we are doing a work of humanity; that we 
 are attempting to lay a broader foundation for the 
 whole social fabric ; one not to be laid amid the suffer- 
 ings and groans of our fellow-beings ; one not cemented 
 by blood and tears, but resting on the immutable prin- 
 ciples of truth. 
 
 * See Essay X., on the Irremediability of Capital Punishment.
 
 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 89 
 
 Our Declaration of Rights says that ' all men are cre- 
 ated equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator 
 with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' But, is 
 our right to life secured while the doctrine of the invi- 
 olability of human life is denied? It may be said 
 that it was the great design of the framers of our con- 
 stitution to secure this right. We freely admit that 
 such was the object ; but, then, we have inwoven in 
 all our laws, civil and martial, the life-taking prin- 
 ciple ; thus, building up with the one hand, and throw- 
 ing down with the other. It may be said, that, as 
 members of the compact, we agree to give up a certain 
 portion of our rights. Admitting this compact, we 
 have shown, in our first essay, that man could not 
 give the right of life to any being or government, for 
 he has no right to take his own life ; and, of course, 
 cannot give it to another. We have shown, and we 
 wish the advocates of the present law would look at 
 this point, that, to be consistent, they must maintain 
 suicide to be justifiable ; an act which many of them 
 think punishable with eternal death. In order to sus- 
 tain this mode of punishment, M. Urtis, in France, 
 actually maintained the justifiableness of suicide.* Let 
 the advocates of this cruel law, then, be consistent, 
 and make regulations and enactments respecting the 
 time when a man may take his own life, whether in 
 youth, manhood, or old age ! Would it not be well to 
 have the- best method pointed out, whether drowning, 
 hanging, beheading, or shooting, is the easiest mode ? 
 And would it not be well to have certain men duly 
 elected for this work, and have a sort of suicide-office ? 
 
 * See Essay I., p. 18.
 
 90 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 
 
 The hangman might be appointed, as he has not much 
 to do at present. We hope we shall not be accused of 
 levity on a subject so solemn in its nature ; for, really, 
 we have never felt more deeply than since we have 
 turned our attention to this subject. We feel that its 
 bearings are not seen nor understood. 
 
 It may be said that we are in no danger ; that lib- 
 erty is secured ; that it has been purchased by the 
 blood of our fathers, and that we shall never have a 
 revolution that will overthrow our institutions. Yes; 
 but our very boasting may be our destruction ; the 
 very manner in which our liberties were obtained, 
 may be the reason why they may be destroyed. 
 Whatever is obtained by violence may be taken away 
 in the same manner. How little is that solemn decla- 
 ration considered, that dropped from the lips of the 
 great Teacher, even while one of his disciples held the 
 sword in his hand : ' All they that take the sword shall 
 perish by the sword.' How much is contained in this 
 declaration ! Would that its . solemn import might 
 sink deep into the heart of every sovereign and every 
 legislator.* But why should we consider our govern- 
 ment safe ? Are not the same passions at work that 
 have overthrown every republic 1 Does not the tide 
 of party spirit even now run so high that life is endan- 
 gered ? Look into the religious world. See the fires 
 of persecution still burning upon the altar ! And may 
 there not be some turn, either in the religious or politi- 
 cal world, that shall make even our streets flow with 
 blood ? Let us take warning from the past. History 
 
 * Here, as in other instances, we find our remarks leading to the 
 subject of War. But we have preferred to present that in a work on 
 which we are now engaged.
 
 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 91 
 
 is little else than a record of human follies and crimes. 
 The tears, and sighs, and groans, of the widow and the 
 orphan have been disregarded. Let us consider the 
 scenes of by-gone days. We look now at the revolu- 
 tions in our world, at the downfall of republics, yet 
 imagine we are safe ; but what was the cause of their 
 destruction ? Did they not admit, in all their laws, 
 the punishment of death ?* Was not this bloody law 
 called into action whenever it suited the reigning 
 tyrant or dominant party, either when political or 
 spiritual despotism had the ascendency? for the re- 
 marks that will apply to the one are equally applica- 
 ble to both. For, what is treason 1 What is heresy ? 
 Who is to define either ?f By looking at history, we 
 
 * Rome, we know, for two centuries and a half, abolished Capital 
 Punishment in her criminal code. And what was the result ? BLACK- 
 STONE says, ' In this period, the republic flourished : under the emperors, 
 severe punishments were revived, and then the empire fell.' We think 
 we are safe in saying, that no republic, either ancient or modern, has 
 trer recognized the true doctrine of the Inviolability of Human Life. 
 We ought, perhaps, to except that of WILLIAM PENN, 'who,' says VOL- 
 TAIRE, ' made the only treaty that ever was made without blood, and 
 the only one that never was broken ! ' See p. 214 of this work. 
 
 f The author, while writing this very chapter, would be indicted, 
 under some forms of government, for high treason, and if he were not 
 carried to the flames himself, his works would probably meet that fate. 
 Every tyrant has clung to this form of punishment with a death-grasp ; 
 for, without it, no tyrant on earth could remain upon his throne ; though, 
 while it is his security on the one hand, it is his terror on the other. 
 And then, again, from the peculiarities of his faith, the author might 
 be considered a heretic ; thus making himself an object of vengeance, 
 both among political and spiritual despots. We respectfully ask the 
 advocates of Capital Punishment in what manner they would dispose 
 of such a case. Perhaps they would try to make the old adage true, 
 'to be hung and pay forty shillings.' 
 
 To illustrate the difficulty of defining treason, Mr. RANTOUL, an emi- 
 nent jurist, informed the writer that he had five huge volumes on that
 
 92 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 
 
 shall see that treason and patriotism are convertible 
 terms, and that it is success or failure that crowns the 
 adventurer with laurels, or brands him with infamy.' 
 What was treason in Emmet was patriotism in Wash- 
 ington. Indeed, how many instances have happened 
 where the individual, in different periods of his life, 
 has been sometimes the traitor and sometimes the 
 patriot. How frequently was that the case in the 
 French Revolution ; an event which shows, in the most 
 solemn manner, the evils attending the punishment of 
 death. Each party was afraid of the other, and each, 
 in its turn, contending for the continuance or abolish- 
 ment of the punishment of death, as the party gained 
 or lost the ascendency. But we cannot dwell on the 
 scenes connected with that event. All know that the 
 guillotine was a mere engine of war, ready to lift its 
 bloody axe upon the head of any one whom the tri- 
 umphant party should deem to be the traitor. : More 
 and Fisher, Sidney and Russell, died the death of trai- 
 tors; while Henry Tudor ascended the throne, and 
 Cromwell attained a power greater than that of many 
 kings. Ney and Labeydoyere perished for adhering 
 to the army and the nation, against a family hated by 
 both ; while men who had voted for the death of Louis 
 XVI. were honored with offices of the highest trust 
 under his legitimate successor.' But, to look at home ; 
 even Washington, Hancock, Adams, and the whole 
 host of revolutionary patriots, would have died as 
 traitors if America had not triumphed. 'The Hun- 
 garians were first called rebels,' says Bolingbroke, 
 
 very subject. And a fact has just come to hand, from Ireland, that the 
 charges against O'CONNELL, for conspiracy against the English govern- 
 ment, covered thirty-three skins of parchment, and occupied seventy 
 hours in the reading.
 
 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 93 
 
 ' for no other reason than this, that they would not be 
 slaves.' Under this head, all the reformers and the 
 patriots in our land would be considered traitors ! 
 
 How evanescent is all human applause ! To-day, a 
 king; to-morrow, a malefactor! To-day, the shouts 
 of the multitude; to-morrow, the reproaches of the 
 world ! The history of all reformers, even Jesus him- 
 self, shows that no dependance can be placed upon 
 popular favor. It is fickle as the wind ; evanescent as 
 the passing cloud ; fading as a rose, and empty as a 
 bubble. 
 
 In the time of Henry YIIL, clipping an English 
 shilling, or believing that the kmg was lawfully mar- 
 ried to one of his wives, was no less than high treason. 
 The heart of the offender was torn out from his living 
 body, dashed in his face, and then burnt! It was 
 inflicted upon prince David, a Welsh patriot, in the 
 reign of Edward First, in 12S3.* It was the law for 
 about five hundred years afterward ! 
 
 By referring to the appendix, it will be seen that 
 
 * A very affecting account is given of this mode of punishment in 
 Shenstone's ballad. Eighteen persons were convicted for treason. 
 Colonel Townly was the first that was laid on the block, but the execu- 
 tioner, observing the body to retain some signs of life, struck it vio- 
 lently on the breast, for the humane purpose of rendering it quite insen- 
 sible to the remaining part of the punishment. This not having the 
 desired effect, he cut the unfortunate gentleman's throat. The shocking 
 ceremony of taking out the heart and throwing the bowels into the fire, 
 was then gone through, after which the head was separated from the 
 body with the cleaver, and both were put into a coffin. The rest of the 
 bodies were thus treated in succession ; and, on throwing the last heart 
 into the fire, which was that of young Dawson, the executioner cried, 
 'God save King George!' and the spectators responded with a shout. 
 
 A young lady of good family and handsome fortune had, for some 
 time, extremely loved, and been equally beloved by, Mr. James Daw- 
 son, one of those unfortunate gentlemen who suffered at Kennington
 
 94 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 
 
 treason is a capital offence in every state in the Union, 
 except Rhode Island. An overruling Providence had 
 so arranged affairs, that, by the efforts of a single indi- 
 vidual, a principal actor in the late movements, the 
 law was some years since abolished.* We may easily 
 conceive what might have been the result had not 
 such a change taken place. Mr. Rantoul very justly 
 remarks that, ' in a collision between a state and the 
 federal government, in case of rebellion, organized 
 
 Common, for high treason ; and had he been acquitted, or after con- 
 demnation found the royal mercy, the day of his enlargement was to 
 have been that of their marriage. 
 
 Not all the persuasions of her kindred could prevent her from going 
 to the place of execution ; she was determined to see the last hour of 
 a person so dear to her ; and accordingly followed the sledges in a 
 hackney coach, accompanied by a gentleman nearly related to her, and 
 one female friend. She got near enough to see the fire kindled which 
 was to consume that heart which she knew was so much devoted to 
 her, and all the other dreadful preparations for his fate, without being 
 guilty of any of those extravagances her friends had apprehended. 
 But when all was over, and she found that he was no more, she drew 
 her head back in the coach, and crying out, 'My dear, I follow thee 
 I follow thee ! sweet Jesus, receive both our souls together ! ' fell on 
 the neck of her companion, and expired in the very moment she was 
 speaking. 
 
 That excess of grief, which the force of her resolution had kept 
 smothered within her breast, it is thought, put a stop to the vital mo- 
 tion, and suffocated at once all the animal spirits. 
 
 * It is a singular fact that this law was abolished mainly by the 
 efforts of Mr. DORR himself. Little did he imagine the bearing the law 
 might have upon his own fate. It adds another to the thousand in- 
 stances of the danger to be apprehended from the existence of the law 
 of the punishment of death, and shows, incontestibly, that society 
 should sanction no penalty that may be used to the destruction of its 
 citizens. Let us beware, then, how we sharpen the axe and prepare 
 other instruments of death for the hand of party violence. Every na- 
 tion has wept over the graves of patriots and heroes sacrificed bv its 
 own fury.
 
 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 95 
 
 under the state authorities, a state treason law would 
 come into action. Under its provisions, the man who 
 adhered to his oath of allegiance to the United States, 
 might be hanged for his fidelity, while, in retaliation, 
 he who obeyed the state authorities might be hanged 
 by the general government for treason against them.' 
 
 It is said, if we succeed in abolishing this cruel mode 
 of punishment, it may be restored in times of party- 
 excitement. But it is far easier to pervert an existing 
 law to the oppression of the innocent, than to revive, 
 for such a purpose, a punishment which had been 
 solemnly abrogated. Let us suppose the punishment 
 of death had been abolished in France in the year 
 1700; and that the whole population had been edu- 
 cated in the idea that human life was too sacred ever to 
 be taken for the most atrocious crimes ; that the life of 
 every citizen was inviolable. Is it probable that such 
 a people, in 1792, would have butchered not only the 
 innocent, but the most worthy members of their com- 
 munity ? 
 
 It is a very singular fact, showing the mutability 
 of all human affairs, that, at one period in the his- 
 tory of France, even Robespierre himself was strongly 
 opposed to the punishment of death, insomuch that 
 while holding the office of judge, he resigned, rather 
 than to pronounce sentence of death upon a criminal. 
 The following is his language from a speech which 
 gained the prize : ' The law should always present to 
 the people the most perfect model of justice and reason. 
 If, in the place of that powerful severity, of that^calm 
 moderation, which ought to characterize them, they 
 substitute anger and vengeance ; if they cause to flow 
 human blood which they might spare, and which they 
 have not the right to shed : if they display before the
 
 96 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY*. 
 
 eyes of the people scenes of cruelty, and corpses mur- 
 dered by tortures, they then corrupt in the heart of the 
 citizen the ideas of the just and the unjust ; they cause 
 to spring up in the bosom of society ferocious preju- 
 dices, which, in their turn, reproduce others. Man 
 is no longer to man an object so sacred ; a less lofty 
 idea is entertained of his dignity when the public au- 
 thority treats so lightly his life. The idea of murder 
 inspires much less dread than before, when society 
 itself presents the example and exhibition of it : the 
 horror of the crime is diminished when society pun- 
 ishes it only by another. Beware well of confounding 
 the efficaciousness of punishments with the excess of 
 severity : the one is absolutely opposed to the other. 
 Everything seconds moderate laws; everything con- 
 spires against cruel ones.' c What might not France 
 and the world been spared, had these sentiments pre- 
 vailed? They were advocated in the assembly, but 
 the orators were put down by the clamors of the fierce 
 galleries, like vultures scenting their prey from afar.' 
 
 We admit that this mode of punishment may be 
 re-established, but then it will be more and more diffi- 
 cult as society is taught the sacredness of human life. 
 This law is a weapon, ready prepared, which is more 
 susceptible of abuse than any other. An attempt to 
 introduce it after its abolishment would be such an 
 innovation that an alarm would be sounded. 
 
 We forget that even the Son of God suffered by a 
 perverted use of this law. The Jews did not venture 
 to demand his death of the Roman governor without 
 the forms of law and the semblance of justice. When 
 Pilate found ' no cause of death in him.' they appealed 
 to their own laws, saying, ( we have a law. and by our 
 law he ought to die.' Thus the punishment of death
 
 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 97 
 
 became the pretext for the greatest crime ever perpe- 
 trated in our world ; a deed so foul that it is not yet 
 expiated, though the guilty nation have been, for eigh- 
 teen centuries, exiles and vagabonds upon the face of 
 the earth, a by-word and a reproach, ' their own house 
 left unto them desolate.' 
 
 We are overwhelmed with the thoughts that rush 
 into the mind when we consider the horrid use that 
 may be made of this form of punishment. Had it not 
 been for the contempt of human life which it has 
 taught the community, 'there would have been no 
 fires at Smithfield, no massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 no reign of terror in the first French revolution. Cran- 
 mer would not have been led to the stake in his old 
 age, nor Stafford to the scaffold in the full vigor of 
 life and usefulness; Lavorisier might have lived to 
 enlighten the world by his science; Condorcet to 
 instruct by his learning, and Malesherbes to improve 
 it by his virtues.'* 
 
 * How little do we think of the influence of Capital Punishment 
 upon the surviving relatives ! How many affecting scenes must there 
 have been in the French revolution ! How many sighs and groans ! 
 How many tears unnoticed, except by Him who regards even the fall- 
 ing of a sparrow. We will give an instance that happened in our own 
 revolution, which will show how cruel death is when he comes in the 
 form to which we have so frequently alluded. The story is that of 
 Colonel Hayne, of South Carolina, who was taken prisoner by the 
 English. He had a wife and six small children. He was very amia 
 ble, and a great many interceded for him, but in vain. During the 
 imprisonment of the father, his eldest son was permitted to stay with 
 him in the prison. Beholding his only surviving parent, for whom he 
 felt the deepest affection, loaded with irons and condemned to die, he 
 was overwhelmed with consternation and sorrow. The wretched father 
 endeavored to console, him, by reminding him that the unavailing grief 
 of his son tended only to increase his own misery, that we came into 
 this world merely to prepare for a better, that he was himself prepared 
 9
 
 98 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 
 
 If it be true, then, that the light regard paid to 
 human existence has proved sources of unhappiness, 
 it becomes all in this enlightened age to weigh well 
 their motives when they advocate the . punishment of 
 death. We know that even they contend that life will 
 be rendered more sacred by taking that of the murderer. 
 But facts show the contrary. The legal existence of 
 this penalty is not only abused on extraordinary occa- 
 sions, but it tends to encourage daily a disregard for 
 life, and leads on to murder. If the government would 
 
 to die, and could even rejoice that his troubles were so near an end. 
 ' To-morrow,' said he, ' I set out for immortality ; you will accompany 
 me to the place of my execution ; and when I am dead, take my body 
 and bury it by the side of your mother.' The youth here fell on Iris 
 father's neck, crying, ' Oh, my father, my father, I will die with you ! 
 I will die with you ! ' Colonel Hayne, as he was loaded with irons, 
 was unable to return the embrace of his son, and merely said to him 
 in reply, ' Live, my son, live to honor God by a good life ; live to 
 serve your country ; and live to take care of your brother and little 
 sisters.' The next morning, proceeds the narrative of these distressing 
 events, Colonel Hayne was conducted to the place of execution. His 
 son accompanied him. Soon as they came in sight of the gallows, the 
 father strengthened himself, and said, ' Now, my son, show yourself a 
 man ! That tree is the boundary of my life, and of all my life's sor- 
 rows. Beyond that, " the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary 
 are at rest." Don't lay too much at heart our separation ; it will be 
 short. 'T was but lately your dear mother died. To-day I die. And 
 you, my son, thoijgh but young, must shortly follow us.' ' Yes, my 
 father,' replied the broken-hearted youth, ' I shall shortly follow you, 
 for, indeed, I feel that I cannot live long.' And his melancholy antici- 
 pation was fulfilled in a manner more dreadful than is implied in the 
 mere extinction of life. On seeing his father in the hands of the exe- 
 cutioner, and then struggling in the halter, he stood like one transfixed 
 and motionless with horror. Till then, proceeds the narration, he had 
 wept incessantly ; but soon as he saw that sight, the fountain of his 
 tears was staunched, and he never wept more. He died insane ; and 
 in his last moments often called on his father, in terms that brought 
 tears from the hardest hearts.
 
 DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 99 
 
 cease to legalize the shedding of blood, there would 
 then be established in the human mind the great doc- 
 trine of the sanctity of human life that even the days 
 of the criminal are too sacred to be shortened. 
 
 We appeal, then, to the politician as well as the 
 religionist, to think deeply and seriously upon this 
 subject. We may think we have outgrown, in the 
 religious world, the doctrine of the stake and the fagot ; 
 yet, perhaps, it is because no sect among us posses- 
 ses the power. Let any political or religious party 
 gain the ascendency ; then they have the weapon 
 ready formed at their hands.* The guillotine may be 
 established, or the fires of Smithfield may again be 
 lighted, or even all the cruelties of the Inquisition may 
 be revived ! And this penalty is likely to fall, not on 
 the most corrupt and abandoned, but upon the very 
 best citizens. Not belonging to either party, they are 
 suspected by both, and, therefore, are likely to become 
 the first victims. In view of all these facts, we cease 
 to wonder at the strong language of La Fayette in the 
 motto upon our title : ' For my own part, I shall de- 
 mand the abolition of the punishment of death until I 
 am convinced that human judgment is infallible.' 
 
 * Numberless incidents occur in history to illustrate this point. 
 During the reign of James II , while the tyrant Jeffries was on the 
 bench, the following took place: 'A Mrs. Gaunt was noted for her 
 beneficence to all professions and persuasions. One of the rebels, 
 knowing her humane character, had recourse to her in his distress, 
 and was concealed. The abandoned villain, hearing that a reward 
 and indemnity was offered to such as informed against criminals, 
 betrayed her. His evidence was incontestible. He was pardoned for 
 his treachery she burned alive for her benevolence.' 
 
 Another instance occurred, equally terrible. ' Lady Lisle was 
 proved innocent twice of sheltering two fugitives. But the jury was 
 sent back by Jeffries, with reproaches, and they were constrained lo 
 give a verdict against the prisoner.'
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 Appeal to Christians Conduct of prisoners Stephen M. Clarke 
 Cheever's argument Petition presented by Lord Brougham 
 Incident at Lechler's execution Execution of a man eighty-three 
 years of age Reformation possible Corinthian church Apostle 
 Peter David, king of Israel. 
 
 Who can reflect, unmoved, upon the round 
 
 Of smooth and solemnized complacencies, 
 By which, on Christian lands, from age to age, 
 Profession mocks performance. Earth is sick 
 And Heaven is weary of the hollow words 
 Which states and kingdoms utter when they talk 
 Of truth and justice. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 WE reach now, in our labor, a part of our subject, 
 which presents some very solemn aspects ; so solemn 
 in their nature that language is inadequate; views 
 that overwhelm the imagination, and which we would 
 gladly have passed over, but a sincere conviction of 
 duty calls upon us in the most imperious manner to 
 give it our serious attention. It is a view on which 
 we have thought with the deepest reverence, and we 
 feel to invoke the divine aid while we carefully call 
 to it the attention of the reader. 
 
 We do, therefore, in the most solemn manner, and 
 in the fear of God, appeal to that very large and 
 respectable body of Christians, among whom are to 
 be found many bright examples of piety and learning, 
 who believe that 'life is but a trial for eternity that
 
 FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 101 
 
 as man dies, so he remains forever, tortured with 
 anguish and polluted with guilt, or blooming in un- 
 fading joy and exalted goodness.' 
 
 We have, in all our labor, so far, looked to this sub- 
 ject in reference to temporal things, but now we must 
 turn away from all the fleeting vanities of time, to 
 that world, ' where the wicked cease from troubling, 
 and the weary are at rest.' On such a subject we 
 ought to speak with humility, if not with terror. Let 
 us then look at the facts in the case. We have seen, 
 especially in our article on the effect of public execu- 
 tions, that, generally, those who become guilty of cap- 
 ital offences, become more hardened and indifferent as 
 the day approaches. Mr. Wakefield, who spent seve- 
 ral years in prison, says, ' In about one case out of 
 four,* no religious impression is produced ; but the 
 prisoner goes through all the ceremonies of his situa- 
 tion with an air of indifference, being occupied to the 
 very last moment with the hope of a reprieve.' He 
 further states, ' that on almost every execution day, on 
 which several are hanged, the chaplain is subjected to 
 the most outrageous insults from one or more of the 
 doomed men. He will readily confirm this statement. 
 And it may be farther proper to say, for the informa- 
 tion of religious persons, among those who make our 
 laws, that every year several of their fellow-creatures 
 are cut off in front of Newgate, in the very act of scoff- 
 ing at God and Christ, and the Holy Sacrament.' We 
 could fill volumes, showing the deadening, paralyzing 
 influence of this mode of punishment upon those un- 
 
 * The author of Old Bailey Experience, makes the proportion much 
 less. He says that, ' in nineteen cases out of twenty, there is no true 
 repentance; most of them die apparently careless about their formei 
 course of life, or of the world to come.' 
 9*
 
 102 FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 fortunate beings who are called to suffer. We say 
 unfortunate, for none deserve more pity than those 
 who have no pity for themselves. 
 
 Another view is that the criminal may be innocent 
 or morally insane. But, passing over such considera- 
 tions, we solemnly ask how, in view of all the facts in 
 the case, you can consistently advocate the continu- 
 ance of a law involving such irretrievably awful 
 results? one which cuts off a fellow-being in the full 
 vigor of young life and health, and hurries him, red, 
 reeking with guilt, to that last, irrevocable judgment, 
 where you expect to meet him, and on the decision of 
 which you believe hangs the eternal fate of the human 
 soul !* 
 
 We know the argument of Mr. Cheever, and other 
 distinguished divines. We give it in his own words. 
 ' In the abolition of this penalty, the number of mur- 
 ders would inevitably be increased ; and every indi- 
 vidual so murdered is sent into eternity, not with the 
 weeks of preparation, and all the solemn, holy induce- 
 ments and appliances allotted to the murderer; but in 
 a moment, without a breath for prayer, without time 
 so much as to say, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 
 Now I say, without hesitation, it is worse to send one 
 person into eternity, in this manner, than it would be 
 to send ten murderers with six weeks' warning. But 
 if you were to repeal this penalty of death for murder, 
 then, by the increase of this crime, for every murderer 
 now with solemn warning executed, you would proba- 
 bly be the occasion of sending two or three innocent 
 
 * Stephen M. Clarke, who was hung for arson, in Newburyport, 
 some years since, was only seventeen. Amidst his cries and martial 
 music he was forced to the scaffold.
 
 FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 103 
 
 persons, unwarned and unprepared, into eternity. This 
 is an inevitable result of the repeal of this penalty. 
 I say, therefore, that its abolition would be an act of 
 impiety; for the substitution of imprisonment for life 
 would probably make most murderers die in their sins, 
 while it would send many innocent persons unpre- 
 pared into eternity. I turn this objection, therefore, 
 back with tenfold power upon your own proposed 
 repeal of the penalty of death for murder. It consti- 
 tutes, in the mind of every benevolent person, one of 
 the very strongest arguments against such a repeal.' 
 
 The position should be proved by facts, that mur- 
 ders would inevitably be increased. We have given 
 abundant evidence to the contrary, in our article on the 
 abolishment of this penalty, in Part I., Essay VII. We 
 have shown that the law defeats itself; that it multi- 
 plies the very crimes it designs to abolish. In our 
 article on the Scruples of Jurors, we have seen that 
 even petitions were presented by Lord Brougham, in 
 England, in which the petitioners say, ' that they find, 
 by experience, that even the probability of the inflic- 
 tion of death prevents the prosecution, conviction and 
 punishment of the criminal, thus endangering the pro- 
 perty which it was intended to protect.' This is the 
 case with regard to property. How is it respecting 
 life ? We have seen, in our article on the effects of exe- 
 cutions upon spectators, that many persons have gone 
 directly from the scene, and committed the very same 
 act. We gave the case, in Lancaster, Pa., of Wilson, 
 who stabbed another, and had the same irons put on 
 him which had scarcely been laid off long enough by 
 Lechler to get cold. In view of this fact, the subject 
 becomes still more awful. We again appeal to those 
 who believe that the future condition of the soul
 
 104 FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 depends upon the state in which it leaves this world 
 Not only, on your theory, you may send a fellow-being 
 reeking with blood into the presence of his God, but, 
 by increasing murders by the very penalty, you may 
 send many others in the same unprepared state.* 
 
 * A case now lies before me, that presents this subject in the most 
 awful light. It is the account of the execution of a man, in his eighty- 
 third year, for the murder of his Wife. He was a believer in your sen- 
 timent, as it appears from many of his expressions ; such as, ' he hoped 
 the parties who condemned him would be overtaken by the vengeance 
 of God, and sent into everlasting condemnation ;' ' that God would rain 
 down fire and brimstone.' But I need not present the horrid language 
 he employed. You are familiar with such phrases, though you never 
 intended such a use to be made of them. But look at this case in 
 the light of eternity. Passing over the protestations of innocence in 
 which the poor old man persisted to the last, I earnestly ask you to look 
 at this humiliating spectacle. ' A hoary old man, bent together with 
 age and mental suffering, oppressed with a five months' imprisonment : 
 his whole appearance indicating the utmost degree of human frailty, 
 borne down with the intense idea of grief, and the tears flowing.' 
 Behold him pinjoned, while the poor creature says, ' You need not do 
 it very tightly, as I intend to make no resistance. My only wish is to 
 have it soon over.' What a scene ! "With your views of eternity, how 
 many thoughts overwhelm the mind. By the present law, this poor 
 man, decrepit and bent, so far that the ministers of the law were 
 obliged to procure a chair upon the scaffold, was sent into the presence 
 of his God, reeking with blood. Perhaps, a moment more, and he 
 might have been made an heir of heaven. Stop, we beseech you ; 
 pause, think of the awful, irretrievable results according to your faith. 
 How solemn the scene! And if ever your favorite hymn would apply, 
 this would be a fair case. 
 
 ' Behold, the aged sinner goes, 
 Laden with guilt and heavy woes, 
 Down to the regions of the dead, 
 With endless curses on his head.' 
 
 But the subject becomes too solemn for language to describe. When 
 again you lift up your voice in favor of the law of blood, think of the 
 poor old man, just on the brink of eternity, and pause ere you become 
 the means of sending another immortal spirit unprepared into the pres 
 ence of its Maker !
 
 FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 105 
 
 1 Every execution,' says Dr. Lushington, in parlia- 
 ment, 'brings an additional candidate for the hang- 
 man ! ' We know that some divines have even urged 
 that the law was humane ; that the perpetrator has 
 been induced to think seriously of divine things, and 
 led to repentance ; and, in his last hours, has confessed 
 the justice of his sentence, and given glory to God. 
 Granting even that such cases have occurred and 
 they are like angels' visits, few and far between still, 
 the law itself appears in no better light. Indeed, it 
 appears cruel, even giving it this favorable view. 
 Monstrous law ! To cut off a human being, whose 
 heart had just begun to feel the emotions of returning 
 virtue ; whose eyes were just opening to the enormity 
 of his crime ! Strange inconsistency ! Like the phy- 
 sician, who should recommend that, on the recovery of 
 his patient, he should be murdered ! Tender mercies 
 indeed! This is hanging a criminal for very love 
 and kindness. 
 
 There is still another serious aspect to our subject. 
 Can we be certain that divine grace may not renew 
 the heart even of the vilest, if life is spared? We 
 cannot extend our remarks on this part of our sub- 
 ject.^ We simply observe that, among the most heroic 
 of Christian martyrs, we shall find those who have 
 been the most deeply corrupt. The Corinthian church 
 contained many whose lives had been stained with the 
 blackest crimes. ' The infallible apostle of the Catho- 
 
 * Tne Author designs to take up this view of the subject in a distinct 
 volume. In his travels, he is now preparing the materials for such a 
 work. His great object, throughout the present labor, was to show the 
 wrongfulness of the punishment of death. He intended to have gone 
 farther, but the great abundance of facts obliged him to confine the 
 present volume to one point. See Appendix, II.
 
 106 FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 lies,' says one, ' denied his Master ;' and the man ' after 
 God's own heart' was saved from a terrible death 
 only by his royal right of sinning. The first effusions 
 of devotional feeling ever perused were written by a 
 repenting murderer. Had the policy which doomed 
 even the worst of criminals to the scaffold, as incapa- 
 ble of correction, been pursued in this melancholy 
 case, the world would have been deprived of the most 
 affecting example of holy penitence and of divine 
 mercy; of the clearest prophecies of a suffering Mes- 
 siah; of the sweetest consolations that can animate 
 hope or relieve despair ; and one of the greatest charac- 
 ters of sacred history sent, covered with guilt and dis- 
 grace, to the bar of the Almighty.' 
 
 We earnestly and affectionately, in view of all these 
 facts, beseech you to think deeply and solemnly on this 
 awful subject ; awful in reference to the present, but 
 more so in reference to the future. If it appears that 
 the criminal is converted, then, surely, you will not 
 cut him off, for he may become again a blessing to 
 the community. Tf he remain impenitent, surely, then, 
 you Avill not seal his everlasting misery. If Capital 
 Punishment multiplies murders, as we have proved, 
 then, surely, you will not send any more murdered 
 victims to hell !
 
 ESSAY X. 
 
 IRREMEDIAB1LITY 
 
 The argument Indifference of Pailey and Hudson Case of a sur- 
 geon and his servant Confession not a proof Instances in Eng- 
 land and in Vermont Complaining for gain Noticed by parlia- 
 ment Burkites Liability of witnesses Difficulty of disproving 
 a certain charge Rape Innocent condemned Forty-eight hours 
 for criminals after sentence, in England Property considered 
 more valuable than life Mock charge of a villain Trial of 
 the Knapps Singular remark of Daniel Webster Execution of 
 the innocent Innkeeper A farmer Instances given by Mrs. 
 Child, Smollel and O' ConnelL 
 
 'Truth lifts up the veil with which probability had enveloped her 
 but she appears too late ! The blood of the innocent cries aloud for 
 vengeance against the prejudice of his judge, and the magistrate passes 
 the rest of his life in deploring a misfortune which his repentance can-, 
 not repair.' CHANCELLOR D'AGUESSEA.U. 
 
 AMONG the various arguments that may be urged in 
 favor of our views, that of the Irremediability of Capi- 
 tal Punishment appears to the writer to be the most 
 cogent and convincing. As we have pursued our labor, 
 from day to day, facts of this nature have multiplied, 
 till what appeared at first to be the easiest part of our 
 work, has become the most difficult. Every author 
 knows that the labor of condensing is often more dif- 
 ficult than the attainment of the fact; and that it 
 requires more time to shorten a work than to extend 
 it. We have adopted two rules as our guide. 1. Not 
 to rely on the testimony of prisoners themselves. 2. 
 To present only those cases where execution had actu- 
 ally taken place.
 
 108 IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 We have been somewhat surprised at the small influ- 
 ence which facts of this nature have had on those who 
 favor the punishment of death. Paley says, { He who 
 falls by a mistaken sentence, may be considered as 
 falling for his country, whilst he suffers under the ope- 
 ration of those rules by the general effect and tendency 
 of which the welfare of the community is maintained 
 and upheld.' Rev. Charles Hudson, a member of 
 the seriate, in 1838, says, ' Though the objection may 
 appear plausible, we think it entitled to but little 
 weight.' An orthodox writer says, ' When an innocent 
 man suffers, all that can be said is, that Providence 
 has seen fit to take away, by a painful exit, one, whom 
 a few years more would have necessarily carried to 
 the tomb.' How coolly the whole matter is turned 
 off ! How easy to philosophize and act the patriot for 
 others ! How easy to arm ourselves with topics of 
 consolation, and reasons for enduring with fortitude 
 evils to which we think we are not exposed ! 
 
 In approaching this subject, we have felt a solem- 
 nity which is almost too great to allow us to proceed. 
 When we consider how much is embraced in that 
 expression, ' the glorious uncertainty of the law,' we 
 hardly feel safe even while pursuing the most lauda- 
 ble calling ; for many have fallen even while engaged 
 in works of humanity. The following case presents 
 this subject in a strong light. In view of such facts, 
 where is human safety so long as the punishment of 
 death exists upon the statute book ? 
 
 A SURGEON CHARGED WITH THE MURDER OF HIS SERVANT. 
 
 A gentleman was tried in Dublin on the 24th of May } 1728, 
 charged with the murder of his maid servant. An opposite neigh- 
 bor saw him admitted into his house about ten at night, by his ser-
 
 IRREMEDIABILITY. 109 
 
 vant, who opened the door, holding in her hand a lighted candle in 
 a brazen candlestick. Not long after, the gentleman made an 
 alarm, exclaiming that his servant was murdered. The woman 
 was found a corpse in the kitchen, her head fractured, her neck 
 wounded so as to divide the jugular vein, and her dress steeped in 
 blood. On further search, the inquirer discovered that the prisoner 
 had on a clean shirt, while one freshly stained with blood, and 
 ascertained to be his, was discovered in the recess of a cupboard ; 
 where also was found a silver goblet, bearing the marks of a bloody 
 thumb and finger. The prisoner almost fainted on being shown 
 the shirt. He was executed. 
 
 His defence, on trial, was, that the maid servant admitted him as 
 sworn , and went to the kitchen ; that he had occasion to call her, 
 but not being answered, went and found her lying on the floor ; not 
 knowing her to be dead, and being a surgeon, he proceeded to open 
 a vein in her neck ; in moving the body, the blood stained his 
 hands and shirt sleeves. He then thought it best to make an alarm 
 for assistance, but being afraid of the effect which his appearance 
 might produce, he changed his linen, and displaced the silver cup, 
 in order to thrust his bloody shirt out of sight. 
 
 This story was deemed incredible. Several years after, a dying 
 penitent confessed to a priest, that he was concealed in the gentle- 
 man's house for the purpose of robbing it, at the moment of the 
 gentleman's return ; that, hearing him enter, he resolved to escape ; 
 that the woman saw, and attempted to detain him ; that he, fearing 
 detection, knocked her down with the candlestick she had in her 
 hand, and fled, unnoticed, from the premises. 
 
 How much does a cause involve ! What knowledge 
 of the human heart ! What nice discrimination of 
 character ! A touching appeal to the feelings of a 
 jury, a happy retort, or a humorous illustration, has 
 crowned with undeserved triumph many a desperate 
 case. And it is remarkable that even the confession 
 of guilt is not sufficient.* We do not allude to the 
 
 * A case is recorded of one who made a confession, and delivered 
 himself up to justice. Circumstances transpired which, notwithstand- 
 
 10
 
 110 IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 horrid practice, obtaining in ancient times, of torturing 
 the criminal to make him recriminate himself, but when 
 it has been entirely voluntary. 
 
 A remarkable case happened in Yermont. It has 
 been cited nearly all over the civilized world, and it 
 has done much to modify our system of criminal juris- 
 prudence. It comes from an authentic source, for the 
 narrator has been long known to the author as a cler- 
 gyman of high standing and of veracity, WILLIAM S. 
 BALCH, of New York city. 
 
 BOURNE CONVICTED OF THE MURDER OF HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW. 
 
 A case occurred in Manchester, Vermont. Two men, brothers, 
 by the name of Bourne, were convicted of the murder of a brother- 
 in-law, named Colvin. While under the sentence of death, one of 
 the brothers confessed a participation in the murder. By an act 
 of the legislature, his punishment was cummuted to imprisonment 
 for life. The other stoutly persisted iu asserting his innocence. 
 Great excitement prevailed during and after the trial ; I remember 
 it well. It was near my native town. But when the confession 
 was made under oath, and published, none longer doubted. Had 
 he confessed he did not assist in the murder, would he have been 
 believed 1 The day of execution at length arrived. Hundreds of 
 people from the hills and vales were gathered around the gallows, 
 to witness the dying struggles of a poor unfortunate fellow-sinner. 
 The hour had arrived, and the elder Bourne, still avowing his inno- 
 cence, wan and weak, was led forth into the ring, and stood beneath 
 the horrid engine of death. The sheriff was about to adjust the 
 halter, and draw down the dismal cap, when a cry was heard from 
 behind the ring, ' Stop ! Stop ! For God's sake stop.' All eyes 
 were directed that way ; when, to the astonishment of all, the 
 
 ing his confession, led many to doubt his guilt. He at length admitted 
 that he had made up his mind to suffer the punishment in order to 
 claim, upon conviction, a reward which had been offered, and hand it 
 to his starving wife, and children. Selections from the London Morning 
 Herald, vol. ii., p. 89.
 
 IRREMEDIABILITY. Ill 
 
 murdered Colvin was led into the ring-, presented to the sheriff, 
 recognised by the assembled neighbors, and greeted by Bourne, 
 with feelings better imagined than described ; and the people 
 doomed to return home in disappointment as some remarked, 
 ' without seeing the fun they anticipated.' 
 
 Had Colvin (says Mr. Balch) not been found, for he was in New 
 Jersey, or had some little hindrance delayed his arrival for a sin- 
 gle hour, an innocent man would have been hurried out of the 
 world as a felon, leaving a wife, and children, and friends, to 
 lament his untimely death ; humanity to weep over the mistakes, 
 and weaknesses, and cruelties, of human legislation ; and judges 
 and juries to reproach themselves for taking the fearful responsi- 
 bility of destroying a life which they could not restore when their 
 errors were clearly manifest. 
 
 Instances are not wanting where corrupt individu- 
 als have even complained of others for gain. This 
 practice became so prevalent in England, that it 
 attracted the attention of parliament. It was found 
 that, in 1830, there was paid 31,843 8s. 8d., being at 
 the .rate of 17 per head. This was very appropri- 
 ately called blood-money, and the individuals man- 
 hunters. It was really suggested that the Burkites, 
 who engaged to find subjects for dissection, might find 
 it more profitable to slay by due process of law ! Three 
 conspirators actually swore away the life of a poor 
 man for 40, which was, at the time, the reward for a 
 highway robber ! Alas ! what is there man will not 
 do for gold ! And how many have been sacrificed for 
 ambition ! Hecatombs of human victims have been 
 offered up on the altars of both ! 
 
 Passing over the fallibility of judges, let us look for 
 a moment at the liability of witnesses to be deceived, 
 or to perjure themseves, or to be corrupted by others. 
 'There is,' as Judge Hales observes, 'a charge that is
 
 112 IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 easily made, and difficult to be disproved, resting 
 solely upon the solitary oath of the prosecutrix.' How 
 many have fallen in this way, through revenge or 
 extortion ! Mr. Pollock relates an instance of this 
 kind, in which a man was tried for rape, and was 
 executed in forty-eight hours.* He was satisfied the 
 man was INNOCENT ! It is a maxim in law that a per- 
 son who has a pecuniary interest in a matter, is not a 
 competent witness, but the most depraved wretch that 
 ever bartered the remnant of a conscience for gold, is 
 permitted to give in evidence against a prisoner where 
 life is at stake. An instance is recorded where two 
 men were convicted of a highway robbery, and left 
 for execution, at Lancaster, England, upon the mock 
 charge of a villain. The diabolical contrivance was 
 discovered just in time to save their lives ! Four 
 others came near losing their lives in the case of a 
 blood-money conspiracy ! An instance occurred at the 
 trial of the Knapps, in Salem, Mass., a few years since. 
 A man was even brought to testify from the State 
 Prison. He was objected to by some. Hon. DANIEL 
 WEBSTER, who was secured as counsel, made the 
 remark, that truth was truth, if it came from the bot- 
 tomless pit !f And he was admitted. The remark is 
 correct, but it is a singular source to look for truth. 
 We might multiply facts, but we must find room for 
 
 * This seems to have been the usual time, in England, allotted to a 
 criminal, under sentence of death, unless the Sabbath intervened ; 
 and to give him a day longer, judges would often manage to pass sen- 
 tence on Friday ! 
 
 | This anecdote is given from the impression of the author, though 
 Mr. WEBSTER admitted to him that such a witness was present, but did 
 not distinctly recollect the remark here ascribed to him, though I was 
 at liberty to give it in this form.
 
 IRREMEDIABILITY. 113 
 
 several cases where the punishment of death has actu- 
 ally taken place. 
 
 EXECUTION OP THOMAS HARRIS FOR MURDER. 
 
 The individual kept a public house on the road to Newcastle 
 He employed a man and maid servant. James Gray, a blacksmith, 
 stopped there for the night. In the morning, he was found dead 
 in his bed. Morgan deposed that he found his master on the 
 stranger's bed, in the act of strangling him, and that he saw him, 
 through a key-hole, rifling his pockets. Harris denied the whole, 
 and was about being discharged, when the maid servant was called, 
 and she deposed that she saw her master take some gold, that 
 morning, and bury it in a private corner of the place. A constable 
 was despatched, and thirty pounds were found ! The accused 
 admitted the hiding, but gave his answers so unwillingly, that all 
 doubts of his guilt were removed. 
 
 Harris was brought to trial, and plead that the money was his 
 own, and that he buried it for security ; and that his behavior arose 
 from the shame of acknowledging his covetousness, and not from 
 guilt. The evidence was summed up, and in two minutes the jury 
 found a verdict of guilty ! 
 
 The truth came out, but too laje. Morgan the servant, and the 
 maid, were sweethearts. They both knew that their master hid 
 money in the garden, and both agreed, when it arose to a certain 
 sum, to plunder the hiding-place, and marry, and set up in busi- 
 ness. One day, Harris struck his servant Morgan, and he deter- 
 mined on revenge. James Gray arrived at this fatal period, and 
 Morgan found him dead the next morning. Morgan and the maid 
 agree to charge the murder upon their master. On the trial, the 
 girl, fearing that her paramour will be punished for perjury, con- 
 cludes to sacrifice the hidden money and her master, to save him. 
 
 The whole of this stupendous wickedness came to light in 1643, 
 in a quarrel between Morgan and the girl, who had lived together 
 as man and wife ever since the death of Harris. 
 
 The innocence of Harris was farther evident by its being found 
 that James Gray, the supposed murdered person, had had two 
 attacks of apoplexy, some months previous to his death, and that 
 he was never worth five pounds, at one time, in his life ! 
 10*
 
 114 IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 The following case, from a London paper, furnishes 
 the strongest arguments to the friends of the abolition 
 of Capital Punishment. At the Surrey Sessions, Mr. 
 Charnoch, who was engaged to defend a prisoner on 
 circumstantial evidence, said such evidence was al- 
 ways dangerous to conviction, and cited the following 
 illustration : 
 
 EXECUTION OF A FARMER FOR THE MURDER OF HIS NIECE. 
 
 A farmer, who was left executor and guardian, was indicted for 
 the wilful murder of his niece. A serious quarrel took place 
 between them, and the farmer was heard to say that his niece would 
 not live to enjoy her property. Soon after, she was missed. 
 Rumors were quickly spread that she was murdered by her guar- 
 dian. On being apprehended, blood was found upon his clothes. 
 The judge was persuaded to postpone the trial, and the most stren- 
 uous exertions were made to find the niece, but in vain ! The 
 prisoner, to save his life, resorted to a step which procured his con- 
 demnation and execution within forty-eight hours after his trial. 
 A young lady was produced, exactly resembling the supposed mur- 
 dered female. Her height, age, complexion and voice were so 
 similar that the witnesses swore to the identity. An intimation was 
 given that the female was not the niece. By skilful cross-exami- 
 nation, the artifice was detected, and the unfortunate man was 
 hung. The unhappy convict declared his innocence, but was re- 
 buked by the clergyman for his hardihood. 
 
 In two years after, the niece made her appearance, and claimed 
 the property. It appeared that, the day after the fatal quarrel, she 
 eloped with a stranger to whom she was attached, and she had not 
 been heard of till her unexpected return, and that, by mere acci- 
 dent, she had heard of her uncle's execution. 
 
 On looking over the popular work, just issued from 
 the pen of Mrs. CHILD, entitled ' Letters from New 
 York,' we found two cases. They show very conclu- 
 sively the awful results that flow from our present
 
 IRREMEDIABILIT Y. 115 
 
 law. The case of the poor German is indeed very 
 touching, and is related with the spirit and vigor 
 which characterizes all the productions of the fair 
 authoress : 
 
 EXECUTION OF A POOR GERMAN FOR MURDER. 
 
 A few years ago, a poor German came to New York, and took 
 lodgings, where he was allowed to do his cooking in the same room 
 with the family. The husband and wife lived in a perpetual quar- 
 rel. One day, the German came into the kitchen, with a clasp- 
 knife and a pan of potatoes, and began to pare them for his dinner. 
 The quarrelsome couple were in a more violent altercation than 
 usual, but he sat with his back towards them, and, being ignorant 
 of their language, felt in no danger of being involved in their dis- 
 putes. Ifcit the woman, with a sudden and unexpected movement, 
 snatched the knife from his hand, and plunged it into her husband's 
 heart. She had sufficient presence of mind to rush into the street, 
 and scream murder. The poor foreigner, in the mean while, seeing 
 the wounded man reel, sprang forward to catch him in his arms, 
 and drew out the knife. People from the street crowded in, and 
 found him with the dying man in his arms, the knife in his hand, 
 and blood upon his clothes. The wicked woman swore, in her 
 most positive terms, that he had been fighting with her husband, 
 and had stabbed him with a knife he always carried. The unfor- 
 tunate German knew too little English to understand her accusa- 
 tion, or to tell his own story. He was dragged off to prison, and 
 the true state of the case was made known through an interpreter ; 
 but it was not believed. Circumstantial evidence was exceedingly 
 strong against the accused, and the real criminal swore that she 
 saw him commit the murder. He was executed, notwithstanding 
 the most persevering efforts of his lawyer, John Anthon, Esq., 
 whose convictions of the man's innocence were so painfully strong, 
 that, from that day to this, he has refused to have any connection 
 with a capital case. Some years after this tragic event, the woman 
 died, and, on her death-bed, confessed her agency in the diabolical 
 transaction ; but her poor victim could receive no benefit from this 
 tardy repentance. Society had wantonly thrown away its power to 
 atone for the grievous wrong.
 
 116 IRREMEtUABILITV. 
 
 The following, from the same pen, is indeed affect- 
 ing. The magnanimous conduct of the poor con- 
 demned Burton, to save his loved-one, is finely pre- 
 sented ; and also his effort to take his own life, which 
 was prevented for the cruel purpose of taking it away 
 according to law : 
 
 TRAGICAL FATE OF BURTON, ft* MISSOURI. 
 
 A young lady, belonging to a genteel and very proud family in 
 Missouri, was beloved by a young man named Burton ; but, unfor- 
 tunately, her affections were fixed on another, less worthy. He 
 left her with a tarnished reputation. She was by nature energetic 
 and high-spirited ; her family were proud, and she lived in the 
 midst of a society which considered revenge a virtue, and named it 
 honor. Misled by this false popular sentiment, and her own ex- 
 cited feelings, she resolved to repay her lover's treachery with death. 
 But she kept her secret so well that no one suspected her purpose, 
 though she purchased pistols, and practised with them daily. Mr. 
 Burton gave evidence of his strong attachment by renewing his 
 attentions when the world looked most coldly upon her. His 
 generous kindness won her bleeding heart, but the softening influ- 
 ence of love did not lead her to forego the dreadful purpose she 
 had formed. She watched for a favorable opportunity, and shot 
 her betrayer when no one was near to witness the horrible deed. 
 Some little incident excited the suspicion of Burton, and he induced 
 her to confess to him the whole transaction. It was obvious enough 
 that suspicion would naturally fasten upon him, the well-known 
 lover of her who had been so deeply injured. He was arrested, 
 but succeeded in persuading her that he was in no danger. Circum- 
 stantial evidence was fearfully against him, and he soon saw that 
 his chance was doubtful ; but with affectionate magnanimity he 
 concealed this from her. He was convicted and condemned. A 
 short time before the execution, he endeavored to cut his throat; 
 but his life was saved for the cruel purpose of taking it away accor- 
 ding to the cold-blooded barbarism of thb law. Pale and wounded, 
 he was hoisted to the gallows, before the gaze of a Christian com- 
 munity. The guilty cause of all this was almost frantic when she 
 found that ho had thus sacrificed himself to save her. She imme-
 
 IRREMEDIABILITY. 117 
 
 diately published the whole history of her wrongs and her revenge. 
 Her keen sense of wounded honor was in accordance with public 
 sentiment ; her wrongs excited indignation and compassion, and 
 the knowledge that an innocent and magnanimous man had been so 
 brutally treated, excited a general revulsion of popular feeling. 
 No one wished for another victim, and she was left unpunished, 
 save by the dreadful records of her memory. 
 
 It is related by Dymond, in his Essays on the Prin- 
 ciples of Morality, that, at one assizes, he believed that 
 not less than six innocent persons were hanged. 
 
 The following deplorable instance of rape and mur- 
 der is given by Dr. SMOLLET. It goes far to confirm 
 the view which we have maintained, that public exe- 
 cutions have no good effect upon spectators, for here 
 the real criminals actually assisted on the occasion : 
 
 'The victim was an unfortunate woman, in the 
 neighborhood of London. The real criminals assisted 
 at the execution, and heard the innocent man appeal 
 to heaven, while they, in the character of friends, 
 embraced him as he stood on the brink of eternity.'* 
 
 The following instances are from a speech made by 
 O'CoNNELL, before the London Society for the diffusion 
 of information on the subject of Capital Punishment. 
 And as, at this present crisis, everything from him 
 attracts the notice of the civilized world, and as all 
 true philanthropists are looking to him, in his mighty 
 efforts for the cause of humanity, we give the lan- 
 guage ascribed to him : 
 
 ' He had long been deeply impressed with the con- 
 viction that Capital Punishment ought to be entirely 
 abolished. He could not forget that ' Vengeance is 
 
 * History of England, vol. iii., p. 318.
 
 118 IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay it.' Perhaps it 
 was by the impulse of feeling, and what he conceived 
 to be humanity, that, in the early part of his life, he 
 was brought to this conviction; but long, and he 
 might venture to say, great experience in the criminal 
 law for no advocate, at least in his own country, had 
 the miserable boast which he could make of the 
 frequency of his practice in that branch that expe- 
 rience had confirmed him in his opinion, that there 
 should not be in man the power of extinguishing 
 human life, because the result was irreparable; be- 
 cause the injury could not be compensated which 
 might be done, if the beings were not infallible who 
 inflicted the punishment ; (and where should we find 
 such ?) and, because, while we thought we were vin- 
 dicating the law of society, we might be committing 
 the greatest outrage that could be perpetrated upon our 
 fellow-creatures. The honorable and learned gentle- 
 man who spoke last, shuddered at the death even of a 
 criminal ; but what would have been his feelings if he 
 had witnessed, as he had, the execution of the inno- 
 cent ! ' 
 
 EXECUTION OF TWO BROTHERS FOR ROBBERY. 
 
 One of the first events which struck him when he was rising 
 into life, was seeing a gentleman who had forsaken society, and 
 thrown himself into a mountain lodge, abandoning the intercourse 
 of men, and wandering about like a troubled spirit, a willing out- 
 law, and an outcast from the social state. He inquired the cause, 
 and learned that it originated in these circumstances : Two men 
 got into his bed-room at night, and robbed him, but did not treat 
 him with any brutality. He prosecuted two brothers for the crime ; 
 and they, being unprepared with any defence, from a consciousness 
 of their innocence, were convicted and executed. Not a fortnight 
 after they had been laid in the grave, in the presence of theii
 
 IRREMEDIABILITY. 119 
 
 father, and amidst the tears of their broken-hearted mother, the 
 gentleman discovered his total mistake ! 
 
 Mr. O'Connell said he would mention another in- 
 stance, of which he had a personal knowledge : 
 
 EXECUTION OF THREE BROTHERS FOR MURDER. 
 
 He defended three brothers who were indicted for murder ; and 
 the judge having a leaning, as was not unusual in such cases, to 
 , the side of the crown prosecution, almost compelled the jury to 
 convict. He sat at his window as the men passed by, after receiv- 
 ing sentence. A military guard was placed over them, and it was 
 positively forbidden that any one should have any intercourse with 
 them. He saw their mother, strong in her affections, break 
 through the guard, which was sufficient to resist any male force 
 he saw her clasp her eldest son, who was but twenty-two years of 
 age he saw her cling to her second , who was but twenty and he 
 saw her faint as she clasped the neck of her youngest boy, who 
 was but eighteen. 
 
 Instead of giving our views, we prefer to give the 
 reflections of O'Connell himself. He asked 'What 
 compensation could be given for such agony, and for 
 such a sacrifice of human life as that?' After citing 
 another case, of one who was saved from an execu- 
 tion by his efforts, he proceeds : 
 
 c He mentioned these facts to show with what 
 extreme caution any one should do that which was 
 irrevocable. When we recollected that, in criminal 
 cases, a prisoner was almost shut out from making 
 any defence ; and that, in cases of circumstantial evi- 
 dence, men were convicted, not upon facts, but upon 
 reasonings and deductions ; when we recollected that 
 the criminal law permitted the counsel for the crown 
 to aggravate the impression against the prisoner, and
 
 120 IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 prohibited his counsel from opening his mouth in his 
 defence, it might be said, without much exaggera- 
 tion, that such a code was written in letters of blood. 
 Was this England, the first country in the world for 
 the love of liberty, and the encouragement of all the 
 arts which adorn civilization and morality 1 Was this 
 the country where, if a man had five pounds at stake, 
 he might employ ten or twenty counsel to speak for 
 him as long as they liked ; but, when his life was 
 in jeopardy, the law said, "The counsel against you' 
 shall speak in aggravation of the charge ; but the lips 
 of your counsel shall be sealed!" Up to the present 
 moment, that horrible state of the law continued. He 
 was firmly persuaded that if he had been entitled to 
 speak on behalf of those three brothers feeble as 
 might be his advocacy, perhaps his heart would have 
 aided his judgment, and given him an inspiration 
 beyond the natural dulness of his disposition he felt 
 that he would have made it impossible for any jury to 
 convict. If the punishment of these three brothers had 
 not been incapable of being recalled, they might have 
 been restored to their family ; and the mother, who 
 wept over their grave, might have been borne in 
 decency to her tomb by those over whose premature 
 death she mourned.'* 
 
 We can add nothing to such eloquent, burning lan- 
 guage. It is the true, the lion-hearted O'Connell who 
 speaks. The voice comes across the Atlantic from 
 the old world. It is a VOICE FROM IRELAND ! And it 
 comes not from one who speaks from mere theory, but 
 from one who has felt, who has seen, the innocent 
 
 * See Herald of Peace for April, May and June. London : 1832.
 
 IRREMEDI ABILITY. 121 
 
 suffer ; who even, while sitting at his window, actu- 
 ally saw the distracted mother as she broke through 
 the guard to embrace her innocent children on their 
 way to the scaffold ! 
 
 What a thrilling scene ! This fact alone should 
 make the whole civilized world pause and tremble, lest 
 another innocent victim should be sacrificed upon the 
 altar of this bloody law ! And how many have fallen ! 
 Rev. Mr. Chapin says, 'it has been estimated that there 
 are over one hundred ! ' How many more, is known 
 only to him who is the Great Searcher of hearts. 
 What a dark catalogue ! How many griefs and tears ! 
 How many broken hearts ! How many distracted, 
 ruined families ! And yet, how many lift up their 
 voice, even now, in favor of blood ! And when we 
 turn now to distracted, oppressed Ireland, in her 
 ardent struggles for liberty, how solemn is her voice, 
 as it comes to us from her ' great Agitator ! ' Even 
 now, he is arraigned for conspiracy, in charges which 
 have occupied seventy hours in reading ! And who can 
 tell, who can predict, her fate ? The law of death still 
 exists the bloody axe is lifted up ! She may yet add 
 another to the long list of those who have fallen vic- 
 tims to the punishment of death ! Heaven spare her 
 from such a fate ! 
 
 11
 
 PART II. 
 
 SACRED SCRIPTURES,
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 Scriptures Dominion not given to man over man First murder in 
 first family Lamech Abimelech The Sacrifice Murder of Abel 
 Address of Deity Omniscience of Deity Life inviolable Ob- 
 jection Anecdote of Biron Immutable distinctions Strength of 
 the argument Reflections First and last murder. 
 
 Life is not to be taken, even for life. From beneath that rainbow 
 arc, and from the ashes of martyred Abel, and from the stamped fore- 
 head of Cain, is proclaimed to the magistrate and the criminal, to the 
 murderer in his bloody purpose, and the judge in his fearful decision, 
 ' Thou shall not kill ! ' E. H. CHAPIK. 
 
 HAVING presented various facts and arguments from 
 history and observation, we now approach the sacred 
 volume; that volume which must decide all moral 
 questions, and by which every system of Moral Phi- 
 losophy is to be tried. Let us go then to its sacred 
 pages, solemnly and reverently asking for light from 
 Him who is the source of all moral and spiritual light ; 
 to Him who ' in the beginning created the heavens 
 and the earth ;' who said, ' Let us make man in our 
 own image.' 
 
 Having finished our fair world and placed man ' to 
 replenish and subdue it, He saw it was very good.' 
 And ' the morning stars sang together, and all the sons 
 of God shouted for joy.' 
 
 Such was the work of creation. God gave man 
 ' dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls 
 of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth,
 
 126 CAIN. 
 
 and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
 earth.' But man has extended that dominion over his 
 fellow-man, and marred the image of God. Instead 
 of making the earth to bloom and bud, he has strewn 
 its surface with dungeons and gibbets, and made it a 
 vast charnel house ! From the hour that Abel fell, to 
 the present, man has imbrued his hands in the blood 
 of his fellow-man. 
 
 Let us then turn back the page of history, and look 
 into the first family that inhabited our fair world. 
 What an interesting period ! The first family ! We 
 need not go to the garden and witness their temptation 
 and moral degradation, for our plan leads us to their 
 subsequent history, as they walk forth, driven from 
 Paradise, laden with guilt and sorrow. As we follow 
 them in the mind's eye, how anxiously we desire that 
 they may find rest and peace. But O ! the mutability 
 of all earthly things ! For lo ! a murder even by 
 their first-born ! A brother stricken down by the hand 
 of a brother ! What sorrow must have rent their 
 hearts as they beheld the stiffened corse of Abel ! 
 What a scene ! The first murder in the first family ! 
 Scarcely had the plough turned a furrow, ere the earth 
 drank in the blood of one of her sons ! How dark the 
 prospect of our race at that period ! * How foul the 
 
 * Pursuing sacred history, we find Lamech, the father of Noah, was a 
 murderer, and yet life was still held inviolable. And, in addition to 
 this, he was the first bigamist ; for we are told that Lamech said unto 
 his wives, Adah and Zillah, ' Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, 
 hearken unto my speech ; for I have slain a man to my wounding, and 
 a young man to my hurt : if Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, truly 
 Lamech seventy-and-seven-fold.' 
 
 Pursuing history still farther, we find that the punishment of death 
 originated with Abimelech, Gen. xxvi. 11. To secure Isaac and his 
 wife after their prevarication, in which he had said, ' She is my sister,'
 
 CAIN. 127 
 
 deed ! How cruel the motive ! ' because his own 
 works were evil, and his brother's righteous.' Here 
 we see the foul demon, envy, not content with driving 
 the first pair from Paradise, but even alluring their 
 first-born from the path of virtue ! How insinuating, 
 how wily his arts! He even goes to the altar and 
 sows there, with a sacrilegious hand, the seeds of 
 discord ! 
 
 How simple, how artless the account ! ' And in 
 process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of 
 the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And 
 Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and 
 of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto 
 Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and to his 
 offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, 
 and his countenance fell.' How early in the history 
 of our race did passion triumph over reason ! Behold 
 the calmness of the Great Supreme, as he addresses the 
 murderer ! ' And the Lord said unto Cain, why art 
 thou wroth ? and why is thy countenance fallen ? If 
 thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ? and if 
 thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto 
 thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.' 
 How calmly ! how deliberately did Cain lift his mur- 
 derous arm against his brother! 'And Cain talked 
 with Abel his brother, and it came to pass, when they 
 were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his 
 brother and slew him.' Again Heaven speaks, and in 
 the same calm tone ! ' And the Lord said unto Cain, 
 where is Abel thy brother 1 ' What a question to a 
 
 Abimelech, after stating what might have been the consequences, 
 ' charged all his people, saying, he that toucheth this man or his wife, 
 shall surely be put to death.'
 
 128 CAIN. 
 
 brother ! How direct ! Now see how the demon leads 
 on his miserable victim. Not content with murder, he 
 drives him to falsehood and deception ! There is a 
 dreadful connection between the vices, and a beautiful 
 connection between the virtues. He who ascends but 
 a single step may reach the highest point in moral 
 excellence. He who descends may reach the lowest 
 depths of depravity ! The history of man confirms 
 this remark. It is a great moral truth of the utmost 
 moment. How early was it revealed in the moral 
 world ! How little has it been heeded ! It is inwoven 
 in the very texture of things. And how inseparably 
 connected are vice and wretchedness, and virtue and 
 happiness ! 
 
 Cain even imagines that he may deceive God him- 
 self! 'He said, I know not. Am I my brother's 
 keeper ? ' How natural for him who has deceived 
 himself, to think that he can deceive others, even the 
 Great Searcher of hearts ! But the same kind voice 
 speaks. The Great Father does not forsake the mur- 
 derer, though the murderer has forsaken him ! 
 
 There is no solemn mockery of a trial. The sin is 
 laid to his charge. ' What hast tbou done ? The voice 
 of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.' 
 There is indeed a voice in blood. The great, the 
 solemn, the perpetual, the universal mandate has gone 
 forth from the Great Legislator of the universe, ' Thou 
 shall not kill ! ' Blood doth indeed cry from the ground. 
 The murderer may bury his victim deep, but there is 
 an eye that sees him ; there is one who has said of the 
 wicked, ' Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine 
 hand take them; though they climb up to heaven,- 
 thence will I bring them down.' His eye is not dim 
 that he cannot see, nor his ear heavy that he cannot
 
 CAIN. 129 
 
 hear. And He who made man in his own image, will 
 ever regard that image with tenderness and love. Life 
 is sacred, inviolable; and he who destroys that life 
 will he held accountable. And yet how slowly does 
 man learn this great truth! Earth's fairest scenes 
 have been reddened with blood ; her mountains have 
 been stained with human gore, her valleys have been 
 rivers of blood, and her streams have been polluted, 
 and she has been a vast slaughter-house.* 
 
 There was no trial, we have said; there were no 
 witnesses, no judge with his ermine robe, no gathering 
 of spectators, no prison, no fetters forged for the cul- 
 prit. No. The Great Lawgiver himself presided, and 
 pronounced the sentence. And what a lesson of calm- 
 ness ! What mingling of mercy and justice ! And 
 what a beautiful example for legislation in all ages ! 
 
 We have seen the deed; we have learned the motive, 
 and now the sentence! 'And now art thou cursed 
 from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive 
 thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest 
 the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her 
 strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in 
 the earth.' Life and liberty are both held sacred. 
 The murderer might wander upon the earth. If he 
 who had reddened its surface with a brother's blood 
 should turn to it, it should not yield unto him its 
 strength. And so it ever will be with the murderer. 
 He may walk forth upon the earth, but briars and 
 thorns will spring up in his path, and at every step his 
 victim will ever be before him. No wonder Cain said, 
 
 * Dick has made an estimate in one of his works, that as many have 
 been slain by human violence, as would fill eighteen worlds like our 
 own!
 
 130 CAIN. 
 
 ' My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold ! 
 Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the 
 earth ; and from thy face shall I be hid ; and I shall be 
 a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass 
 that every one that findeth me shall slay me.' The 
 poet has admirably presented the feelings of Cain in the 
 following lines : 
 
 To the broad earth's farthest range 
 
 Me the Almighty's curse has driven,. 
 
 My crime pursues me everywhere, 
 
 And ' Vengeance ! Vengeance ! ' cries to heaven. 
 
 Wo is me ! my brother's blood 
 
 Echoes through the wild sea-shore ; 
 
 It murmurs in the hollow blast, 
 
 It thunders in the torrent's roar. WHITEHOUSE. 
 
 What an instinct in man, that leads him to fear from 
 society the same evil that he has inflicted upon another ! 
 And this is the punishment of the transgressor. It is 
 one of the moral laws of God's universe. It accords 
 with the experience of every human being. An argu- 
 ment has been founded on this fact in ojur nature in 
 favor of the Punishment of Death. But the Author of 
 our being is not governed by our fears or our instinct. 
 'My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways 
 your ways,' saith Jehovah. Christianity is our light 
 and our guide ; arid while the criminal may fear from 
 society an infliction of the same evil that he has com- 
 mitted upon others, still it tells him that the age of 
 retaliation is past. It is no longer ' an eye for an eye,' 
 Still justice reigns, and terror and misery will follow 
 in his steps. He will say in the morning, ' would to 
 God it were even ! and at even, would to God it were 
 morning! for the fear of his heart wherewith he
 
 CAIN. 131 
 
 shall fear, and for the sight of his eyes which he 
 shall see.' 
 
 It may be said, if we remove the gallows, there 
 is no terror. Was there no terror to Cain? Has 
 human nature altered? Is there nothing in a guilty 
 conscience? Let us beware how we turn men from 
 themselves. Let us show them there is a hell within ; 
 that in the very act of doing wrong, they kindle a fire 
 in their own hearts, a worse hell than ever poets or 
 divines imagined. And while we teach the sanctity 
 of life, let us show that misery must follow in the path 
 of wickedness. Any other doctrine is fraught with 
 danger to the community. The author of Lacon has 
 spoken very aptly on this subject. ' That the wicked 
 prosper in the world, that they come into no misfortune 
 like other folk, neither are they plagued like other 
 men, is a doctrine that divines should not broach too 
 frequently in the present day. For there are some so 
 completely absorbed in present things, that they would 
 subscribe to that blind and blasphemous wish of the 
 marshal and duke of Biron, who, on hearing an eccle- 
 siastic observe that those whom God hath forsaken 
 and deserted as incorrigible, were permitted their full 
 swing of worldly pleasures, the gratification of all 
 their passions, and a long life of sensuality, affluence, 
 and indulgence, immediately replied, " that he should 
 be most happy to be so forsaken.'" 
 
 Amidst all the guilt and sufferings of the murderer, 
 still both life and liberty were held sacred. ' And the 
 Lord said unto him, Therefore, whosoever slayeth him, 
 vengeance shall be taken on him seven-fold. And the 
 Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should 
 kill him.' How remarkable ! The first law on record 
 against murder, is to preserve the life of the murderer
 
 132 CAIN. 
 
 himself! If the gallows is so sanctifying, why was it 
 not reared at that early period in the history of man ? 
 
 It may be said there was no express law against 
 crime ; and ' where there is no law, there is no trans- 
 gression.' There was no law written upon stone, but 
 there was one written deep upon the human soul. 
 There is, however, an eternal and immutable distinc- 
 tion between virtue and vice, truth and falsehood. It 
 is an eternal law of nature that man shall not kill. It 
 did not begin to be a law when first revealed, but it 
 was so from the beginning. When the commands 
 were given upon Mount Sinai, they were only a tran- 
 script from the great Original Mind, of what had 
 always been right. Let all written laws against crime 
 be abolished, and yet it would be wrong to commit 
 them. We will give a single illustration. Were all 
 human statutes, or even divine, respecting fraud, injus- 
 tice, or cruelty, to be struck out of being, still it would 
 be as wrong to steal or murder, as if we had ten thou- 
 sand more laws enacted. Truth is truth, right is right, 
 independent of all laws. 1 * 
 
 But to return. Such is the account of the first mur- 
 der, the motive by which it was prompted, the manner 
 in which it took place, the trial of the parricide, the 
 sentence and the Judge. And how many solemn 
 thoughts rush into the mind ! We behold the progeni- 
 tors of our race driven from Paradise, laden with guilt 
 
 * The author could not be expected, in a work of this nature, to enter 
 into a dissertation on the doctrine of Immutable Distinctions. He 
 refers the reader to the writings of DUGALD STEWART and BROWN. 
 and especially to the invaluable work of Dr. SAMUEL CLARKE, enti- 
 tled, 'A discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the 
 obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the 
 Christian Revelation,' vol. ii. p. 37, London. 1725.
 
 CAIN. 133 
 
 and borne down with sorrow. We behold them as they 
 clasp their first-born ! Then a few short years, and 
 what a scene meets their eyes ! Their first-born a mur- 
 derer ! We follow them as they stand over the body of 
 martyred Abel ! as they compose his cold limbs and 
 lay them ' into the first grave dug for mortality ! ' And 
 how many moral truths does this scene present to the 
 reflecting mind ! And were it our province, gladly 
 would we present them. But we revert to the history 
 to learn the fate of the murderer, and what an argu- 
 ment against the shedding of blood ! Who can gain- 
 say it? And here the great fact stands, that life is 
 inviolable, that even the days of the murderer are too 
 sacred to be shortened ! And here it ever will stand 
 as one of the planets in the firmament of revealed 
 truth ! It stands for the guidance of all legislators ! 
 It stands forever as a bow in God's universe, as an 
 oasis in a desert. And when the hand that pens these 
 lines shall be motionless in the grave, and others shall 
 plead for the sanctity of human life, here will be found 
 that great truth stamped with the broad seal of Je- 
 hovah. We love to linger here and contemplate this 
 bright truth, this truth on which rests the temporal hap- 
 piness of a world ! But we must close. Other scenes 
 invite our attention. We have opened the volume of 
 inspiration, and we must follow it as it leads us on to 
 other times and other events. And we finish with a 
 single reflection. 
 
 The first murder ! How many thoughts are awak- 
 ened by that expression ! The first murder, and 
 that a brother, and in the first family that trod our 
 fair earth ! How ardently does the philanthropist 
 look forward to the last murder ! To that quiet and 
 beautiful period when the earth shall no longer drink 
 12
 
 134 CAIN 
 
 in the blood of her children ; when superstition and 
 ignorance, pride and passion, bloodshed and misery, 
 will yield before the dominion of the Prince of Peace ; 
 when the hand of cultivation shall spread bloom and 
 beauty through all the valleys, and up the sides of 
 every hill and mountain, and over all the continents 
 and islands of the earth, till at last the Prince of Peace 
 will sit upon his throne, the grand pacificator and 
 restorer of a world ! How glorious !
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 Importance of the argument Cheever's view Confounded with 
 Mosaic code Cain's sentence experimental Reply The deluge 
 The promise Rainbow Translation Septuagint Vulgate 
 Le Clerc Calvin Upham A prediction Cheever's ridicule 
 Sanctity of life Chopin's view Patriarchal age Illustration 
 from Jesus The revelator Debate in Windward Islands. 
 
 ' We regard it as merely expressive of a great retributive fact in 
 nature, and in the overruling Providence of God, that he, who design- 
 edly and wickedly takes human life, shall, assuredly, in some way or 
 other, meet with severe punishment, and will probably come to a vio- 
 lent end.' T. C. UPHAM ; Manual of Peace, p. 219. 
 
 WE have now reached a very important part of our 
 labor ; a portion of Scripture on which the advocates 
 for the punishment of death place great confidence. 
 The Rev. Mr. Cheever calls it ' the citadel of the argu- 
 ment, commanding and sweeping the whole subject.' 
 
 ' The hand,' he continues, ' that drew the rainbow 
 over the sky, in sign " that storms prepare to part," 
 wrote this statute in lines no more to be effaced till 
 the destruction of all things, than the colors of the 
 rainbow can be blotted from the sky, while lasts the 
 constitution of this physical universe. And, as in 
 every conflict of the elements that might fill men's 
 souls with terror of another deluge, this bow of mercy, 
 this vision of delight, should span the clouds with the 
 glittering arch, so, in every storm of human passion, 
 that rises to the violence of death, this statute, as a
 
 136 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 bow of promise, is God's assurance to the world, 
 against the anarchy of murder. There probably never 
 was an instance of murder in the Christian world, in 
 which men did not think of it ; nor ever an instance in 
 the heathen world, in which the voice of conscience 
 did not echo its assurance. As it stands in the Scrip- 
 tures, it is one of the planets in- the firmament of re- 
 vealed truth ; to strike it out from its place, and from its 
 authority for the guidance of human legislation, would 
 be like striking the constellation of the Pleiades, or the 
 bright North Star, from heaven. A great writer has 
 said, with most profound wisdom, that it is only by 
 celestial observations that terrestrial charts can be ac- 
 curately constructed ; and so, it is only by the divine 
 light that comes down from these divine statutes, that 
 human legislation can be perfected ; it is only by com- 
 parison with these statutes, that the mistakes of human 
 prejudice or ignorance can be detected and adjusted. 
 Sure we are, that, on the ocean of human passion, 
 neither states nor individuals can be safe, but by 
 charts, mapped and marked beneath the light of these 
 enactments. It is light, like that of the planets, has 
 travelled unaltered and unabated across the storms 
 and changes of thousands of years ; and still it shines, 
 and still will it shine to the end of the world; for 
 as sure as we are that a God of mercy gave this com- 
 prehensive element of law to Noah, so sure we are 
 that he will never suffer it to be blotted from human 
 statute books by the presumptuous tampering of a 
 single generation.'* 
 Such is the boasting, extravagant manner in which 
 
 * The argument of Rev. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, in reply to J. L 
 
 N, Esq., p. 39. New York : 1843.
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 137 
 
 this reverend divine speaks of the covenant of Noah. 
 He even goes farther, and endeavors to show that it 
 is inhuman to strike out the penalty of death. This 
 is only a reiteration of the same argument that has 
 always been employed by the advocates of sanguinary 
 laws. But this will be more fully met in our review 
 of the objections at the close of the work. 
 
 Let us take a general view of the use made of this 
 covenant. We find that many writers confound it 
 with the Mosaic code, which was not given till nearly 
 a thousand years after. Strictly speaking, the passage 
 on which we are now commenting was not a code. 
 It was a law or prophecy connected with regulations 
 of another kind. The advocates for the Punishment 
 of Death often use it both as a command and prophecy. 
 But the most singular reason for this covenant is that 
 given by the Rev. Mr. Cheever, in the introduction of 
 his reply to O'Sullivan. ' I have argued that in con- 
 sequence of the divine lenity in the case of Cain, the 
 crime of murder had become frightfully common, the 
 earth being filled with violence. The assurance that 
 his own life would not be taken, with which Lamech, 
 whether a murderer or a homicide, comforted himself 
 and his wives by the example of Cain's preservation, 
 shows how men reasoned from that lenity ; and that 
 the consequence of it would be a great cheapness in 
 the estimate of human life, a great freedom in the 
 indulgence of violent passion, unrestrained by conse- 
 quences, and a perfect carelessness and recklessness in 
 bloodshed.' Indeed, then, the Deity must have been 
 a poor legislator ! What a mistake ! How short- 
 sighted ! Not to see that, even in a period scarcely 
 covering the life of a patriarch, in passing sentence 
 upon Cain, the result would be ' a great cheapness in 
 12*
 
 138 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 the estimate of human life,' a perfect carelessness 
 and recklessness in blood-shed ! ' And pray what 
 certainty have we, on this ground, that, in future 
 legislation, God may not make a similar mistake ! 
 And how are we to know but he has been mistaken in 
 every age, and that even in sending Christianity from 
 heaven, He may fail in making it effectual in the 
 redemption of man ! But we cannot pursue this au- 
 thor in such a strain of remark. The idea that God 
 was thus trying, as it were, the experiment of dispens- 
 ing with Capital Punishment, for the experimental 
 instruction of the human race itself, certainly seems 
 puerile and absurd in the extreme. 
 
 Let us look at the circumstances connected with this 
 passage. Its history is solemn and unspeakably impor- 
 tant. ' The earth was filled with violence.' ' All in 
 whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in 
 the dry land died.' . . ' Noah only remained alive, 
 and they that were with him in the ark.' What a 
 melancholy scene ! What a wild waste of waters ! 
 How dark the prospect of our race at that period ! 
 
 At last, 'the windows of heaven were stopped,' 
 and the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. 
 ' The dove was sent forth, and she comes, and lo ! an 
 olive leaf plucked off ! So Noah knew that the waters 
 were abated from off the earth.' ' And Noah went 
 forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives 
 with him.' And, as they went, Heaven sent forth the 
 gracious promise : ' While the earth remaineth, seed 
 time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and 
 winter, and day and night, shall not cease.' What 
 a beautiful promise ! How interesting the circum- 
 stances ! 
 
 Now, as the last wave of the deluge swept over the
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 earth, and man was again to re-people its surface, God 
 establishes his covenant with his chosen servant. 
 ' And the fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be 
 upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of 
 the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon 
 all the fishes of the sea ; into your hand are they 
 delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be 
 meat for you ; even as the green herb have I given 
 you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which 
 is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your 
 blood of your lives will I require : at the hand of every 
 beast will I require it, and at the hand of man ; at the 
 hand of every man's brother will I require the life of 
 man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
 blood be shed ; for in the image of God made he man.'* 
 Then was established the token of the covenant, ' the 
 bow in the cloud.' And in no age has there been a 
 cloud so dark that the great Father could not paint 
 his bow there ! And, as ages have swept over our 
 earth, as storms have beat upon it, man has ever been 
 able, amid all his sorrows and trials, to feel, as he 
 lifted his eyes toward heaven, ' that the waters should 
 no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.' Such is 
 the history of the covenant with Noah. Let us pro- 
 ceed to discover its true meaning. And if we can but 
 show, by fair interpretation, that it does not sanction 
 the law of the Punishment of Death, then its advocates 
 must remain content; for here, Mr. Cheever says, is 
 the citadel of the argument ; ' all else is a mere gue- 
 rilla warfare, if you cannot carry this entrenchment.' 
 To give our remarks order and precision, we will pre- 
 sent them under two different views. 
 
 * Gen. ix. 26.
 
 140 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 I. The true rendering. 
 
 II. A prophetic warning. 
 
 I. The true rendering. Some commentators have 
 given a different view from our common English trans- 
 lation. We might not have noticed this fact, were it 
 not that they believed in the punishment of death. 
 No one will doubt this remark in relation to Calvin ; 
 for the cruel death of Servetus evidently shows that 
 he was both theoretically and practically in favor of 
 such a form of punishment; and his history adds 
 another to the long, dark catalogue of facts, showing 
 the perverted use that may be made of the Punishment 
 of Death. Both spiritual and political despots have 
 ever found it a weapon ready prepared at their hands. 
 
 Mr. Rantoul, to whom we are greatly indebted for 
 many valuable facts, says, ' that the Hebrew parti- 
 ciple translated "whoso sheddeth," answers to our 
 English word "shedding," and might, with quite as 
 much or more propriety, be rendered "whatsoever 
 sheddeth:" and the grammatical construction will be 
 consulted by substituting " its" for " his." The clause 
 will then read, " whatsoever sheddeth man's blood, 
 by man shall its blood be shed." '* He then shows 
 that this rendering makes it consistent with the con- 
 text, which was to show the sanctity of human life. 
 ' The fear and dread of man shall be upon every 
 beast. The beasts may be eaten for food, but not with 
 the sacred principle of life, the blood ; for life is 
 sacred, and if your blood of your lives shall in any 
 case be shed, I will require a strict account of it, 
 Avhcther it be shed by beast or man. I will myself 
 call to a strict account the man who shall shed the 
 
 * See Report made to the Massachusetts Legislature, 1836, p. 79.
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 141 
 
 blood of his brother, but if a beast has shed man's 
 blood, by man let that beast be slain, because that 
 beast has profanely marred the image of God in the 
 human frame.' Mr. O' Sullivan says the literal ren- 
 dering is, ' Shedding blood of man in man his (or its) 
 blood will be shed.' He then endeavors to show the 
 difficulties attending the common translation. He, 
 however, does not rest his argument upon the mere 
 rendering of the passage. ' That of the Septuagint 
 would alone suffice, as it is not to be supposed that 
 the seventy-two learned Jews of Alexandria, two hun- 
 dred and eighty-seven years before Christ, would 
 have misunderstood the Hebrew expression ; and their 
 rendering into Greek is : *o ac^ea? a/p Wftntv, <W) TQU 
 nlfMTot AUTOV t*xMffvvM. " Whoso sheddeth a man's blood, 
 for his blood (i. e. the blood of the slain) will 
 have his own shed." So also the Samaritan version, 
 as rendered into Latin, has it, "pro homine sanguis 
 ejus effundetur" "for the man his blood will be 
 shed." While the Latin Vulgate renders it simply : 
 " Quieumque effudrit humanum sanguinem fundetur 
 sanguis illius," " Whoso sheddeth human blood, his 
 blood will be shed," omitting our "by man" alto- 
 gether.' Calvin says, 'to render it "by man, "is a 
 " forced" construction.' And he interprets it rather in 
 a denunciatory than in a mere legislative sense. Le 
 Clerc, who is certainly high authority, in a note on the 
 word, says, 'that while some translate it "per homi- 
 nem," i. e. through or by man, and that the preposi- 
 tion beth is constantly to be found in the sense of per, 
 yet, "in accordance with the most frequent usage of 
 the Hebrew language, it would have been said BJAD 
 ADAM, by the hand of man. Yet it is always read BAA- 
 DAM, or in man, or among men." "As in man (con-
 
 142 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 tinues Le Clerc) would scarcely make any sense, we 
 are led to adopt the other signification, among men ; 
 whence arises a plain proposition, which is the same as 
 that of the words immediately preceding, but more 
 clearly expressed. God has said that he will require the 
 life of the man slain from the slayer, among men or 
 among beasts ; he here more fully sets forth the same 
 truth when he says that the blood of the slayer will be 
 shed. A similar expression is used in Ecclesiastes 
 viii. 9, Dominates est homo inter homines in malum 
 sulum. It also often occurs in the books of Moses, 
 BAADAM OUBABBHEMA, among men and beasts, as in Exo- 
 dus xiii. 2 Nor are these words to be understood 
 
 otherwise than MS * TO nolv, (as generally to happen,) 
 as such expressions constantly occur among the sacred 
 and profane writers. Homicides generally suffer a 
 retributive punishment for their crime, whether they 
 fall into the hands of the law, or, by the just providence 
 of God, perish by some violent death." '* Such 
 authority ought to settle forever the true rendering. 
 Professor Upham, one of the first Hebrew scholars in 
 this country, says, 'that the passage may read, "who- 
 so sheddeth man's blood, by man WILL his blood be 
 shed." He adds that the expressions 'are obviously 
 not to be understood as a command, authorizing and 
 requiring every one, by his own act, and in his own 
 person, to put to death any and every other individual 
 who has been guilty of murder. Such an interpre- 
 tation would fill the world with violence and con- 
 fusion.' 
 
 * See an able article, entitled ( The Gallows and the Gospel,' in the 
 Democratic Review for March, 1343. Also the number for April, 
 
 1843.
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 143 
 
 II. The passage may be considered as a denuncia- 
 tion or prediction. We know that the advocates of 
 the law of death will look on such a view with suspi- 
 cion, or as an evasion of its true meaning. But we 
 leave them in the hands, of commentators of their own 
 school. When men like Le Clerc, Michaelis,* Calvin, 
 and Upham favor such a rendering, it is certainly 
 entitled to respect. The Rev. Mr. Cheever actually 
 turns such a view into ridicule. ' Suppose,' he says, 
 1 a malicious neighbor, in that early age, to have set a 
 trained bloodhound on a man whose life he was seek- 
 ing ; and the obedient animal, true to his own nature, 
 and an admirable instrument of murder for his mas- 
 ter, takes the life-blood of his victim. Must the man 
 be arraigned and executed on the charge of murder? 
 By no means, say the humane expositors of this law 
 of God ; that would be to add murder to murder. Let 
 the man escape, but the dog must be hung ; the fero- 
 cious brute, that knew no better than instinctively to 
 do what his master bade him, and so to slay a man 
 made in the image of God, deserves to die. Let the 
 court proceed to condemn the blood-thirsty quadru- 
 ped ; and, to show the sacredness of human life, and 
 protect society from the incursions of wild beasts, let 
 the creature be solemnly executed ; and let it be done 
 in the sight of all the other beasts and bloodhounds 
 you can summon to the spectacle ; for the statute is, 
 " Whatsoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall that 
 beasts blood be shed !" We shall see that all such 
 remarks are not only ridiculous, but even blasphe- 
 mous. We sincerely believe that our views are con- 
 firmed by history, both sacred and profane. The pas- 
 
 * Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, ch. iv., 2, art. 274.
 
 144 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 sage expresses a great retributive fact revealed in the 
 moral world, and in the Word of God. He who 
 wickedly takes human life will meet with severe pun- 
 ishment, and come to a miserable end. It may be 
 understood in the same general sense as that in the 
 fifty-fifth Psalm : ' Bloody and deceitful men shall not 
 live out half their days.' It is so arranged in the con- 
 stitution of things, and in the providence of God, that 
 bloody and deceitful men do not prosper, but always 
 meet with disappointment and suffering. To human 
 appearance, they may prosper, but, if we could look 
 within, we should find they were as ' whited sepul- 
 chres, full of dead men's bones.' ' The way of the 
 transgressor is hard.' And he who even attempts to 
 strew that way with flowers and roses, does an un- 
 speakable injury to society. 
 
 The very object of the passage was to strengthen 
 and deepen, in the human soul, the great idea of the 
 sacredness of life. Even if destroyed by a beast, its 
 life would be the forfeit ; not man, for that would 
 destroy the very idea of the sanctity of life. 1 * ' The 
 provision conforms naturally with that dread and 
 fear, with which beasts are to regard their appointed 
 lord ; it accords precisely with the main object of the 
 law itself, that blood shall not be eaten, in order to 
 
 * The same sentiment will be found to be incorporated with the 
 Mosaic Code. And the principle is found in connection with the laws 
 of other nations. ' An individual accused of murder was allowed, by 
 one of the Athenian laws, to banish himself from Attica, in the early 
 stages of the process. If he returned, however, before a compromise 
 was effected between his friends and those of the person slain, he 
 might be put to death. Plutarch relates that Solon required a dog, 
 which had bitten a man, to be delivered up to the vengeance of the 
 law ; and a statue, which, by falling, killed an Athenian, was pun- 
 ished as a murderer.'
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 145 
 
 cultivate a reverence for the principle of life ; and we 
 see the force of the reason for it, that man is made in 
 the image of the Deity, which would not be very 
 apparent, if it were understood to mean, that because 
 murder was a marring of God's image, therefore, 
 whenever that image had been once marred, it should 
 be marred again.' 
 
 The whole passage breathes a sentence of condem- 
 nation against taking life, assigning a reason of the 
 utmost weight: 'for in the image of God made He 
 man.' As though the Deity would say, just as man 
 was once more stepping forth to re-people the earth, 
 My image is sacred ; it is not to be marred, and I will 
 throw around it every guard, that it may be preserved 
 inviolable.* But, if the passage conveys the common 
 notion, it would defeat itself. Certainly, it could not 
 mean, that when the image was marred by the mur- 
 derer, his image should also be marred ; for this 
 would indeed fill the earth again with violence.. And 
 where would such a principle end 1 For he who took 
 
 * The Rev. Mr. CHAPIN, in his Discourses on Capital Punishment, 
 p. 17, well observes, that ' the term " whatsoever " would seem to direct 
 the application of the mandate in the text to the beast, to something 
 lower than man ; and the blood of the beast, shedding man's blood, 
 man might shed ; but, says the context, " at the hand of every man's 
 brother will 7," not shall man, not shall a court of justice, but " will 1 
 require the life of man." The penalty here is not with man, but with 
 God. This, then, I say, seems to be the idea of the text and contexts. 
 The principle of life has a mysterious sanctity, even in the beast. 
 But man has a high distinction from the brute. He has not only the 
 principle of life in him, but he is made in the image of God. Man, 
 then, is not to violate this principle of life in the beast, for even there 
 it is sacred. But the beast violating it in man shall die by the hand 
 of man ; and man violating it in his brother, shall render an account 
 to GOD ; for in the case of man's murder, not only is the principle 
 of life violated, but the image of God is desecrated.' 
 
 13
 
 146 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 the life of the murderer must fall. Taking, then, the 
 popular view, when the first murder was committed, 
 it would authorize a second to meet it ; and, then, he 
 who was the executioner must, in turn, have his blood 
 shed ; and so on, till the very last man stood upon the 
 ruins of a world ! 
 
 There is one consideration which ought to have 
 great weight with those who advocate the penalty of 
 death from the covenant of Noah. It seems, however, 
 to have been entirely overlooked by them. We refer 
 to the fact, that even in the patriarchal age, it was 
 not understood as a command to take life. We have 
 an account ' of the murder of Shechem and the peo- 
 ple of his city, by Simeon and Levi, the sons of 
 Jacob,* under circumstances of a most treacherous 
 ferocity. Had the covenant with Noah been under- 
 stood in that day as requiring the retribution of blood 
 for blood, it is not to be supposed that the patriarch 
 Jacob combining the character of ruler with that of 
 parent would have left unexecuted the mandate so 
 directly and imperatively given by the recent voice of 
 God himself. His grief and anger for their crime are 
 shown in Gen. xxxiv. 30. He nowhere intimates any 
 feeling of remorse for the neglect of what would 
 otherwise have been a high and solemn duty incum- 
 bent on him as a patriarch. While in his denuncia- 
 tion, on his death-bed, of the future retribution yet to 
 overtake the seed of the guilty brothers. (Gen. xlix. 
 6, 7,) he makes no allusion to any such penalty, upon 
 them or theirs, as that which must have been regarded 
 as inevitable, had he understood the passage in ques- 
 tion according to the modern interpretation of the 
 
 * See Genesis, ch. xxxiv.
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 147 
 
 advocates of Capital Punishment.' We forget that 
 Moses himself was a muiderer, even while this cove- 
 nant was the only law. 
 
 In presenting a prophetic view of this passage, we 
 feel that we are uttering a great and salutary truth, a 
 truth so solemn and universal in its application, that 
 we know not where to end our labors. Violence begets 
 violence-: ' a violent life will be likely to close with a 
 violent death.' This truth is not felt nor understood. 
 Illustrations might be drawn from history, both sacred 
 and profane. When the Great Legislator of the uni- 
 verse announced this prophecy, He did but utter the 
 same great truth that later Revelations were designed 
 to confirm. ' He that doeth wrong shall receive for 
 the wrong which he hath done.' As age after age 
 rolled on ; as empires rose and fell, this great law was 
 continually developed. At last, the Great Teacher 
 came from heaven, and established it forever. How 
 many passages might be drawn from his weighty 
 admonitions as illustrations ! One only can be pre- 
 sented. Passing over the many thrilling events which 
 marked the eventful life of the Son of God, let us 
 view him in the trying hour that he passed in the gar- 
 den of Gethsemane. Surrounded by his enemies, on 
 the very eve of a cruel and ignominious death, and in 
 sight of the very cross on which he was to suffer, he 
 says to Peter, while in the very act of employing the 
 sword, 'Put up again thy sword into his place; for 
 all they that take the sword, shall perish with the 
 sword.'* What a momentous declaration ! big with 
 the fate of nations ; for. what nation exists that has 
 not ' taken the sword 1 ' And, when applied practi- 
 
 * Matt. xxvi. 52.
 
 148 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 cally to individuals, how many illustrations might we 
 not find ! The history of the world shows that those 
 who resort to acts of cruelty and violence are exposed 
 to similar acts in return. 
 
 If any consideration can add weight to the words 
 of him ' who spake as never man spake,' it is the fact 
 that, even in the closing up of Heaven's record, the 
 same truth is again presented, preceded by the im- 
 pressive address, { If any man have an ear, let him 
 hear.' ' He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into 
 captivity ; he that killeth hy the sword, must be killed 
 by the sword.' Here is the patience and the faith of 
 the saints.* 
 
 Professor Upham, to whom we feel deeply indebted 
 for many facts, has well expressed our views in his 
 admirable work on Peace. ' The mark of Cain is 
 stamped upon murderers, and they are lost and ruined 
 men, even if the civil magistrate does not touch them. 
 All nature frowns upon them; the very stones cry 
 out; some perish by quarrels in the streets; some 
 seek a refuge on the ocean and are drowned ; some 
 are put to death by their fellow-rnen from feelings of 
 revenge, some are killed in war, some put themselves 
 to death by violent means, some die of pure remorse 
 and anguish of spirit; and, in one way or other, as 
 sure as there is a God in heaven, who requires 
 the blood they have shed at their hands, they all, 
 
 * Rev. xiii. 10. The word rendered here, will bear the interpreta- 
 tion herein, or on this account in hac re, as Rosenmuller has it. The 
 passage would indicate submission to enemies, trust in God. It is a 
 corroboration of that injunction, 'Avenge not yourselves, vengeance -is 
 mine ; I will repay saith the Lord.'
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 149 
 
 sooner or later, come to a miserable end.'* This 
 amiable author seems even to think that the execu- 
 tioner is not exempt from the general doom of the 
 murderer. To him who has violated God's law, the 
 very earth on which he treads is a prison. He is, 
 indeed, like Cain, a fugitive and a vagabond ; and he 
 is afraid that every one that findeth him will slay 
 him. You need forge no chains for him ; he has forged 
 his own chains. You need write out no sentence; 
 for everywhere he finds written, ' Thou art weighed 
 in the balance, and found wanting.' He is his own 
 
 * Before me lies an account that illustrates the language of Pro- 
 fessor UPHAM, in a very striking manner ; ' About sixty years since, 
 an exciseman, who lived between Symington and Christ-church, on 
 the Southern coast of England, was barbarously beaten to death in 
 the presence of his wife and daughter, who were deterred from giving 
 an alarm by two of the gang, who stood over them with a pistol at 
 each of their heads. The sufferer (named Bursey) had, by his vigi- 
 lance in his duty, rendered himself obnoxious to the smugglers on the 
 coast, and a party of them obtained access to his house, by one of the 
 smugglers calling Bursey up at midnight, with a false account of 
 unlawful doings near by, and getting Bursey to open the door, that the 
 informer might wait in the hall while Bursey dressed himself. On 
 this, the gang rushed in on him and accomplished their object ; and 
 although the government offered a large reward, no tidings were 
 obtained of the murderers for twenty-five years afterward. At about 
 that time, the minister of Symington church was sent for by a man 
 on his death-bed, and this man confessed that he was the thirtieth man 
 of the gang who had murdered Bursey ; that he stood watch at the 
 garden wicket, between the house and the road, to give the alarm, if 
 needful, but had no further active hand in the murder ; that the other 
 twenty-nine had every one died a violent death some by fire, shipwreck, 
 battle, frays with their companions in crime, execution for other 
 crimes, or by some other means so that, of the whole thirty, no one 
 but himself had a chance to die in their beds or their homes. At the 
 time of this confession, the writer was in the neighborhood of Syming- 
 ton, and had the facts from the minister who received the dying man's 
 confession.' 
 
 13*
 
 150 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 enemy. No human government, no outward circum- 
 stance, can injure him to the extent he has injured 
 himself. He may fly from every human tribunal, hut 
 he cannot fly from himself I With his own hands 
 he kindles the fires of hell within his own soul ! 
 Once more, we repeat, and we would that we could 
 reach the heart of every sovereign, and every indi- 
 vidual, that ' Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man. 
 shall his blood be shed.' Let society feel that this is 
 not to be done by human tribunals, but that it is a 
 great law inwoven in the very constitution of things. 
 Let all our systems of Moral Philosophy be based on 
 this great moral truth. Let it be deeply impressed 
 upon the minds of our children. Let it be written 
 upon the gateway of all our courts of justice. Let it 
 guide all legislation. Let society everywhere be im- 
 pressed with this moral law of heaven, that violence 
 begets violence ; that he who wantonly sports with life 
 will himself meet with violence, disappointment and 
 sorrow. When once the community are made to rea- 
 lize this truth, more good will be accomplished in a sin- 
 gle hour than all the scaffolds, chains and gibbets have 
 accomplished since time began ! It is, indeed, ' one of 
 the planets in the firmament of revealed truth ; to 
 strike it out from its place, and from its authority for 
 the guidance of human legislation, would be like 
 striking the constellation of the Pleiades, or the bright 
 North Star, from heaven.' ' It is light, like that of the 
 planets, has travelled unaltered and unabated across 
 the storms and changes of thousands of years; and 
 still it shines, and still will it shine to the end of the 
 world.' 
 
 He who labors to establish this great moral law in 
 the hearts of men, will benefit his race more than all
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 151 
 
 the conquerors of earth. What a lesson for the ambi- 
 tious ! How slowly the world learns this essential 
 truth ! How desirous men are to lower the standard 
 of duty to their own narrow views and sordid feel- 
 ings ! Man must be brought up to the standard ; it 
 will never be brought down to man. Let the standard 
 be raised ; let the banner be unfurled that human life 
 is sacred, that 'in the image of God made He man.' 
 Here is a great work to be done. And if he is useful 
 who cultivates the soil, and makes it bloom and bud, 
 how much more so is he who plants a moral truth in 
 the human soul, a truth that will ' bring forth the 
 fruits of righteousness,' one that will germinate and 
 flourish when thrones and dominions shall have passed 
 away, and when all the fading glories of earth shall 
 be lost in the glory and light of eternity ? 
 
 Subjoined is a very interesting account of a debate 
 in reference to this very passage, in a formal parlia- 
 ment of the Windward Society Islands. It is taken 
 from the Voyages and Travels of D. Tyerman and 
 G. Bennet. We present it as a very singular docu- 
 ment, and as showing the progress of religious truth, 
 and the views the unsophisticated mind of the heathen 
 takes of the Noahic covenant, on first becoming ac- 
 quainted with the Bible. Surely, if these untutored 
 savages thought it safe to dispense with the punish- 
 ment of death, the civilized world need not be afraid. 
 
 It may be remarked that the question was death or 
 exile for life to a desolate island, and the latter was 
 adopted : 
 
 On the question being proposed, Hitoti, the principal chief of 
 Papeete, stood up, and, bowing to the president and the persona
 
 152 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 around him, said, ' No doubt this was a good law, but a thought 
 has been growing in my heart for several days, and when you have 
 heard my little speech, you will understand what it is. The laws 
 of England, from which country we have received so much good 
 of every kind, must not they be good ? Now, my thought is, that 
 as England does so, it may be well for us to do so. That is my 
 thought.' 
 
 Perfect silence followed ; and it may be observed here, that 
 during the whole eight days' meeting of this parliament, there 
 was not an angry word spoken by one against another, nor did 
 any assume more knowledge than the rest. None controverted 
 the opinion of a preceding speaker, or even remarked upon it with- 
 out some respectful commendation of what appeared praiseworthy 
 in it, while, for reasons which he modestly but manfully assigned, 
 he deemed another sentiment better. 
 
 After looking round to see if one was np before him, Utami, 
 the principal chief of Buanaauia, rose, and thus addressed the 
 president : ' The chief of Papeete has said well, that we have 
 received a great many good things from the kind Christian people 
 of England. Indeed, what have we not received from Beretane? 
 (Britain.) Did they not send us (Azea) the Gospel? But does 
 not Hitoti's speech go too far? If we take the laws of England 
 for our guide, then must we not punish with death those who 
 break into a house 1 those who write a wrong name ? those who 
 steal a sheep ? and will any man in Tahiti say that death should 
 grow for these? No, no, this goes too far. So I think we should 
 stop. The law, as it is written, I think, is good ; perhaps I am 
 wrong, but that is my thought.' 
 
 After a moment or two of stillness, Upuparu, a noble, intelli- 
 gent and stately chief, stood forth. It was a pleasure to look 
 upon his animated countenance and frank demeanor, without the 
 smallest affectation either of superiority or condescension. He 
 paid several graceful compliments to the former speakers, while, 
 according to his thought, in some things each was right, and each 
 was wrong. ' My brother Hitoti, who proposed that we should 
 punish murder by death because England does so, was wrong, as 
 has been shown by Utami. For they are not the laws of England 
 which are to guide us, though they are good ; the Bible is our 
 perfect guide. Now, Mitti Fruter (the missionary Crook) was
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 153 
 
 preaching to us on (naming the day) from the Scripture, "He 
 that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," and 
 he told us this was the reason of the law of England. My thought, 
 therefore, is not with Utami, but with Hitoti, (though not because 
 of the law of England, but because the Bible orders it,) that we 
 ought to punish w 7 ith death every one found guilty of murder.' 
 There was a lively exchange of looks all through the assembly, 
 as if each had been struck with the sentiments of the speaker, 
 especially when he placed the ground of the punishment of death, 
 not upon English precedent, but upon Scripture authority. An- 
 other chief followed, and, 'rising, seemed a pillar of state,' one 
 whose aspect, and presence, and costume (richly native) made the 
 spectators forget even him who had just sat down. His name was 
 Tati ; and oji him all eyes were immediately and intensely fixed, 
 while, with not less simplicity and deference to others than those 
 who had preceded him, he spoke thus : ' Perhaps some of you 
 may be surprised that I, who am the first chief here, and next to 
 the royal family, should have held my peace so long. I wished to 
 hear what my brethren would say, that I might gather what 
 thoughts had grown in their breasts on this great question. I am 
 glad I waited, because some thoughts are now growing in my 
 breast which I did not bring with me. The chiefs who have 
 spoken before me have spoken well. But is not the speech of 
 Upuparu like that of his brother Hitoti, in this way? If we can- 
 not follow the laws of England, in all things, as Hitoti's thoughts 
 would perhaps lead us, because they go too far, must we not 
 stop short of Upuparu, because his thoughts go too far, likewise ? 
 The Bible, he says, is our perfect guide. It is. But what docs 
 that Scripture mean? "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man 
 shall his blood to shed." Does not this go so far that we cannot 
 follow it to the end, any more than we can follow the laws of 
 England all the way? I am Tati; I am a judge; a man is con- 
 victed before me ; he has shed blood ; I order him to be put to 
 death; I shed his blood; then who shall shed mine? Here, 
 because I cannot go so far, I must stop. This cannot be the 
 meaning of these words. But, perhaps, since many of the laws 
 of the Old Testament were thrown down by the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and only some kept standing upright, perhaps, I say, this is one 
 of those which were thrown down. However, as 1 am ignorant,
 
 154 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 
 some one else will show me that, in the New Testament, out 
 Savior or his apostles have said the same thing concerning him 
 that sheddeth man's blood, as is said in the Old Testament. 
 Show me this in the New Testament, and then it must be our 
 guide.' 
 
 Much cordial approbation was evident at the conclusion of Tati's 
 speech, and its evangelical appeal seemed to remove some difficulty 
 and doubt respecting the true scriptural authority applicable to the 
 case. 
 
 Next rose Pati, a' chief and judge of Eimeo, formerly a high 
 priest of Oro, and the first who, at the hazard of his life, abjured 
 idolatry. ' My breast,' he exclaimed, ' is full of thought and sur- 
 prise and delight. When I look round at this fare bure ra, (house 
 of God,) in which we are assembled, and consider who we are who 
 take sweet counsel together here, it is to me all mea huu e, (a thing 
 of amusement,) and mea aafoaou te aau, a thing that makes glad 
 my heart. 
 
 ' Tati has settled the question : for is it not the gospel that is our 
 guide ? I know many passages which forbid, but I know not one 
 which commands, to kill. But then another thought is growing in 
 my breast, and if you will hearken to my little speech, you shall 
 know what it is. Laws to punish those that commit crime are 
 good for us. But tell me why do Christians punish? Is it be- 
 cause we are angry, and have pleasure in giving pain? Is it 
 because we love revenge, as we did when we were heathens? 
 None of these : Christians do not love revenge ; Christians must 
 not be angry ; they cannot have pleasure in causing pain Chris- 
 tians do not, therefore, punish for these. Is.it not that, by the 
 suffering which is inflicted, we may prevent the criminal from 
 repeating his crime, and frighten others from doing as he has done, 
 to deserve the like? Well, then, does not everybody know it 
 would be a greater punishment to banish forever from Tahiti, to a 
 desolate island, than just in a moment to be put to death? and 
 could the banished man commit murder again there? and would 
 not others be more frightened by such a sentence than by one to 
 take away his life ? So my thought is that Tati is right, and the 
 law had best remain as it is written.' 
 
 One of the taata rii, or little men, a commoner, a representative 
 of a district, now presented himself, and was listened to with aa
 
 COVENANT WITH NOAH. 155 
 
 much attention as had been given to the lordly personages who 
 preceded him. He said, 'As no one else stands up I will make 
 my little speech, because several pleasant thoughts have been 
 growing in my breast, and I wish you to hear them. Perhaps 
 everything necessary has been said by the chiefs ; yet, as we are 
 not met to adopt this law or that law, because one great man or 
 another recommends it, but, as we, the taata rii, just the same as 
 chiefs, are to throw our thoughts together, that out of the whole 
 heap the meeting may make those to stand upright which are 
 best, whencesoever they come this is my thought. All that 
 Pati said was good ; but he did not mention that one reason for 
 punishing-, (as a missionary told us, when he was reading the law 
 to us, in private,) is to make the offender good again, if possible. 
 Now if we kill a murderer, how can we make him better? But if 
 he be sent to a desolate island, where he is all solitary, and com- 
 pelled to think for himself, it may please God to make the bad 
 things in his heart to die, and good things to grow there. But if 
 we kill him, where will his soul go ? '
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 Popular appeals to the Mosaic Code Imperfect system Wrong 
 views Its divisions The Avenger Cities of refuge Visit to 
 the cell of Leavitt, the murderer Number of capital offences Sa- 
 credness of life Error in civilized codes Statute of Massachu- 
 setts Jewish code abolished Moses referred to a higher prophet 
 Sixth commandment Reasons for Jewish code Voice of God 
 Objections. 
 
 'All other things, which depend upon the eternal and immutable 
 laws and rights of nature, remaining inviolately the same under both 
 covenants, and as unchanged as nature itself.' SOUTH. 
 
 THE advocates of Capital Punishment have invaria- 
 bly appealed to the code of Moses. It has been to 
 them a 'city of refuge.' It is worthy of remark that 
 the opposers of every moral improvement have gone at 
 once to the types and shadows of the old dispensation. 
 The advocates for Slavery, the supporters of War, and 
 the opposers of Temperance, have all sought rest amid 
 its shadows and darkness; and whoever has even 
 suggested that its essential features have passed away, 
 has been deemed an innovator or a skeptic. This is 
 unfair. We profess as high a veneration for this por- 
 tion of the sacred volume as the strongest advocate of 
 that form of punishment which it is the object of the 
 present labor to prove to be contrary to humanity. 
 That ancient code was designed for a particular age, 
 nnd a peculiar condition of society. When the advo-
 
 MOSAIC CODE. -157 
 
 cates of blood are driven from every other covert, they 
 seek rest in the ancient dispensation. Here is a last 
 resort, amid the types and shadows of a system which, 
 under other circumstances, they admit has forever 
 passed away. Driven to desperation, they grasp the 
 horns of the altar. But ' they fly from light into the 
 sun ; from heat into the devouring fire ; and from the 
 voice of God into the thickest of his thunders.' In 
 every age, the spiritual and political despot has called 
 upon Moses, till the general reader has finally sup- 
 posed that his system was a vast, dreary waste, bar- 
 ren as the very wilderness through which he led 
 Israel ! The system contained many benevolent pro- 
 visions.^ It taught a moral purity that even the 
 penal code of civilization does not always include. 
 
 It is not to be considered as a perfect system ; for, 
 strictly speaking, there is no system of moral truth in 
 the Bible. Its writers knew nothing about system. 
 Guided, as we believe they were, by a superior wis- 
 dom, they presented truth as it came, leaving future 
 generations to such an arrangement as appeared best. 
 Great injustice has been done to this part of the sacred 
 record. On the one hand, it has been said that it 
 must be received entire ; on the other, that it has been 
 wholly repealed. 
 
 The whole code may be divided into the moral, the 
 criminal, and the ceremonial. The first, embracing 
 the decalogue given upon the Mount. The second, 
 
 * . . . ' The stranger and the fatherless and the widow, which 
 are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied ; that 
 the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which 
 thou doest.' Deut. xv. 29. The benevolence of the Mosaic Code ex- 
 tended even to beasts : Exod. xxiii. 5 ; Deut. xxv. 4 ; Exod. xx. 10 ; 
 Lev. xxv. 7. 
 
 14
 
 158 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 relating to the penal jurisprudence. The third, rela- 
 ting to the various ceremonies and rites connected 
 with its religious institutions. Living amid the light 
 and blessings of Christianity, it is difficult to conceive 
 of the bearings of this code upon that state of society 
 for which it was designed. The means for the re- 
 pression of crime were unknown. Extirpation seemed 
 easier than emendation. 
 
 In this ancient code, the punishment of death was 
 not a cool, deliberate act of society. The executioner 
 was the nearest of kin to the one who was slain.* 
 He was very appropriately called ' The Avenger of 
 Blood.' Cities of refuge were provided for the slayer. 
 But his life could be taken if found before he reached 
 these places of security. Even the altar was no 
 
 * "We find the same law existing among the uncivilized nations 
 generally. ' Of the Arabs, says D' Arvieux, (" Travels in Arabia 
 Deserta," p. 145,) "there is no hatred among them but on account of 
 blood, and that is irreconcilable. For example, if a man has killed 
 another, the friendship between their families and all their posterity is 
 
 broken If they happen to be in some common interest, 
 
 or there is any match to propose, they very civilly answer, 'You know 
 there is blood between us ; it can never be done ; rve have our honor to 
 preserve.' They never pardon till they are revenged." "Les Per- 
 sans," says Chardin, ("Voyages en Perse," &c., Tome III., p. 417,) 
 " et tous les autres Mahometans, se conferment la-dessus absolument 
 a la loi Judai'que, remettant a la fin du proces, le meurtrier entre les 
 mains des plus proches parens du defunt." Father Lobo testifies to the 
 same practice in Abyssinia ("Voyage to Abyssinia," &c., p. 57.) "If 
 a man is unlawfully killed," says the Koran, (Sura xvii. verse 35,) 
 '' we give to his nearest relation the right of revenge." But the notion 
 is by no means to be called Oriental. 
 
 "If I live to be a man, 
 
 My father's death revenged shall be," 
 
 says the child of the Border Chief, in the " Lay of the last Minstrel j" 
 and there is no rule more rigidly observed among our North American 
 
 Indians.'
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 159 
 
 protection. A legal investigation then took place. If 
 guilty, the 'avenger' stood ready to cut down his vic- 
 tim. If innocent, and even then he abandoned the 
 asylum before the death of the high priest, his life was 
 insecure. 
 
 But where are our cities of refuge ? The murderer 
 is hunted down like some wild beast ; then thrown into 
 a cold, damp, dungeon, perhaps with felons far more 
 guilty, there to await, perchance, a whole year before 
 his guilt or innocence is known.* Then, if guilty, 
 he is brought out before the gaze of a thoughtless 
 multitude, and cruelly put to death ! But we cannot 
 enlarge. We will present the code itself, or rather its 
 various capital offences. It is remarkable that no 
 writer with whom we have met has performed this 
 labor. We feel that it will do more to settle the 
 question of its adoption by any civilized community 
 than all other considerations : 
 
 NUMBER OF CAPITAL OFFENCES IN THE MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 Murder, Exod. xxi. 12. 
 
 Kidnapping, . . . . . . . " " 16. 
 
 Eating leavened bread during the Passover, . " xii. 15. 
 Suffering an unruly ox to be at liberty, if he kill ; 
 
 the ox also to be stoned, . . . " xxi. 29. 
 
 * LEAVITT, the murderer, was confined in the Plymouth jail, Mass., 
 nearly a year before his trial. A philanthropist, so nearly related to 
 the writer that propriety would forbid his name, visited him nine 
 months after his confinement in a most wretched cell, with scarcely a 
 table or chair, or even a decent bed. ' How many have been to see 
 you ? ' said the visitor to the poor prisoner. ' No one has entered the 
 cell but the keeper.' And yet we are living in a community who 
 profess to be followers of him who said, ' I was in prison, and ye came 
 unto me.'
 
 160 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 Witchcraft, Exod. xxii. 18. 
 
 Beastiality, the beast put to death, . . " xxii. 19 
 
 Idolatry, " xxii. 20. 
 
 Oppression of Widow and Fatherless, . . " xxii. 22. 
 
 Compounding holy ointment, or putting it on any 
 
 stranger, " xxx. 33. 
 
 Violation of the Sabbath, " xxxi. 14. 
 
 Smiting of father or mother, . . . . />? " xxi. 15. 
 
 Sodomy, Lev. xx. 13. 
 
 Eating the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offer- 
 ings with uncleanness, . . . . " vii. 20. 
 
 Eating the fat of offered beasts, ... " vii. 25. 
 
 Eating any manner of blood, .... " vii. 27. 
 
 Offering children to Moloch, . . . " xx. 2. 
 
 Eating a sacrifice of peace-offering, ... " xix. 8. 
 
 Screening the idolater, " xx. 4. 
 
 Going after familiar spirits and wizards, . . " xx. 6. 
 
 Adultery, [both parties, if female married, and 
 
 not a bond-maid,] ..... " xx. 10. 
 
 Incest, [three kinds,] " xx. 11. 
 
 Cursing of parents, ..... " xx. 9. 
 
 Unchastity in a priest's daughter, . " xxi. 9. 
 
 Blasphemy, " xxiv. 16. 
 
 Stranger coming nigh the tabernacle, . . . Numb. i. 51. 
 
 Coming nigh the priest's office, . . . " iii. 10. 
 
 Usurping the sacerdotal functions, . . " iv. 20. 
 
 Forbearing to keep passover, if not journeying, . " ix. 13. 
 
 Presumption, or despising the word of the Lord, . " xv. 30. 
 
 Uncleanness, or defiling the sanctuary of the Lord, " xix. 13. 
 
 False pretension to the character of a divine mes- 
 senger, ....... Deut. xiii. 5. 
 
 Opposition to the decree of the highest judicial 
 
 authority, ...... " xvii. 12. 
 
 Unchastity before marriage, when charged by a 
 
 husband, ......." xxii. 13. 
 
 MODES OF PUNISHMENT FOR CAPITAL OFFENCES. 
 
 Sword, Exod. xxii. 24. 
 
 Stoning, Lev. xx. 2.
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 161 
 
 POSTHUMOUS INSULTS. 
 
 Burning of the body, . . Lev. xx. 14 ; Josh. vii. 15. 
 
 Hanging of the body, Deut. xxi. 22. 
 
 Heaping of stones over the body or place of burial, Josh. vii. 25. 
 
 MODES INTRODUCED FROM OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 Decapitation, 2 Sam. iv. 7. 
 
 Sawing asunder, ....... Heb. xi. 37. 
 
 Strangulation. 
 Crucifixion.* 
 
 What a dark catalogue ! How minute in its delin- 
 eation of offences ! Every avenue of passion seems to 
 have been guarded by a severe penalty. We ask its 
 advocates if they are willing to take it entire for a 
 guide to morals? Or will they contend that a part 
 only is binding at the present day 1 If so, what part? 
 Shall 'he that smiteth father or mother be put to 
 death ? ' Shall this penalty be inflicted on ' the man 
 that gathers sticks upon the Sabbath day ? ' Shall it 
 be inflicted on him who ' stealeth a man and selleth 
 him?' Or on him ' who afflicts any widow or father- 
 less child ? ' Alas ! if we were tried by this standard, 
 imperfect as it was, we should find we were weighed 
 in the balance and found wanting! 
 
 There is one feature in this code that demands our 
 particular attention. It is the sacredness attached to 
 man. There was a mingling of mercy and judgment. 
 We refer to that portion jvhich says, ' He that stealeth 
 a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, 
 
 * See Introduction to the Holy Scriptures. By T. H. HORNE. Vol. 
 iii., Part II., ch. III., sect. iii. and iv. MICHAELIS'S Commentaries, 
 vol. ii., pp. 365 367 ; vol. iv., pp. 1 312. JAHN'S Biblical Archae- 
 ology, $ 252, et seq. Academical Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures, 
 vol. i. By JOHN G. PALFREY, D. I). 
 
 14*
 
 162 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 he shall surely be put to death.' It is a very singular 
 fact, that while man-stealing, man-holding, or man- 
 selling, was punished capitally, that highway robbery 
 was punished by requiring restitution.^ The great 
 truth here presented is, that man was of more conse- 
 quence than property. We might do well to learn a 
 lesson from this singular feature. It will be found 
 that the great error in nearly all civilized society is, 
 that property is more carefully guarded than life.f 
 ' In matters of property] says a writer in the London 
 Morning Herald, ' one court of appeal may be resorted 
 to after another ; but where human life is concerned, 
 our system of criminal jurisprudence allows of no 
 appeal whatever. It is true,' he adds, ' that the judge 
 may stay the execution if he thinks there is sufficient 
 ground ; but it rests entirely within his own breast 
 whether he will exercise that discretionary power or 
 not.J This idea is very clearly presented by Mr. 
 
 * ' If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it, he 
 shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. If a 
 thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, there shall no 
 blood be shed for him. If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be 
 blood shed for him ; for he should make full restitution ; if he have 
 nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.' Exod. xxii. 1 3. Of 
 course, where man was stolen, there could be no restoring of four 
 fold! 
 
 | Our code reminds us of an anecdote found in connection with the 
 history of the game laws : ' There was a time, we are told, when, by 
 the law of England, the killing of a man was permitted to be expiated 
 by the payment of a fine, while the killing of a wild boar, by one not 
 qualified to hunt, was punishable with death. It happened then, so 
 the anecdote has come down to us, that a man, charged with killing a 
 wild boar, and put on trial for his life, plead in his defence that he did 
 it by mistake, for that he really thought the beast was only a man ! ' 
 
 \ See O'CONNELL'S speech before the London Society for the Diffu
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 163 
 
 Rantoul. ' It is somewhat remarkable that offences, not 
 against property, but which endanger life more directly 
 and imminently, as well as offences more heinous and 
 cruel against the person, the liberty, the honor, and not 
 the purse of the injured party, are guarded against by 
 punishments slight in comparison. Who steals the 
 purse steals trash, but if he steals it openly, and so 
 armed as to prevent or repel resistance, he must die for 
 it ; while whoso stealeth a man and selleth him, though 
 armed in the same manner, with the same intent to 
 kill if resisted, is to be punished by fine not exceed- 
 ing one thousand dollars, or imprisonment in the State 
 Prison not more than ten years, or in the county jail 
 not more than two years. * So that if the robber has 
 taken from a man of wealth the smallest coin that 
 passes from hand to hand, being driven by the pres- 
 sure of extreme want, or in the insane fury of intoxi- 
 cation, the judge, with these extenuating circum- 
 stances before him, must pass sentence of death, for 
 here nothing is left to, his discretion; while, if the 
 same robber, armed with the same weapons, with 
 deliberate malice aforethought, too cruel to be satisfied 
 with the murder of its victim, should seize the same 
 man of wealth, bind him hand and foot, and cause him 
 to be transported to the coast of Barbary, and there 
 sold as a slave to the Moors, the judge would be left 
 at his discretion, to inflict a nominal fine upon the 
 offender, or to sentence him to the county jail for 
 twenty-four hours, if he see fit.' The same author 
 
 sion of Information on the subjfct of Capital Punishment. He has 
 there touched this point with a masterly hand. Page 120 of the 
 present work. 
 * Revised Statutes of Massachusetts, Chap. 125, sect. 20.
 
 164 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 gives an illustration in showing the difference between 
 highway robbery an$ manslaughter. ' Suppose a des- 
 perate man, just ruined at a gaming table, meets one 
 who enrages him by bitter reproaches, and then, pro- 
 voked by an angry answer, strikes him. If, in his 
 fury, he should seize this man, snatch from him his 
 pocket-book, and fly, having about him a dagger 
 which he does not use, but only threatens to draw ; 
 this is highway robbery, punishable with death. If 
 lie had drawn his dagger and stabbed him to the 
 heart, this would have been only manslaughter, and 
 the punishment made as light as the court see fit to 
 make it. The law, therefore, counsels an angry man 
 to wreak his revenge upon life and not upon property, 
 which, in such cases, it holds more sacred.' Indeed, 
 he even goes farther, and shows that the law has not 
 only guarded the purse with more jealousy than life, 
 but even that which is dearer than life ; ' for, by chap- 
 ter 125, section 19, of the Revised Statutes, an assault 
 upon a woman with intent to violate her honor, which 
 may be committed with intent to kill if resisted, or 
 even if not resisted, is punished by imprisonment, 
 at the discretion of the court, or by fine.' 
 
 There was a very severe moral purity in the Jew- 
 ish law, which civilization would hardly dare or 
 wish to imitate.^ 
 
 * ' And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, 
 even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adul- 
 terer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.' Lev. xx. 10. 
 
 The following was the law of the old Plymouth Colony. We give 
 it to show the views of our forefathers on the subject of Adultery : 
 'It is enacted by the Court and the Authoritie thereof, that whoso- 
 ever shall commit Adultery shalbee severely punished by whipping 
 two several times ; viz., one whiles the Court is in being att which
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 165 
 
 Dim as the light was that guided Israel through 
 the pathless desert, we find there was a great moral 
 purity, and a peculiar sacredness attached to life. It 
 was not to be stolen or taken away by violence, except 
 by permission from its Great Author. And why this 
 sanctity ? Why, in that ancient code, were life and 
 liberty more strictly guarded than the purse? Be- 
 cause, to steal a man and sell him, is one of the 
 highest offences that can be committed against a 
 fellow-man. It includes within itself every other out- 
 rage that human power can perpetrate. To employ 
 the language of another, ' It is the reduction of persons 
 to things; not robbing a man of privileges, but of 
 himself ; not loading with burdens, but making him 
 a beast of burden; not restraining liberty, but sub- 
 verting it; not curtailing rights, but abolishing them; 
 not inflicting personal cruelty, but annihilating per- 
 sonality ; not exacting involuntary labor, but sinking 
 him into an implement of labor ; not abridging human 
 comforts, but abrogating human nature ; not depriving 
 an animal of immunities, but despoiling a rational 
 being of attributes uncreating a MAN, to make room 
 for a thing ! ' What a fearful responsibility rests on 
 those who not only deprive men of their rights, but 
 who deprive man of himself,* and sell him to the 
 
 they are convicted of the fact, and the 2 cond time as the Court shall 
 order; and likewise to wear two Capitall letters, viz. A D. ; cut out in 
 cloth and sowed on theire uper most Garments on theire arme or 
 backe ; and if att any time they shalbee taken without the said letters 
 whiles they are in the Govment, soe worn, to be forthwith taken 
 and publicly whipt.' Plymouth Colony Laws, published agreeably to a 
 Resolve, April 5, 1836, p. 113. 
 
 * The author finds other subjects constantly presenting their claims. 
 He determined, from the outset, in this work, to confine himself to the
 
 166 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 highest bidder! How little realized in this age of 
 speculation ! What is man to him who is engulphed 
 in trade? A mere machine to increase his wealth. 
 What usurpations of power do we see in what is 
 called a high state of civilization ! The law and the 
 altar claim their victims. What excesses of passion ! 
 And what a weapon does the law of blood put into 
 the hands of the political and the spiritual despot! 
 But the essential features of the Jewish code have 
 passed away. The penal and the ceremonial part is 
 no longer binding. It was ' a schoolmaster,' teaching 
 men, in an imperfect condition of society, the first 
 rudiments of moral and religious truth ; teaching them, 
 through the medium of types and prophecies, to look 
 to '.One who would tell them all things.' It was a 
 system of preparation, to lead them on to a higher 
 state of moral truth.* 
 
 subject of the Punishment of Death, and the Sacredness of Human 
 Life. He found, however, on examination, the remarkable feature 
 in the Jewish code, of the punishment of death of him who stole a 
 human being, and restitution or the selling of him who took property. 
 At some future day, the author may, if health be spared, enlarge 
 more fully on other moral topics that agitate the community. At 
 present, he feels that the poor, condemned prisoner has peculiar claims 
 upon his sympathy. He trusts that, as he journeys on, visiting the 
 cold, loathsome dungeon, he may carry words of consolation, and be 
 governed by the mild and gentle spirit of Him who ( came to open the 
 prison to them that are bound.' 
 
 * ' To say that no part of the Jewish law is binding upon Christians, 
 is very far from leaving them at liberty to disregard all moral duties. 
 For, in fact, the very definition of a moral duty, implies its universal 
 obligation, independent of all enactment. The precepts respecting sacri- 
 fices, for instance, and other ceremonial observances, are all positive 
 ordinances ; meaning that the things in question become duties because 
 they mere commanded: the commandment to love one's neighbor as 
 one's self, on the contrary, we call a moral precept, on the very ground
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 167 
 
 Whatever is immutably right, in that ancient dis- 
 pensation, will stand forever ; not because we find it 
 there, but because truth, like its great Author, is 
 imperishable. Whatever was based upon the peculiar 
 situation of Israel, has passed away. Its rites and 
 ceremonies are lost in the more perfect system of 
 Christianity. They were addressed to the outward 
 senses, and were designed to lead the mind to Him 
 who is a spirit. Its priesthood has ceased with the 
 more perfect priesthood of Jesus. In Him ' we behold,' 
 says a beautiful writer, ' the Law and the Prophets 
 standing at the foot of the cross, and doing homage. 
 You behold Moses and Aaron bearing the ark of the 
 covenant ; David and Elijah presenting the oracle of 
 testimony. You behold all the priests and sacrifices, 
 all the rites and ordinances, all the types and symbols, 
 assembled together to receive their confirmation.'* 
 He who received the law upon the Mount bid the peo- 
 ple look to a higher and more perfect dispensation. 
 'The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet 
 from the midst of thee, of thy brethren like unto me ; 
 unto him shall ye hearken.' When that Prophet 
 came, he abolished the penal and ceremonial part of 
 the old dispensation, and summed up the whole deca- 
 logue in two simple precepts : ' Thou shall love the 
 Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
 soul, and with all thy mind Thou shall love 
 
 that it was a thing commanded because it was right. And it is evident 
 that what was right or wrong in itself before the law existed, must 
 remain such after it is abrogated.' ARCHBISHOP WHATELY. 
 
 * For an extended comparison between the Levitical priesthood 
 and that of Christ, see a work published and sold by the Author, enti- 
 tled, ' Names and Titles of the Lord Jesus Christ,' p. 167. Fifteenth 
 edition. Boston, 1843.
 
 168 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 thy neighbor as thyself.' Having thus condensed or 
 simplified the moral part of the ancient code, he 
 declared, ' On these two commandments hang all the 
 law and the prophets.' 
 
 Let it be remembered, however, that there was in 
 that code a great command, ' THOU SHALT NOT KILL.' 
 This is the sixth commandment. It is addressed to 
 all men; to sovereigns as well as subjects. Thou 
 shalt not commit homicide. Such is the strict trans- 
 lation : the Hebrew verb signifying strictly to commit 
 homicide ; not always homicide with malice, which is 
 the mere interpretation of our English word murder, 
 nor the mere act of killing, which may be applied to 
 the destruction of animals as well as man. Homicide, 
 then, is forbidden without any qualification. We 
 might as well talk of qualifying or repealing the first 
 or second, third, fourth or fifth, in short, the whole 
 decalogue, as this commandment. He who breaks 
 this law will be held accountable. Life is sacred, 
 inviolable. It is not to be taken even by the indi- 
 vidual himself, nor by any earthly power. This law 
 stands as the great pillar of the moral universe. It 
 came from Him who is the author of every moral 
 being. He permitted the penalty of ' life for life' to be 
 incorporated with this code on account of the peculiar 
 condition and character of his ancient people, or, as 
 Jesus said, ' on account of the hardness of their hearts.' 
 If we go to the days of the prophets, we find the Deity 
 himself saying, ' Wherefore I gave them also statutes 
 that were not good, and judgments whereby they should 
 not live.'' ' He saw,' says an amiable writer, ' that 
 they were so little advanced in the knowledge and 
 practical application of the principles of government, 
 and. at the same time, by reason of the hardness of
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 169 
 
 their hearts, were so wholly given up to suspicion, 
 violence, and discord, as to render the permission of 
 the belligerent principle of an eye for an eye, tooth for 
 a tooth, life for life, in some degree necessary under 
 the circumstances actually existing. It was on ac- 
 count of their sin that he permitted them to put each 
 other to death, in the same way as it was on account 
 of their sin that he permitted them to practise poly- 
 gamy, and to give the writing of divorcement. Or 
 another scriptural illustration of the course of the 
 divine proceeding in this matter may perhaps be 
 equally to the purpose, to be found in the hundred and 
 sixth Psalm. "They soon forgat his works; they 
 waited not for his counsel ; but lusted exceedingly in 
 the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And 
 he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their 
 soul." ' 
 
 Such were the reasons for the ancient code. The 
 command, 'THOU SHALT NOT KILL,' is solemnly re- 
 enacted by the Great Teacher in the later and more 
 perfect revelation. It is there found without any sus- 
 pension or modification. The voice of God is speak- 
 ing through his 'beloved Son,' to the nations of the 
 earth. It comes not in the whirlwind, nor in the fire ; 
 but in the gentle accents of love. He speaks as a 
 father to his erring children, and says, ' THOU SHALT 
 NOT KILL.' Amid the noise and confusion of battle, 
 that Voice has been disregarded. How great the 
 responsibility of him who turns a deaf ear ! This 
 Voice not only speaks in Revelation, but also from the 
 depths of the human soul. That Voice speaks to every 
 government and to every individual, teaching the 
 great truth that life is sacred ; that it is not to be 
 15
 
 170 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 r 
 
 touched by the hand of man or angel without per- 
 mission of Him who gave it existence. 
 
 We are aware that some may object to the views 
 we have advanced. It will be said there was a con- 
 dition of society in which the Deity himself per- 
 mitted the penalty of death. Therefore it may be 
 proper now, or, if not now, at some future day. 
 Since the announcement of the Law, Heaven has 
 . given us a more perfect Revelation. And, in the very 
 opening of that Revelation, the law of retaliation is 
 forever abrogated. The law of love is the only law 
 by which we are now to be governed. Ages may 
 pass away before Christianity shall reign upon our 
 earth. That it will eventually ' reconcile all things,' 
 we have no more doubt than of the existence of the 
 system itself. Mr. Rantoul has met this objection so 
 admirably that we prefer to give an answer in his 
 own words : ' But, because a peculiar people, under 
 the most peculiar circumstances, by as express an 
 interposition of Heaven, as that which directed Abra- 
 ham to offer up Isaac, were commanded to punish 
 certain crimes with death, shall we, a polished and 
 humane people, whose moral sensibility is deeply 
 wounded by the spectacle, under circumstances essen- 
 tially opposite to theirs, without warrant, violate the 
 great command, which says to the legislator as well 
 as to the subject, thou shalt not kill? This is the 
 command both of nature and revelation ; it grows out 
 of no local or temporary occasion, but is eternal and 
 universal in the obligation it imposes. How, then, 
 dare any man disobey it; and how is it an excuse for 
 onr disobedience, that the man we kill has broken this 
 law before we break it, and that we have taken into our 
 own hands to exercise upon him that vengeance which
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 171 
 
 the Almighty has declared belongs to himself, because 
 He, in his inscrutable purposes, some thousands of 
 years ago, specially authorized a particular people, in 
 specified cases, to be the executors of his vengeance ? 
 We have no message from Heaven, as they had, 
 exempting from this law the four cases which our 
 statutes exempt.' It should ever be borne in mind 
 that our circumstances are entirely different from that 
 of Israel. We are not a wandering tribe, just out of 
 Egypt, passing through a wilderness ! Our manners, 
 our customs, our religion, are all different. Indeed, 
 it would require a long labor to point out the pecu- 
 liarities of the two conditions of society to which we 
 have alluded. Yet there are many who really con- 
 tend that the code given to Israel in their wander- 
 ings three thousand years ago. would answer for the 
 present condition of society ! It is forgotten that they 
 had just escaped from the house of bondage, where 
 they had been held in the most abject slavery. We 
 cannot now, perhaps, tell precisely what was that 
 condition. One writer says, ' that it probably ex- 
 ceeded any of the present hordes of savages in the 
 wilds of Africa or Tartary, in slavish ignorance, sor- 
 did vices, loathsome diseases, and brutal lusts !' It 
 betrays, then, a gross ignorance, to contend that the 
 code of this ancient people may be applied to the 
 present condition of society, especially when we call 
 to mind that Moses himself bid us look to a higher 
 Prophet. 
 
 It will be said that the Deity violated his own law ; 
 that He said to Israel, ' Thou shall not kill,' and yet 
 incorporated the life-taking principle in the very same 
 code. The following, from one who has thought very
 
 172 MOSAIC CODE. 
 
 deeply on this subject, meets this objection in a very able 
 manner : ' Without discussing the question, whether 
 God could really suspend, or positively command, the 
 violation of any of the moral precepts embodied in the 
 decalogue, either for the purpose of benefi tting or pun- 
 ishing any of the creatures whom he has made, we 
 meet the objection by saying that, whatever may have 
 been the excellences or defects of the Mosaic code or 
 dispensation, it prophesied of a time when it would be 
 superseded by a higher and holier covenant; and,' 
 having now vanished away, it is no longer to be put 
 on an equality with the new one, or to be referred to 
 as of binding authority. Whatever was morally good 
 in it, or in accordance with the moral nature of man, 
 is, of course, embodied in the new covenant, and car- 
 ried to perfection. Now let the objector point out 
 where, in the latter, permission is given to take away 
 human life, in any case, or for any object whatever. 
 To whom shall we go but to Christ 1 What were his 
 teachings on the subject of violence, and in regard to 
 the punishment of enemies 1* What did he say about 
 taking the sword? What about coming to save men's 
 lives 1 What in regard to his ability to defend him- 
 self? How did he feel towards those who crucified 
 him between two thieves ? They who appeal to the 
 old covenant are bound to give heed to the voice of 
 the new. They who bid us think highly of Moses, 
 must concede that far greater reverence is due to 
 Christ.'! 
 
 But let us turn from Moses, and from every other 
 prophet, to Him who 'came from the bosom of the 
 
 * See Sermon on the Mount. f See Hebrews iii. 1 7.
 
 MOSAIC CODE. 173 
 
 Father,' the Light of the world, the Physician who 
 came to remove the moral maladies of the human 
 soul ; the Morning Star who came to usher in a day 
 of quietness and repose ; the Good Shepherd who is 
 to bring home the last wanderer to the fold of God. 
 15*
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 
 Skrmon on the Mount Law of retaliation Present law Story of 
 an executioner The adulteress Law of Moses Feelings to be 
 entertained towards the criminal Anecdote Request to call fire 
 from heaven Peter's request Forgiveness Moses and Christ 
 Objection Sentence of Christ His precepts Objection of 
 Hudson Reply Duty of the church Objection New cove- 
 nant The crucifixion Eulogium upon Howard Prayer-meet- 
 ing in a murderer's cell Death of Christ. 
 
 For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save 
 them. JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 AFTER wandering among the types and shadows of 
 the Mosaic dispensation, it is refreshing to come to 
 that more excellent ministry; to him who is the 
 Mediator of a better covenant. We feel as though we 
 had crossed the desert, and were about entering Ca- 
 naan. As we approach, we hear the song, not of 
 Moses and his host, but of angels uttering, in strains 
 unheard before, PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN. 
 We place our feet on the plain of Bethlehem, beside 
 the cradle of the great Christian Legislator, with an 
 illuminated sky above us. Here are no gibbets, no 
 ruthless desolations, but all is lovely and refreshing. 
 We stand upon the Rock Christ Jesus, looking back 
 to ' the first covenant,' with its : ordinances of divine 
 service, and a worldly sanctuary ;' and forward to 
 that c new and living way, which he hath consecrated 
 for us through the vail.' ' Let us draw near with a
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 175 
 
 true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts 
 sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies 
 washed with pure water.' 
 
 As the great Mediator enters upon his work, what a 
 flood of light and consolation does he pour upon the 
 soul ! He looks back on Moses and all the prophets. 
 He shows that they pointed to him as the true Mes- 
 siah. He collects their scattered rays, like the light of 
 ten thousand suns, into one focus ! And while he 
 speaks, the multitudes hang upon his lips, ' wondering 
 at the gracious words that proceeded from his mouth.' 
 He began by revealing God as a Father, and as a 
 being requiring spiritual worship. And when God 
 was thus brought before the mind, every idolatrous 
 temple on earth shook to its very centre. It was like 
 the sun appearing in the midst of storms and tempests, 
 gilding and beautifying every object. A flood of light 
 and joy poured upon the world. Man claimed kin- 
 dred with the skies. His soul leaped for joy. He 
 looked to Heaven, and, for the first time, he felt that 
 he could say to the Creator of worlds, MY FATHER ! 
 What a kindling, mighty thought ! A richer truth, 
 God could not have conferred on man. Let us hear 
 his first sermon : ' Blessed are the poor in spirit : for 
 theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the 
 meek : for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are 
 the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed 
 are the peace-makers : for they shall be called the 
 children of God. Love your enemies, bless them that 
 curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray 
 for them which despitefully use you and persecute 
 you.'* What a sermon ! Like dew upon the tender 
 plant ; like broad rivers in a desert ; like the bright 
 
 * Matt. v. 3, 5, 7, 9, 44.
 
 176 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 
 morning star ushering in a day of righteousness and 
 peace. The very wilderness budded ; the desert re- 
 joiced and blossomed as the rose. From that hour to 
 the present, the blessed influences of this sermon have 
 been felt by the wise and the good. It has been to 
 the world 'like rain upon the mown grass, and as 
 showers that water the earth.'* 
 
 Had Jesus been governed by human wisdom, he 
 would have pronounced blessings upon the proud, 
 the rich and the popular. His first labor was to abro- 
 gate forever the law of retaliation. 'It hath been 
 said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine 
 enemy, but I say unto you, love your enemies, bless 
 them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
 you. 3 But can we love another, and put him to 
 death? How much love does the government feel 
 when the unhappy culprit is forced from his cell to 
 the place of execution ? It is the spirit of retaliation. 
 There is no feeling for the offender. One great object 
 must, from necessity, be excluded ; which is, the good 
 of the unhappy culprit. Indeed, the great ends of 
 punishment are entirely set aside. The community 
 receive no reparation, nor would they if ten thousand 
 lives were taken. The example, instead of being 
 beneficial, brutalizes and hardens the heart. f The 
 law is wholly subversive of any good, and entirely 
 contrary to the spirit of Christianity. This we shall 
 
 * See Names and Titles of the Lord Jesus Christ : Boston. Pub- 
 lished and sold by the Author. Fifteenth edition, pp. 297, 363. 
 
 f See page 65, where will be found one of the most lamentable 
 proofs of this remark. The executioner himself actually, after strang- 
 ling seven men, coolly sat down to smoke his cigar and quaff a bottle 
 of wine, before he proceeded to cut off the heads of his victims, pre- 
 vious to the burning of their bodies !
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 177 
 
 prove both by the example and precepts of its great 
 Founder. 
 
 A solitary case occurs in the eventful life of the Son 
 of God, in which a capital offender was brought before 
 him. ' And the Scribes and Pharisees brought unto 
 him a woman taken in adultery.' The object was 
 rather to ensnare him than to obtain a just decision. 
 ' This they said tempting him, that they might have 
 to accuse him.' ' He knew what was in man.' He 
 penetrated into the very depths of the heart. In this 
 instance, what a sublimity of action ! What brevity 
 in his language ! What . inexpressible tenderness ! 
 What a benignity of spirit ! While he rebukes the 
 severity of the law on the one hand, he puts her 
 accusers to flight on the other. What a rebuke to 
 self-righteousness ! ' He that is without sin among 
 you, let him first cast a stone at her.' Then leaving 
 the rebuke to find its way to their hearts, he stooped 
 down and wrote on the ground. { And they which 
 heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, 
 went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even 
 unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the 
 woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted 
 up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said 
 unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? 
 hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, 
 Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn 
 thee : go, and sin no more.'* How admirably did 
 
 * John viii. 3 11. It adds much to the interest of this narrative, 
 if we remember that the law of Moses ordained that the witnesses 
 should throw the first stone, Deut. xvii. 7. It might add to the purity 
 of our courts if we were guided by Moses in this respect. How slow 
 should we be to condemn to death, if we had to chain the culprit, 
 erect the gibbet, and place the halter and the cap !
 
 178 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 
 Jesus turn the thoughts of these accusers inward ! 
 Would it not be well, when we look upon the misera- 
 ble culprit, to turn our thoughts in upon our own 
 hearts'? A certain divine used to exclaim, when he 
 saw a criminal carried to execution, { There goes my 
 wicked self.' And when the advocates for blood come 
 forward in their zeal, would it not be well to pause, 
 and remember the words of Jesus? ' He that is with- 
 out sin among you, let him cast the first stone.' Let 
 those who cry for blood, erect the gibbet and place the 
 halter ! How many would then be executed? 
 
 Let us consider the criminal as a man and a brother. 
 A writer very feelingly remarks, that when we see 
 one on his way to the gallows, we should say, ' There 
 goes my father, my brother, or my son.'* How many 
 executions would take place if the whole community 
 possessed such a feeling ? ' Go ye and learn what 
 that meaneth,' said the Great Teacher; 'I will have 
 mercy, and not sacrifice. I am not come to call the 
 righteous, but sinners, to repentance.'! ' Thou shall 
 love thy neighbor as thyself.' 
 
 * A most beautiful incident occurs to the writer, which admirably 
 exemplifies this sentiment. A long acquaintance with the individual 
 renders it dear to him. It was a venerable old lady of Brewster, 
 Mass. In passing through the street, she saw a poor bloated drunkard 
 lying in the gutter. She went to him, and offered her aid, which he 
 gladly accepted. An individual, passing at the moment, expressed his 
 surprise that a lady should, in his estimation, so far demean herself. 
 He asked her the reason. She replied, ' It is my brother ! ' ' Indeed ! ' 
 he exclaimed. She quickly added, to his great surprise, ' and your 
 brother, too ! ' How Christ-like ! How nearly resembling the language 
 of the Parable of the Prodigal Son ! Instead of admitting the. expres- 
 sion of the elder, ( THIS THY SON,' it was, ' THIS THY BROTHER has come 
 home ! ' 
 
 f Matt, ix 13.
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 179 
 
 A very striking instance, illustrative of the spirit of 
 Jesus, occurred on his way to Galilee. His road lay 
 through Samaria, but the villagers ' did not receive 
 him because his face was as though he would go to 
 Jerusalem. And when his disciples, James and John, 
 saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command 
 fire to come down from heaven and consume them, 
 even as Elias did 1 ' What a request ! And how 
 would it have tarnished the character of Jesus had he 
 given such permission ! It was the very spirit of 
 revenge. How pointedly did he reprove them ! And 
 that reproof contains the very spirit of that reform for 
 which we are laboring. ' Ye know not what manner 
 of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come 
 to destroy men's lives, but to save them.' Had the 
 nations of the earth been governed by this principle, 
 all violence would have ceased ; every prison door 
 would have been thrown open, and every criminal 
 would have been reformed. The very wilderness 
 would have smiled, and the desert rejoiced and blos- 
 somed as the rose. ' Instead of the thorn, would have 
 come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier, the myr- 
 tle-tree.' But, blessed be God, the time will come 
 when ' violence shall no more be heard in thy land, 
 wasting nor destruction within thy borders ; but thou 
 shalt call thy walls Salvation, arid thy gates Praise.' 
 ' Thy people also shall be all righteous.' 
 
 Look at another striking instance in the eventful 
 life of the Son of God.* ' Then came Peter to him 
 
 * Matt, jcviii. 21, 22. It was a maxim among the Jews, never to for- 
 give more than thrice. We see that Peter had begun to outgrow the 
 maxims of his age. But the idea of forgiving to the extent of the 
 direction of his Master, had never entered his heart, nor that of 
 scarcely any one since his day. And, as to human governments,
 
 A 80 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 
 and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sjn against 
 me, and I forgive him ? till seven times ? Jesus saith 
 unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times ; but 
 Until seventy times seven.' 
 
 No one, who has glanced over the New Testament, 
 but must have seen the totally different spirit of the 
 new and the old law. Moses addressed the injurer, 
 Christ the injured. Moses says to the one who has 
 mutilated his neighbor, ' Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' 
 Christ says to the injured person, ' Ye have heard 
 that it hath been said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but 
 I say unto you not to requite* evil ; but whosoever 
 strikes you on the one cheek, offer to him also the 
 other.' Moses taught retaliation. Christ taught sub- 
 mission. Moses made his enemies die for him. Christ 
 died for his enemies. Moses regulated the outward 
 actions. Jesus regulated the heart. Moses was mor- 
 tal. Christ was divine. Moses was sinful. Christ 
 was sinless. Moses was a teacher to a single nation. 
 Jesus is the teacher of a world. Moses required sac- 
 rifice. Jesus required mercy. Moses violated his 
 own laws. Christ exemplified his in every action. 
 ' For if that which is done away was glorious, much 
 more that which remaineth is glorious.' 
 
 Our laws are founded on Moses, not on Christ. 
 ' Life for life' is written on every code in the Union. f 
 
 there is not one on the face of the earth that has been wholly governed 
 by this or any other precept of Christ. If they had been, the law of 
 death would long ere this have been abolished. For, can we forgive 
 even once, and then put the capital offender to death ? . 
 
 * The word nvria-men means not merely to resist, but also requite ; 
 and, as it were, to neigh out again what one has received. 
 
 f Moses incorporated with his laws only thirty-four capital offences. 
 Judge STROCD says, ( there are seventy-one crimes in the slave states for
 
 TEACHINGS OP CHRIST. 181 
 
 Moses is our master, not Christ. We say to the crimi- 
 nal, ' life for life.' Christ says, ' Be of good cheer : 
 thy sins are forgiven thee.' We 'are blinded; for 
 until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away 
 in the reading of the Old Testament ; which veil is 
 done away in Christ.' But ' the veil shall be taken 
 away.' ' God will destroy the face of the covering 
 cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over 
 all nations.' Moses is still ' our schoolmaster.' We 
 reject Christ, and put him to death. We will not hear 
 his voice. We still linger around Sinai, preferring 
 1 the ministration of death written and engraven in 
 stones.' ' For ye are not come unto the mount that 
 might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto 
 blackness, and darkness, and tempest, but ye are 
 come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the 
 living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innu- 
 merable company of angels ; to the general assembly 
 and church of the first-born, which are written in 
 heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits 
 of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator 
 of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, 
 that speaketh better things than that of Abel.' Christ 
 is shut out of our legislatures, our courts, our schools, 
 our literature, our families. And if Christ were on 
 the earth, he would say, ' Oh, ye of little faith.' We 
 
 which slaves are punished with death ; for each of which the white 
 man suffers only imprisonment. See Appendix I., code of Virginia. 
 Murder is capital in every state except in Maryland, and there it is 
 death or imprisonment for life. Treason is capital in the code of the 
 Union, and probably in every state, either by statute or common lam. 
 The law was altered in Rhode Island before the late movement by 
 Mr. ***#. For a V ery curious fact, see page 94 ; also, Appendix I., 
 note on Rhode Island. 
 
 16
 
 182 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 
 have ' paid tithes of mint, and anise, and cummin, and 
 have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judg- 
 ment, mercy, and faith.' Oh ! that the spirit of Jesus 
 might reign in our midst ! Well might he ask, ' When 
 the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the 
 earth?' If our ' eyes were lifted up,' we should not 
 behold Moses nor Elias, but Christ. And if the Chris- 
 tian world were guided by the precepts of Jesus, 
 every gibbet would be demolished, and every prison 
 door thrown open. One great, all-pervading law 
 would bind and govern the world ; ' Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor as thyself.' 
 
 It is said that the Christian precepts were designed 
 for individuals, not nations. This has always .been 
 urged against every attempt to make an application 
 of Christianity to the life and conduct. The popular 
 distinction between political and moral right, or be- 
 tween political expediency and Christian duty, is dan- 
 gerous in the extreme. On this principle, political 
 bargains are often made, and as often broken. By what 
 authority do we limit the precepts of Christ ? ' No 
 prophecy of the scripture is of private interpretation.' 
 If individuals are bound to act up to Christian rules, 
 societies are subject to the same. If not, how many 
 individuals must associate before the precepts of Jesus 
 cease to be binding 1 Were Robinson Crusoe and his 
 man Friday a nation? If not, when would they have 
 begun to be a nation, provided successive ships had 
 been cast away on his island, and successive savages 
 enslaved? How populous must the island become 
 before their members would sanction sin? The re- 
 public of San Marino has been considered a nation for 
 many centuries. Its numbers are only three or four 
 thousand. Our Indian tribes are more numerous.
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 183 
 
 Our government considers them nations when it makes 
 treaties, but not when it breaks them ! Is slavery no 
 sin because sanctioned by the nation ? The objection 
 is absurd. We kindly ask, how many must be asso- 
 ciated in a family or tribe before the precepts of Jesus 
 cease to be binding ? 
 
 Jesus, it is said, did not condemn the law against 
 which we have been laboring. This objection has 
 been often presented. And it is not only urged against 
 the present reform, but against every reform that has 
 been commenced since Jesus was on the earth. And, 
 judging from the past, we suppose every reformer will 
 have to encounter it at the very commencement. It 
 is insincere. Men endeavor to seek shelter under the 
 example of Christ, who care nothing about Christ. 
 They woufd crucify the Son of God afresh, and open 
 his bleeding wounds. And are such men willing to 
 be governed by the example of Jesus? If they will 
 go to him, then we beseech of them to follow in his 
 steps. Hear, then, his commands : ' Ye have heard 
 that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth 
 for a tooth. But I say unto you, That ye resist not 
 evil : but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right 
 cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man 
 will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let 
 him have thy cloak also.' These prohibit, decisively 
 and positively, all acts of retaliation and violence. If 
 carried out, not a single execution would ever again 
 disgrace humanity. Such declarations, it is said, are 
 not to be understood literally. Indeed ! Is Christ 
 divided 1 Did he not, when smitten on the one cheek, 
 turn the other 1 Did he not even die on Calvary for 
 his enemies? And is he not our pattern and guide? 
 ' For even hereunto were ye called : because Christ
 
 184 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 
 also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye 
 should follow his steps : who did no sin, neither was 
 guile found in his mouth ; who, when he was reviled, 
 reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened 
 not; but committed himself to him that judgeth right- 
 eously.'* Christ, then, is our great example. Look- 
 ing to him, let us, if we can, erect the gibbet, chain 
 our brother, fix the fatal noose, draw down the cap, 
 and, amid his cries, cut him off from the earth ! 
 
 But we will give the objection in the language of 
 Rev. Charles Hudson, a member of the Senate of 
 Massachusetts, in 1838, in his Report: 'When Christ 
 was put to death, he expired between two malefactors, 
 who were suffering capitally for their crimes. The 
 penitent thief confessed that the punishment was just ; 
 and the Saviour acquiesced in that opinion. Would 
 Christ, in his last hours, have omitted this opportunity 
 to condemn a penalty which was contrary to the ordi- 
 nance of Heaven, and fraught with extreme cruelty ? 
 Would the zealous advocate for the abolition of Capi- 
 tal Punishment, in these days, let such an opportunity 
 pass without entering his protest against it? We 
 think not. Now, unless he claims to be more faithful 
 than the Son of God, he must allow that the case 
 before us furnishes an argument in favor of Capital 
 Punishment.' We think, in meeting objections of this 
 nature, a great error has been committed. Too much 
 reliance has been placed on mere phrases, and cold, 
 unmeaning criticisms. Jesus himself never stopped 
 by the way to controvert mere words. He began by 
 laying the axe at the root of the tree. The law of 
 retaliation lay in his way. He said, at once, ' Love 
 your enemies, bless them that curse you.' 
 
 * 1 Peter ii. 2123.
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 185 
 
 *It is apparent,' says a writer, 'throughout all 
 Christ's teachings, that he was careful to confine him- 
 self to the great object of his mission, that of flinging 
 broadcast over the earth, to make their eventual way 
 to its remotest corners, the imperishable seeds of great 
 principles, to the natural germination and growth of 
 which, slow but certain, he committed all the practi- 
 cal social reformations which, in the ripeness of time, 
 were to be their fruit. Wisely abstaining from attack- 
 ing directly even those existing civil institutions most 
 essentially at variance with those principles, he thus, 
 by the words of power which he sent forth, planted at 
 the very depths of their roots a blight which would 
 not fait, earlier or later, to wither them to their top- 
 most branches, and soon to bid them cumber the 
 ground, and mar the fair face of the earth no more.' 
 For ages, the church has been engaged in discussing 
 mere words and trifling ceremonies, while humanity 
 has been suffering, human rights disregarded, and 
 prisons and gibbets strewn over the earth.* How 
 little has been done ! Eighteen centuries have rolled 
 away. Yet, even now, when a poor, feeble voice, 
 amid din, and strife, and blood, is raised for the poor, 
 degraded criminal, it is drowned by the cries of mor- 
 bid benevolence, sickly sympathy, infidelity !f But 
 
 * It is indeed lamentable to see the subjects which have, for ages, 
 occupied the attention of the church, as of primary importance ; such 
 as whether baptism by immersion or by sprinkling was the true mode ; 
 whether Christ was really in the sacramental symbols, &c. &c. 
 
 ) We admire the remarks of Rev. Mr. CHAPIN, of Charlestown, on 
 this point. ' Morbid feeling ! This has always been the cry. It was 
 a morbid feeling in those who protested for the rights of individual 
 conscience it was a morbid feeling in our puritan fathers that ex- 
 cited them to resist the tyranny of the church. It was a morbid feel- 
 
 16*
 
 186 TEACHINGS OP CHRIST. 
 
 the still small voice will be heard. It may be long 
 before it reaches the heart. But its mission will be 
 effected. Truth is powerful, and must prevail. ' Who 
 can calculate the orbit of a word?' He who sends 
 out a great truth, will reap his reward. It may lie 
 long buried in the earth, but it will eventually bring 
 forth the fruits of righteousness. Like Jesus, the great 
 Reformer, the advocate may be put to death, but he 
 will have that peace which flows like a river. From 
 his very death will flow a power that his life could 
 never have imparted. ' The good man shall be satis- 
 fied from himself.' He looks not to outward circum- 
 stances, but to God, the faithful rewarder of suffering 
 virtue. 
 
 Christianity is a great, a perfect system. It is a 
 system of light and love. It comes from Him whose 
 name is love, and who is the Moral Sun of the uni- 
 verse. It contains immutable and eternal truths. It 
 appeals to man's moral nature. It is a system, benev- 
 olent in its origin, and omnipotent in power. Its 
 design is to soften the human heart, to light up the 
 world with joy, to bind up the broken heart, to break 
 every yoke, to open the prison door ; in short, to sever 
 
 ing that spoke in favor of Baptists and Quakers. It was a morbid 
 feeling that induced the patriots of the revolution to rebel. It was a 
 morbid feeling that softened down the harsh penalties of cutting out 
 the heart, of transfixing the head on a pole, and of stretching on a 
 rack, to hanging on a gibbet. It was a morbid feeling that changed 
 the place of public execution from the public gaze to the jail-yard. 
 And I expect that this morbid feeling will continue until the ermine of 
 justice shall be no longer stained with blood ; until men learn to be 
 merciful even while they punish ; until they learn that the true policy 
 of society is not severity but reformation. If all this and it is all of a 
 kind is morbid feeling, let it work on.' Three Discourses on Capital 
 Punishment, p. 71. Boston: 1843.
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 187 
 
 every chain, to purify and refine every soul, and tc 
 subdue all things to God. 
 
 In the New Covenant, we find re-enacted in the 
 most solemn manner the great command, ' THOU SHALT 
 NOT KILL.' As the old covenant was passing away, 
 with its rites and observances, Jesus gathered up the 
 Moral Law, stripped it of all tradition, and incorpo- 
 rated it with the gospel. And one of the commands 
 of that Moral Law was, ' THOU SHALT NOT KILL.' 
 True, there are other portions, of importance to the 
 well-being of society. But our duty is to bring out 
 this, in all its distinctness and awful solemnity. Other 
 writers may take up the several parts of the deca- 
 logue, but, to us, this one seems all-important ; for, we 
 cannot expect human rights to be respected so long as 
 human life is disregarded. The immutability of life 
 lies at the foundation. We can safely build on no 
 other principle. So long as the Punishment of Death 
 is permitted, all other rights will be unsafe. We 
 must begin here : ' THOU SHALT NOT KILL ! ' How 
 solemn ! It shines out everywhere in the Gospel. 
 It does not come to us now amid the thunderings of 
 Sinai. It drops gently from Him who 'came from the 
 bosom of the Father ;' from Him who is ' the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life.' 
 
 But the Hon. Senator, to whom we alluded, won- 
 ders why the Son of God did not speak against Capi- 
 tal Punishment on the cross. Indeed ! Was that a 
 time to point out the evils of a particular law ; a law 
 by which he himself was condemned to be crucified ? 
 Had he not already laid down principles that would 
 eventually subvert every cruel law 7 Had he not, 
 in his very first sermon, spoken directly against the
 
 188 TEACHINGS OP CHRIST. 
 
 law of retaliation? And was he not, in that dark 
 hour, giving his life in attestation of his principles? 
 Could he not have called down twelve legions of 
 angels? The very crucifixion itself, when felt as it 
 should be, will break every fetter, will cast down 
 every gibbet, and open every prison door. It was this 
 doctrine that gave to a suffering world the angel-spirit 
 of a Howard.* And the crucifixion is now moving 
 the hearts of philanthropists to ameliorate the condi- 
 tion of the prisoner. It goes to the cold, damp dun- 
 
 * We cannot mention the name of HOWARD without peculiar emo- 
 tions. When we remember that he spent thirty thousand pounds in 
 the cause of humanity, and traversed nearly sixty thousand miles, 
 fearlessly daring the dungeon's gloom arid the squalid aspect of the 
 miserable occupant, as he lay in his filthy straw, on the damp, clay 
 floor, who can help admiring his ardent love for the degraded. Cow- 
 per, the great moral poet of England, has pronounced the following 
 just and beautiful eulogium on his character : 
 
 ' Patron of else the most despis'd of men, 
 
 Accept the tribute of a stranger's pen; 
 
 Verse, like the laurel, its immortal meed, 
 
 Should be the guerdon of a noble deed ; 
 
 I may alarm thee, but I fear the shame, 
 
 (Charity chosen as my theme and aim,) 
 
 I must incur, forgetting Howard's name, 
 
 Blest with all wealth can give thee, to resign 
 
 Joys doubly sweet to feelings quick as thine. 
 
 To quit the bliss thy rural scenes bestow, 
 
 To seek a nobler amidst scenes of wo, 
 
 To traverse seas, range kingdoms, and bring home, 
 
 Not the proud monuments of Greece or Rome, 
 
 But knowledge such as only dungeons teach, 
 
 And only sympathy like thine could reach ; 
 
 That grief, sequester'd from the public stage, 
 
 Blight smooth her feathers, and enjoy her cage ; 
 
 Speaks a divine ambition, and a zeal, 
 
 The boldest patriot might be proud to feel 
 
 O that the voice of clamor and debate, 
 
 That pleads for peace till it disturbs the state, 
 
 Were hushed in favor of thy gen'rous plea, 
 
 The poor thy clients, and Heaven's smile thy fee !'
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 189 
 
 geon, and speaks kindly to him It endeavors to show 
 him that all is not lost, that he has a Father in 
 heaven, and that Jesus waits with open arms again to 
 receive him.* It goes to the gallows and says, That 
 is my brother, spare him; let him live. Degraded 
 though he may be, still there is hope. Mercy and 
 compassion may yet subdue, and he whom you con- 
 sider an outcast, may yet become a blessing to that 
 community whose laws he has violated.f 
 
 The death of Christ was a complete embodimem 
 
 * ' Private Christians, selected at once for their judiciousness and 
 philanthropy, by conversation, look and encouragement, must touch 
 within the convict, chords which have long ceased to vibrate ; must 
 awaken new hopes ; must show him that all is not lost.' CHANNING. 
 
 f A touching incident fell under the eye of the writer. . During the 
 imprisonment of LEAVITT, the murderer, in Plymouth, Mass., a con- 
 vention was held by the Universalist denomination. It was proposed 
 to hold a prayer-meeting in his cell. The proposal was looked on 
 with surprise. A prayer-meeting in a murderer's cell ! Who ever heard 
 of it ? The prison-door was opened. Several devout men and women 
 entered. The first prayer was from a female. It melted every heart. 
 The beautiful hymn, ' The poor way-faring man,' was sung. And a 
 thrill of sympathy ran through every heart when we came to the 
 words, 
 
 1 In prison I saw him next, condemn'd 
 To meet a traitor's doom at morn.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 Tears flowed from every eye. And, as we addressed the murderer in 
 cheering, confiding language, recognising him as a brother, he wept 
 aloud. He was disarmed. The murderer was gone. The lion became 
 a lamb; the serpent a dove. He was 'clothed in his right mind.' 
 Say not there is no power in the love of Jesus. It will subdue the stout- 
 est heart. It made that dungeon a palace. It was a heaven on earth. 
 We left that cell with chastened feelings, with renewed sympathy 
 for 'the poor way-faring man.' And would not such meetings do 
 more good than chains and gibbets ? Let him answer who has felt the 
 love of Christ in his soul.
 
 190 TEACHINGS OP CHRIST. 
 
 of Christianity. Jesus then carried his principles tc 
 the highest degree of perfection and purity. It was 
 not simply a friend dying for a friend. It was a devel- 
 opment of a higher principle. ' Greater love,' said 
 Jesus, at the Last Supper, ' hath no man than this, 
 that he lay down his life for his friends.' Human 
 love may rise to that point. ' God commendeth his 
 love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, 
 Christ died for us.' ' Herein is love, not that we 
 loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to 
 be the propitiation for our sins.' What love ! Who 
 can measure its height, its depth, its length, or its 
 breadth? Let us seek for an illustration. History 
 furnishes nothing that equals the truth itself. We 
 may refer to the hero, who mounts his steed, and 
 buckles on his armor, and bleeds for his country. 
 The world calls him great, as he goes forth amid 
 the flourish of drums and trumpets, trampling upon 
 the bodies of the slain and the wounded. Community 
 throws up the splendid arch ; it calls on music to 
 praise his deeds, upon the statuary to imbed them in 
 the marble, and upon the poet to portray them in let- 
 ters of fire. But the hero died for fame, perchance for 
 country. Jesus died for his enemies. Then, we turn 
 from the bloody deeds of the earthly hero. Behold 
 the mother, bending over the couch of her sick child ! 
 She is there when the midnight taper burns dimly. 
 She is there when the morning smiles. She is there 
 when the sun pours down his noon-tide splendors. 
 She is there, day after day, till death marks her for 
 his victim, and she is conveyed to the house appointed 
 for all living. She has fallen a sacrifice to her child. 
 But Jesns died for his enemies. Amid the agonies of
 
 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 191 
 
 his expiring hour, he exclaimed, 'Father, forgive 
 them, for they know not what they do.'* 
 
 Yet we are told that Jesus said nothing against the 
 law which demands ' life for life.' Go, ye advocates 
 for blood ! go, stand at the foot of that cross ! Go, 
 imbibe its spirit of forgiveness and forbearance ! Go, 
 while the blood flows fresh from the wounded Saviour ! 
 Go ! and then take your fellow-man, one for whom 
 Christ died ; one, weak, helpless, tempted, frail, like 
 yourself; one made in the image of God; go, and 
 erect your scaffold ; and, amid his shrieks and groans, 
 innocent though he may be, hurl him into the presence 
 of his God ! 
 
 * To show the power of the sufferings of Christ in reclaiming 
 the vicious and degraded, we present the following touching inci- 
 dent : ' At Berlin,' says Rev. C. E. STOWE, 'I visited an establishment 
 for the reformation of youthful offenders.' ' The children,' he says, 
 ' received into this institution are often of the very worst and most 
 hopeless character. Not only are their minds most thoroughly de- 
 praved, but their very senses and bodily organization seem to partake 
 in the viciousness and degradation of their hearts.' 'An ordinary 
 man,' he adds, 'might suppose that the task of restoring such poor 
 creatures to decency and good morals was entirely hopeless.' But 
 not so ; the superintendent ' took hold with the firm hope that the 
 moral power of the word of God was competent to such a task.' ' On 
 one occasion,' we are informed, ' when every other means seemed to 
 fail, he collected the children together, and read to them, in the words 
 of the New Testament, the simple narrative of the sufferings and death 
 of Christ, with some remarks on the design and object of his mission 
 into this world. The effect was wonderful. They burst into tears of 
 contrition, and during the whole of that term, from June till October, 
 the influence of this scene was visible in all their conduct. The idea 
 that takes so strong a hold when the character of Christ is exhibited to 
 such poor creatures, is, that they are objects of affection; miserable, 
 wicked, despised as they are, yet Christ, the Son of God, loved them, 
 and loved them enough to suffer and to die for them and still loves 
 them. The thought that they can yet be loved, melts the heart, and 
 gives them hope, and is a strong incentive to reformation.'
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Innovation Claims of antiquity Christ Cheever's mew of Cain 
 Inhuman to abolish the law Violence upon a maniac The law 
 a restraint upon the imprisoned Conversation in a prison Saves 
 life Expediency Death of Christ Experimenting Anecdote 
 Incident among the Hottentots All sympathy for the criminal 
 Example of Jesus Adulteress Suicide of Colt Criminals beyond 
 moral influences Washingtonian movement. 
 
 ' Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines which it 
 will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is 
 done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next 
 year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject.' 
 
 BISHOP HOKNE. 
 
 OBJECTIONS have always been made to every reform. 
 Human progress is very slow. Long-established laws 
 and customs, however absurd and barbarous, are not 
 easily changed. And he who ventures beyond the 
 prejudices of his age must endure persecution, per- 
 haps even to martyrdom. We expect reproach ; but 
 that shall not turn us aside from laboring for human- 
 ity. Our efforts may have a very limited influence ; 
 but if we reach a single mind, dry up a single tear, 
 modify even one unjust law, or soften a single heart, 
 something will be gained. 
 
 There is an unfairness in the objections that are 
 urged against this reform. It is common to present 
 highly colored pictures of atrocious crimes. We are 
 referred to the unnatural wretch who has assassinated
 
 OBJECTIONS. 193 
 
 his father ; or the incarnate fiend who has set fire at 
 midnight to the habitation of his enemy, and gloated 
 over the destruction of a whole family. We are asked 
 if such men should be allowed to enjoy the boon of 
 life, of which they have pitilessly deprived the inno- 
 cent and the virtuous. 
 
 But will the execution of the offender restore the 
 murdered man to life? Will it again gather around 
 him his ruined home, his massacred wife and children ? 
 The objection is based on vengeance. It was an 
 admirable maxim of Bentham, ' Never do evil solely 
 on the ground that it is deserved.' Unless some good 
 purpose is gained, we have no right to inflict evil on 
 the offender. We have shown that the existing law 
 is subversive of all the ends of punishment. 
 
 Some persons seem to have a sort of morbid dread 
 of the consequences that might ensue if Capital Pun- 
 ishment were abolished. They imagine that it is the 
 only sure protection for their lives and their pos- 
 sessions. They seem to think the very foundations 
 of society would be broken up. Such persons should 
 remember that those countries have always been the 
 most luxuriant in crime where blood has been spilled 
 with the greatest freedom. We have shown the inse- 
 curity of property by the petitions of the bankers in 
 England, who found the law so inefficacious that 
 they prayed for its abolishment.* And such persons 
 should remember that even after the experiment has 
 been tried, society may go back and try again the effi- 
 cacy of the scaffold. All we ask is the experiment. 
 The friends of Capital Punishment have had their 
 
 * Part I., Essay III., p. 38. 
 
 17
 
 194 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 turn for centuries. We beg of them to let us try ours 
 at least for a few years. 
 
 I. The proposed reform is an innovation. This 
 objection has been urged in every age. We freely 
 admit that every innovation is not an improvement, 
 though every improvement is an innovation. We 
 have no respect for antiquity when it conflicts with 
 humanity. If general usage be a test, no improvement 
 will ever be made. We may plead antiquity for 
 every execution for heresy or witchcraft. On this 
 ground, the most cruel tortures, and even human sacri- 
 fices, may be justified. But do those who urge this 
 objection respect antiquity when it conflicts with a 
 favorite theory? Christianity itself is the greatest 
 innovation the world has ever seen. Jesus himself 
 was an innovator. He invaded long-established cus- 
 toms. He came to invade a whole dispensation of 
 rites and ceremonies. He came to establish sentiments 
 that will eventually overthrow every idolatrous tem- 
 ple. He said, ' I am come to send fire on the earth, 
 and what will I, if it be already kindled ? ' This fire 
 is still burning, and will continue till every species 
 of violence is removed from the earth, till every pas- 
 sion is subdued, till ' the kingdoms of this world 
 become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ.' 
 
 But if the objector still urges antiquity, we would 
 go with him to the most antiquated case on record, 
 to the very first murderer ! Was there a gibbet erected 
 for him ? The very first law in existence, respecting 
 murder, was to preserve the life of the murderer him- 
 self! Surely, antiquity is in our favor. We know 
 that the Rev. Mr. Cheever urges that this was an 
 experiment on the part of the Deity ; that, in conse- 
 quence of ' the divine lenity, in the case of Cain, the
 
 OBJECTIONS. 195 
 
 crime of murder had become frightfully common, and 
 the earth was filled with violence ! '* Indeed ! what 
 a sad mistake ! So this advocate for blood would cor- 
 rect the errors of the Great Legislator of the universe. 
 Would it not be well first to enlighten our own legis- 
 lators ? We shall be content if we can correct but a 
 single human error. This would amply repay the 
 labors of a whole life. But we leave this divine to 
 his work. 
 
 II. The advocates of the abolition of the law are 
 not the friends of humanity. This has been urged 
 against philanthropists in every age. Wilberforce, 
 Clarkson and Sharp had this to encounter, in their 
 efforts to abolish the slave trade. It has even been 
 urged against the peace enterprise. War, it is said, 
 has carried forward civilization and the arts, and 
 nations have become improved by conquest. With- 
 out assuming too much, we simply ask the commu- 
 nity to judge in this matter. Is there not as tender a 
 sentiment of love and kindness among those who 
 oppose the Punishment of Death as among its advo- 
 cates? Let there be a day appointed for an execu- 
 tion ; and who are the most angry if a reprieve is 
 announced? Is it the most refined and the most 
 amiable ? Who go to the gallows ? Who indulge in 
 coarse and vulgar expressions? Instances have been 
 where the multitude were so eager for blood that they 
 have rushed into the cell, torn off the chains of the 
 prisoner, and dragged him to the scaffold ! An 
 instance is given by Mr. Livingston, where the poor 
 victim was a maniac !f And yet, when we plead for 
 
 * For a reply to this very profound argument, see p. 137. 
 f See Part I., Essay V., p. 61.
 
 196 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 the repeal of the law, we are not the friends of 
 humanity ! ' Tell it not in Gath ! Publish it not in 
 the streets of Askelon ! ' 
 
 III. It is urged that Capital Punishment is neces- 
 sary to restrain those who are imprisoned. What 
 shall be done with those who are sentenced to im- 
 prisonment for life 1 Suppose the warden, or some 
 other officer, is killed ; then there is no heavier pen- 
 alty, unless life can be taken. To meet this point, 
 we present a conversation held in TKomaston prison, 
 in Maine, with an officer. During a visit there, the 
 writer was asked what could be done in such a case, 
 alluding to the murder of Mr. Lincoln, warden of the 
 Massachusetts State Prison, which had just occurred. 
 ' Suppose,' we replied, { that all the prisoners, (about 
 two hundred and seventy,) had been engaged in that 
 affray ; would you hang the whole 1 ' The officer 
 hesitated. He never thought of that. We observed 
 that the same principle that allowed the execution of 
 one murderer, would admit that of ten, or five hun- 
 dred, or any number that might be concerned. And 
 where should we end? We may say this might never 
 happen. True, but we should look out, in laying 
 down principles, to see how far they may be carried. 
 It will be seen that, in war, this very principle has 
 been adopted. But, then, war justified any expedient. 
 Let us be careful and not carry its principles into our 
 codes.* 
 
 IV. Not wholly dissimilar to the last, is another 
 objection. The execution of a criminal may save the 
 lives of others. This is the doctrine of expediency 
 
 * See a very interesting debate, held at the Windward Islands, on 
 the Punishment of Death ; page 153, of this work.
 
 OBJECTIONS. 197 
 
 a doctrine which has sacrificed thousands, whose 
 names were dear to literature, to patriotism, and the 
 great cause of humanity. On this ground, even the 
 Son of God was put to death. ' Ye know nothing at 
 all,' said Caiaphas, ' nor consider that it is expedient 
 for us that one man should die for the people, and 
 that the whole nation perish not.' And so ONE must 
 be put to death, in whom no fault was found. But 
 the Romans did come, notwithstanding, and the whole 
 nation perished. 
 
 This experimenting upon human nature is shock- 
 ing. We kill one man in order to reform or confirm 
 the virtue of another. It is an entire perversion of all 
 moral reasoning. History, observation, and experi- 
 ence all demonstrate that crimes increase with the 
 severity of laws. Public executions tend to promote 
 cruelty and a disregard for life. 
 
 But if it be necessary to hang the murderer, why 
 not hang the maniac ? He is by far the most danger- 
 ous man. But our statute makes provision for the 
 culprit if he become insane after sentence. The 
 sheriff, then, is to wait till he comes to his senses.* 
 If it be a female, then, if she be in a ' peculiar situa- 
 tion,' the sentence must be delayed ! 
 
 But why hang at all 1 Why not simply have the 
 appearance? Perhaps hanging in effigy might an- 
 swer in some cases, f 
 
 * Our law reminds us of an incident. It appears that, on the morn- 
 ing of an execution, the physician reported that the prisoner was not 
 well enough to be hung ! 
 
 f At the Cape of Good Hope, the Dutch made use of a stratagem, 
 which could only succeed among Hottentots. One of their officers 
 having killed an individual of this inoffensive tribe, the whole nation 
 took up the matter, and became furious and implacable. It was
 
 198 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 1 Suppose,' says Mr. Rantoul, { by an arrangement 
 with foreign nations, all the criminals condemned in 
 all the courts of the old world could be brought within 
 this Commonwealth, and executed in its different 
 towns throughout the next year. Does any one be- 
 lieve that such is the moral effect of these exhibitions, 
 that capital crimes would be less frequent after the 
 expiration of that period than before? Is it not a 
 more reasonable conclusion, that the value of human 
 life would be so cheapened in the eyes of the specta- 
 tors of such a lavish waste of it, that capital crimes, 
 and particularly murder, would be fearfully multi- 
 plied, and almost in the ratio of the executions? If 
 a thousand executions would produc'e this most mis- 
 erable effect, one execution would produce much more 
 than a thousandth part of it, since the first execution 
 that a man witnesses gives a much severer shock to 
 his moral sense, and inflicts a deeper and more lasting 
 injury upon his character, than any ten or twenty 
 scenes of the same sort that he may witness after- 
 wards.' 
 
 V. It is frequently said that the friends of the pro- 
 posed reform have too much sympathy for the crimi- 
 nal. But who is the criminal ? Is he not a man and 
 
 necessary to make an example to pacify them. The delinquent was 
 therefore brought before them, in irons, as a malefactor. He was 
 tried with great form, and was condemned to swallow a goblet of 
 ignited brandy. The man played his part ; he feigned himself dead, 
 and fell motionless. His friends covered him with a cloak, and bore 
 him away. The Hottentots declared themselves satisfied. ' The. 
 worst we should have done with the man,' said they, ' would have been to 
 throw him into the fire, but the Dutch have done better ; they have put the 
 fire into the man? Works of JEREMY BENTHAM. Vol. i. p. 398. Edin- 
 burgh : 1843.
 
 OBJECTIONS. 199 
 
 a brother ? Is he beyond the pale of human sympa- 
 thy and kindness 7 Have we not all, in some form, 
 violated the law of God 1 And may we not be led 
 to commit the same crime 1 Let us not be too hasty. 
 We should remember the words of Jesus : ' He that is 
 without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.' 
 We believe that a murderer is as much an object of 
 commiseration as a man afflicted with a loathsome 
 bodily disorder, and that it is as much our duty to 
 heal the moral maladies of the former, as the physical 
 infirmities of the latter. 
 
 But we do not forget the victim of the assassin. 
 We feel for his family. We mourn that crimes are 
 committed. Gladly would we restore the loss. But 
 would the taking of another life, or even a thou- 
 sand, bring back the dead ? Would it revive the joys 
 of the desolate hearth ? We say, then, spare the cul- 
 prit. He may yet be reformed, and perhaps even 
 benefit the very family from whom he has taken his 
 victim.* It is because we feel for the loss of others, 
 that we would stay the progress of crime. We have 
 shown that public executions do not produce this 
 effect. 
 
 * We have often thought that better arrangements might be made 
 in regard to criminals. Why could not, at least, a portion of their earn- 
 ings go towards the support of the family of the murdered victim ? 
 The prisoner now works for the state, and a portion is devoted to his 
 own security. He does, in fact, build his own cell, and forge his own 
 chains. He does this not only morally but literally. Could he but 
 know that he was doing something for the family whose peace he had 
 invaded, would he not feel encouraged ? On the contrary, if he was 
 still regardless of those whose rights he had violated, would it not be 
 a punishment to know he was laboring for their benefit ? See p. 68, 
 where a very interesting fact is given to show the care that one of the 
 despotic governments of the old world have for the children of crimi- 
 nals.
 
 200 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 But did not Jesus manifest a sympathy for the 
 wrong-doer? Did he not say to the adulteress, 
 'Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more?'* 
 Had we his spirit, we should feel for the degraded and 
 the forsaken. But we are revengeful; impatient for 
 blood. A victim must bleed upon the altar !f An 
 amiable author has finely presented this feeling on 
 the day appointed for the execution of Colt, in New 
 York. He, however, chose to be his own execu- 
 tioner ! ' The hearts of men were filled with mur- 
 der; they gloated over the thoughts of vengeance, 
 and were rabid to witness a fellow-creature's agony. 
 They complained loudly that he was not to be hung 
 high enough for the crowd to see him. "What a 
 pity !" exclaimed a woman who stood near me, gaz- 
 ing at the burning tower; " they will have to give him 
 two hours more to live!" "Would you feel so if he 
 were your son?" said I. Her countenance changed 
 instantly. She had not before realized that every 
 criminal was somebody's son.'J And had he not the 
 
 * See p. 177, where this case is fully considered. 
 
 f It is not merely in regard to the Punishment of Death that cruelty 
 manifests itself, but it is so in all our laws. In 1833, an estimate was 
 made of the number confined for debt. It was found, by that oppres- 
 sive system, seventy-five thousand were deprived of their liberty, in 
 the United States. An instance occurred, where an individual was 
 imprisoned for two or three cents, and an advocate of the law justified 
 the arrest and incarceration of the body. See ' Essays on Imprison- 
 ment for Debt,' p. 14. By the Author of this work.. 
 
 $ Letters from New York. By Mrs. CHILD. Probably this expres- 
 sion was suggested to the fair authoress by an incident in New 
 Haven. A horse was running violently through the street with a boy 
 in a wagon. A lady rushed from her house to save him. Her daugh- 
 ter endeavored to check her, saying, 'Mother! it is not your son.' 
 'Yes,' she replied, 'but it is somebody's son!' When we see the poor
 
 OBJECTIONS. 201 
 
 same right that the government had, to take his own 
 life ? Surely, if any one has the right to take life, it 
 is the individual himself. And it is remarkable, that 
 public executions, as Mr. Rantoul says, 'lead to a 
 form of suicide scarcely known to the ancients.' Who 
 ever read of the heroes of antiquity hanging them- 
 selves with a halter? But if ours is a weak human- 
 ity ; if we are, as one nicknamed us, humanity-mon- 
 gers, we have only to reply that, if this is a weak 
 humanity, it is the weakness of Dr. JOHNSON, of Judge 
 BLACKSTONE, of BECCARIA and MONTESQUIEU. It is the 
 weakness of ERASMUS and Sir THOMAS MORE ; of CHIL- 
 LINGWORTH and GOLDSMITH; of FRANKLIN and LIVING- 
 STON; of RUSH and HOWARD; of Fox and PITT; of 
 WILBERFORCE and ROMILLY, and even of him, above 
 them all, who ' came not to destroy men's lives, but 
 to save them.' 
 
 VI. But it is said that, with all our sympathy and 
 kindness, some criminals are beyond the reach of all 
 moral influences. Is this true? Have we exhausted 
 all moral power? Are there not numberless in- 
 stances that show the power of love upon the human 
 soul?^ We believe there is moral power enough in 
 Christianity to remove every moral evil on earth. 
 We must bring it to bear upon the human soul. Look 
 at the labors of Mrs. Fry and Howard. Let us not 
 despair. And all around us and about us is a great 
 moral movement named after him who led our armies 
 on "to triumph and to victory. What a change has 
 this moral revolution effected in the social habits of 
 
 criminal dragged through the street, did we but realize that it is some~ 
 body's son, what a sympathy would it awaken in the soul ! 
 * See Appendix II., where several illustrations are given.
 
 202 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 our country ! But we shall refer to this more dis- 
 tinctly in our next chapter, on encouragements. 
 
 But who makes the objection that criminals are 
 beyond our reach? Does it come from those who 
 have engaged in the holy enterprise of bringing men 
 back to virtue and holiness 1 No. The true philan- 
 thropist never despairs. He is obliged, sometimes, 
 to adopt the language of the apostle, ' We are troubled 
 on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, 
 but not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast 
 down, but not destroyed.' 
 
 How little is done in comparison to what might be 
 effected ! Who visits our prisons 1 Who thinks of 
 the poor convict 1 When his trial is ended, and he is 
 consigned to the sufferings and degradation of a 
 prison, all interest dies away in the cold inquiry, ' Is 
 he safely lodged within the prison walls V Then the 
 multitude turn away, satisfied if bars, and bolts, and 
 chains, guard the space between them and their 
 brother ! Thenceforth, he is viewed as a ruined man, 
 an outcast from society, and from human compassion. 
 Few go to his cold, damp cell, to speak a kind word. 
 Few care whether he comes forth from his den a peni- 
 tent, reformed man, or a malignant fiend, to scourge 
 and destroy. And even if a feeble voice is raised, 
 the cry is, Morbid feeling ! Weak humanity ! Sickly 
 benevolence ! ' Humanity-mongers ! ' But let the cry 
 be raised. We are willing to be reproached. We 
 will labor on, satisfied if we can but reach a single 
 heart, and bring only one back to truth and virtue. 
 And while we labor sincerely and heartily, we know 
 we shall have the approbation of him who 'went 
 about doing good,' and who said to the sinner, ' Be cf
 
 OBJECTIONS. 203 
 
 good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee ! ' We close 
 this chapter in the affecting words of the great moral 
 poet of England : 
 
 ' My ear is pained, 
 
 My soul is sick with every day's report 
 Of wrong and outrage, with which this earth is filled. 
 There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart ; 
 It does not feel for man.' COWPER.
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 Extent of the proposed reform Punishment of Death sustains 
 slavery Experiment of the reform English philanthropists 
 Mrs. Fry Experiment among the heathen Executions private 
 Suicide of Colt Feelings towards the executioner Spain Scru- 
 ples of jurors Anecdotes Progress of society Imprisonment 
 for debt Inefficiency of Capital Punishment Quakers Penn 
 Washingtonianism Incident of Channing Giristianity . 
 
 'He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall 
 doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.' 
 
 BIBLE. 
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS are necessary to carry forward 
 every reform. And the philanthropist will always 
 look around him for incitements to duty and action. 
 And he has the right and the privilege to call to his 
 aid every encouragement that society may present to 
 animate and invigorate him in his efforts. The pres- 
 ent reform is very extensive in its bearings upon the 
 prosperity of society. It does not look to a single 
 state or territory. It has no bounds. It knows noth- 
 ing about territory. It knows nothing about sect or 
 party. It does not aim solely at a single point; at 
 the mere saving of a fellow-being from an igno- 
 minious death ; though this is accomplishing much. 
 It takes higher ground. Its great object is to show the 
 sacredness of human life; that no hand of man or 
 angel can lawfully touch it without permission of
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 205 
 
 Him who gave it existence. And, to inculcate this 
 sacredness, the reform begins with abolishing the 
 Punishment of Death. Other rights never will be 
 regarded till human life is respected. We may form 
 our associations ; we may create new governments ; 
 we may form new parties ; but never will any great 
 work be accomplished till society receives and feels 
 the doctrine of the Inviolability of Human Life. It is 
 the doctrine of Capital Punishment that is the great 
 support of the slave system, that infernal traffic in 
 flesh and blood.* The Punishment of Death has 
 been, in every age, the weapon ready formed, both for 
 the political and the spiritual despot. 
 
 Here is a great work to be done, a work as honora- 
 ble as it is great; 'a work,' to use the words of an 
 excellent writer, 'which aims at the renovation of 
 society, not by the inefficacious methods of the block, 
 the gallows, and the guillotine ; but by the nobler 
 methods of moral culture ; by purifying the fountain 
 of good and evil in the youthful breast ; by planting 
 the seeds of knowledge and virtue, which shall after- 
 wards spring up and incorporate the strength of their 
 branches and the beauty of their flower and foliage in 
 the mature life and action of the man.' 
 
 In closing our labor, therefore, we feel that we can- 
 not do better than to present such encouragements 
 as society would seem to warrant. But it must be 
 remembered that we have got to work, and to work 
 hard. Prejudices must be overcome ; long-established 
 customs must be changed. Even our very literature 
 must be improved. The arts themselves have con- 
 
 * To support this remark, see the criminal codes of the slave-hold- 
 ing states; Appendix I. 
 18
 
 206 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 tributed to strengthen crime. There are but few 
 flowers to cull in this field; but little to please the 
 taste. There is little poetry in blood, chains and 
 scaffolds. We have a stern work to do in society; 
 not merely to say to the state, spare that man : he is 
 my brother ; but society will demand that we bring 
 him back a reformed man. Still, there are encour- 
 agements, though, as the Rev. Mr. Curtis, chaplain of 
 the Massachusetts State Prison, remarks, ' I am aware 
 that everything which relates to prisons, and their 
 guilty inmates, is, to multitudes, revolting; in them 
 such themes create no interest ; they awaken no sym- 
 pathy. On all this moral desert, they can see no ver- 
 dant spot. Other wastes rnay be made to bud, and 
 blossom, and bear fruit ; but within the precincts of a 
 prison-house, nothing is found to attract the eye of 
 faith, to enkindle the dawnings of hope, or call forth 
 the aspirations of the spirit.' There are some, how- 
 ever, who see, amid all this darkness, some light; 
 amid this moral waste, hearts that can be touched, 
 and beings bearing the image of God. And we must 
 work, though we bring back but a single soul to virtue 
 and truth. 
 
 I. An encouragement is derived from the fact that 
 the proposed reform is not a new experiment. Rome, 
 Russia, Bombay, Belgium and Tuscany, have all set 
 before the world the results of abolishing the Punish- 
 ment of Death.* We need not repeat the facts in this 
 place. They prove, beyond all doubt, that crimes 
 lessen as laws become more humane. 
 
 In looking abroad, we derive much encouragement 
 from the efforts of English philanthropists. For sev- 
 
 * See Part I., Essay VII.
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 207 
 
 eral years, there has been, in London, a ' Society for 
 the Diffusion of Information on the subject of Capital 
 Punishment.' This society has done an immense 
 service to the cause of humanity. It has circulated 
 many valuable works. And we have been much 
 indebted to their labors for many valuable facts. And 
 how much does the world owe to the labors of Mrs. 
 Fry ! Language is utterly inadequate to express our 
 own feelings. Her whole history is a commentary 
 upon the practical influences of Christianity.* 
 
 In looking abroad, we derive encouragements even 
 from the movements of the heathen ! A long debate 
 was held in the Windward Society Islands, on this 
 subject.f And even the Esquimaux are beyond the 
 civilized world on this law.J 
 
 II. Another ground of encouragement is, that hu- 
 manity has triumphed so far as to change the place 
 of execution from the public gaze to the jail-yard.$ 
 This is, in fact, giving up almost the entire ground; 
 for the argument always has been that we needed to 
 
 * Appendix II. 
 
 f See page 151. 
 
 | According to Sir John Ross, the crime of murder but rarely occurs 
 among the Esquimaux. When it does, the murderer's punishment 
 consists in being banished to perpetual solitude, or shunned by every 
 individual of his tribe insomuch, that even the sight of him is 
 avoided by all who may inadvertently meet him. On being asked 
 why his life is not taken in return, it was replied, 'that this would be 
 to make themselves equally bad that the loss of his life would not 
 restore the other and that he who should commit such an act would 
 be equally guilty.' Would it not be well to send there for a few mis- 
 sionaries to enlighten our Christian country? We hope, after this, 
 no one will say that a civilized state of society cannot exist without 
 the law ofyie Punishment of Death. 
 
 $ Appendix I. Notes on the laws of Maine. Massachusetts and 
 New York.
 
 208 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 have executions made public for an example. During 
 the French revolution, when executions seemed too 
 slow, Fouquier proposed to put the guillotine under 
 cover, that the victims might be despatched with few 
 spectators. 'Wilt thou demoralize the guillotine?' 
 asked Callot, reproachfully. Now, the bloody work 
 is to be done within the walls of the prison-yard : 
 with a surgeon and physician to see if the man is 
 really murdered, we suppose a spiritual comforter, a 
 few citizens, and the relatives of the prisoner. A 
 very interesting sight, indeed, for them ! Mrs. Child 
 has described this point admirably, in reference to the 
 death of Colt, in New York. ' We were to have had 
 an execution yesterday; but the wretched prisoner 
 avoided it by suicide. The gallows had been erected 
 for several hours, and, with a cool refinement of cru- 
 elty, was hoisted before the window of the condemned ; 
 the hangman was all ready to cut the cord : marshals 
 paced back and forth, smoking and whistling; specta- 
 tors were waiting impatiently to see whether he would 
 " die game." Printed circulars had been handed 
 abroad to summon the number of witnesses required 
 by law : " You are respectfully invited to witness the 
 execution of John C. Colt." I trust some of them are 
 preserved for museums. Specimens should be kept, 
 as relics of a barbarous age, for succeeding genera- 
 tions to wonder at. They might be hung up in a 
 frame ; and the portrait of a New Zealand chief, 
 picking the bones of an enemy of his tribe, would be 
 an appropriate pendant.' It is mortifying to think of 
 the dense crowd that assembled at the place of execu- 
 tion. One man went from New Hampshire, on pur- 
 pose to witness the entertainment. And even women 
 were there, and we are told by Mrs. Child, ' that they
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 209 
 
 did not think themselves treated with becoming gal- 
 lantry because tickets of admittance were denied to 
 them ! ' And there ' the multitude stood, with open 
 watches, and strained ears, to catch the sound, and 
 the marshals smoked and whistled, and the hangman 
 walked up and down, waiting for his prey, when, lo ! 
 word was brought that the criminal was found dead 
 in his bed ! He had asked one half hour alone to pre- 
 pare for his departure ; and at the end of that brief 
 interval, he was found with a dagger thrust in his 
 heart ! The tidings were received with fierce mutter- 
 ings of disappointed rage ! ' It was a remarkable 
 coincidence that at the very hour of the death of the 
 poor culprit, a fire broke out at the very top of the 
 cupola of the prison. ' The wind was high, and the 
 flames rushed upwards as if the angry spirits below 
 had escaped on fiery wings.' But we turn away from 
 such scenes, for, really, they do not look very encour- 
 aging ! 
 
 III. Another ground of encouragement is, that 
 society looks even upon the executioner with abhor- 
 rence. It was a singular remark of one of the most 
 amiable men that we have ever met with, that, ' if 
 human governments were all right, Jesus could hold 
 any office connected with them ! ' We know not 
 that it is wrong to bring in his sacred name in such a 
 connection. A whole volume is contained in the 
 remark. Could he be a hangman? But we leave 
 the thought with the reader. The office of the hang- 
 man is- a hateful one, ' detestabile camificis ministe- 
 rium.' Men scorn to give him the right hand of fel- 
 lowship ; they flee from him as from a pestilence. It 
 is not only so in a state of society like our own, but 
 the same feeling is found abroad, and even in Spain, 
 18*
 
 210 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 where bull fights are tolerated. The following ac- 
 count is given by that great philanthropist, Mr. Wil- 
 liam Ladd. He said ' that no man, however low and 
 despicable, would consent to perform the office of 
 hangman ; and whoever should dare to suggest such 
 a thing to a decent man, would be likely to have his 
 brains blown out. This feeling was so strong, and so 
 universal, that the only way they could procure an 
 executioner, was to offer a condemned criminal his own 
 life, if he would consent to perform the vile and hate- 
 ful office on another. Sometimes executions were post- 
 poned for months, because there was no condemned 
 criminal to perform the office of hangman. A fee 
 was allotted by law to the wretch who did perform it, 
 but no one would run the risk of touching his polluted 
 hand by giving it to him; therefore, the priest threw 
 the purse as far as possible ; the odious being ran to 
 pick it up, and hastened to escape from the shudder- 
 ing execrations of all who had known him as a hang- 
 man. Even the poor animal that carried the criminal 
 and his coffin in a cart to the foot of the gallows, was 
 an object of universal loathing. He was cropped and 
 marked, that he might be known as the "hangman's 
 donkey." No man, however great his needs, would 
 use the beast, either for pleasure or labor; and the 
 peasants were so averse to having him pollute their 
 fields with his footsteps, that when he was seen 
 approaching, the boys hastened to open the gates, and 
 drive him off with hisses, sticks, and stones."* 
 
 IV. Another ground of encouragement is the in- 
 
 * Letters from New York. By L. MARIA CHILD, p. 207, et seq. "We 
 have read this work with much pleasure. It should be in the hands 
 of every family.
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 211 
 
 creasing difficulty of obtaining jurors to convict in cases 
 where the penalty is death. And the same scruples are 
 found among witnesses. And even judges will com- 
 promise the dignity of their office and the demands of 
 strict veracity, under the impulse of humanity. Num- 
 berless instances have occurred in England, where a 
 prisoner was brought in guilty of stealing property 
 only to the value of thirty-nine shillings, when it actu- 
 ally exceeded that amount, because death was the 
 penalty for stealing forty shillings* But we need 
 not dwell on this point. Many persons, who have 
 
 * See page 36, where will be found a variety of illustrations of this 
 remark. Facts on this point are abundant. The instances are so 
 numerous that, in England, Sir WILLIAM GRANT said, ' there was a 
 confederacy between judges, juries, counsel 1 , prosecutors, witnesses 
 and advisers of the crown, to prevent the execution of the criminal 
 laws ! ' The following instances are worthy of attention ; the first is 
 exceedingly curious in its nature. It is from Lord ASHTOWN'S speech : 
 ' A man swore, that going to bed in his own house, he wound up his 
 watch, put it into his breeches pocket, then put his breeches under his 
 pillow and went to sleep. In the night, a thief got privately into the 
 house, stole the man's watch, and was detected in pawning it. The 
 jury found the thief guilty of stealing, but not in the dwelling-house. 
 " To make common sense of this verdict, the breeches must have con- 
 veyed themselves out of the house, in order to be robbed ; and then 
 taken themselves back to their former station, under the pillow, where 
 the owner swore he found them." Besides the absurdity of this ver- 
 dict, it contains a duplicity and evasion that disgraces a court, and 
 effectually perjures the jury, who are sworn to give a verdict according 
 to the evidence.' We give one more : ' A woman, named Macallaster, 
 about twenty years ago, was indicted at the Old Bailey for stealing, 
 in a dwelling-house, a ten pound bank note. The note was by itself in a 
 box of no value. The fact was clearly proved ; yet the jury found her 
 guilty of stealing what was of the value only of thirty-nine shillings : 
 thus, twelve men, executing a most sacred judicial office, declared 
 before God, and as they hoped themselves for salvation, that a ten 
 pound bank note was worth only thirty-nine shillings.' Sir WILLIAM 
 BLACKSTOJTE denominates such cases as ' pious perjuries ! '
 
 212 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 been called to acj as jurymen, well remember the 
 painful feelings which they have experienced when 
 obliged to decide in a case involving life and death. 
 There is a deep feeling in the human heart, which 
 revolts at the thought of taking life, even though it 
 may be from one x whose hands have been imbrued 
 with human blood.* 
 
 V. Another ground of encouragement is, the grad- 
 ual advancement of society towards greater purity in 
 principle and practice. Science is extending her 
 empire. Political institutions are becoming amelio- 
 rated. Morality and religion are advancing onward. 
 There is a deeper, stronger feeling of sympathy for 
 the degraded and the fallen.f The intellectual sun 
 
 * An instance lately occurred where, upon sentence of death being 
 pronounced, the whole assembly rose, by a sudden impulse, while the 
 judge addressed the throne of grace in solemn prayer. 
 
 | Perhaps the law of imprisonment for debt affords a very good 
 criterion to judge of the progress of society, in respect to ihe amelio- 
 ration of penal jurisprudence. It has been abolished in New Hamp- 
 shire, Vermont, New York, and Tennessee ; and in Connecticut, 
 where, previous to 1831, a creditor could confine the debtor till he rotted, 
 by paying his board. And, in Pennsylvania, a man was actually 
 imprisoned thirty days for two cents ! Seventy-five thousand freemen 
 were then annually deprived of their liberty, in the United States, for 
 debt alone ! The writer well remembers the various objections that 
 were made to his humble efforts, on this subject, in the year 1833. 
 [See Essays on Imprisonment for Debt, by the Author.] But he has 
 lived to see these objections gradually give way, and the cause of 
 humanity triumphing. He hopes to see an equal progress made in 
 the reform to which he is now giving his feeble efforts. He looks for- 
 ward to a time when, not only the scaffold will be removed, but even 
 our prisons will be changed into hospitals for the mind and schools of 
 instruction. Perhaps the time may arrive when the reign of Alfred, 
 king of England, will return again. It was brought about, not by 
 severe laws, but by mildness. ' Such was the general security through- 
 out the country, towards the conclusion of his reign, that a child could
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 213 
 
 is visibly advancing towards its noon. Great efforts 
 are making to diffuse the influence of religion. "We 
 live, indeed, in one of the most brilliant eras in human 
 history. A flood of light has burst in upon us. We 
 know there are many lamentations over the happiness 
 or excellence of other times ; but they have little foun- 
 dation. We have great hopes of our race, and these 
 hopes incite us to new efforts. We see, we feel 
 though we may, in the course of our labor, have 
 spoken despondingly that there is a perceptible ad- 
 vance in the community towards a higher standard of 
 morality. 
 
 The inefficiency of Capital Punishments begins to 
 be seen and felt. It has been tried for ages, and found 
 wanting. Its progress has been marked with the most 
 lamentable consequences. It has contributed to the 
 impunity of the guilty. It has caused the destruction 
 of the innocent.* It has, in every age, been a ready 
 and subservient instrument in the hands of the op- 
 pressor, f And its advocates cannot even say that it 
 
 walk from one end to the other, with a purse of gold around its neck, 
 in perfect security.' Many pleasing indications are already occurring 
 to strengthen and animate him and others in the good work. A fine 
 story is told of the quiet town of Nantucket, since the temperance 
 reformation. The jail had become empty of all its inmates but one, 
 and it was left in such miserable condition that even the key was lost, 
 or, as another version of the story is, that there was but one prisoner 
 left. Feeling rather lonesome, and not being very comfortably sit- 
 uated withal, we are told he sent word to the sheriff, ' that if he did 
 not see to repairing the jail, he should leave pretty soon himself! ' 
 
 * See Part I , Essay X., where a very thrilling speech from O'Cos- 
 NELL may be found, in connection with an affecting instance of the 
 execution of three innocent brothers ! 
 
 t See Part I., Essay VIII., where may be found many illustrations 
 of this remark.
 
 214 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 has effected the object of intimidation. It begins to 
 be seen, then, that a milder system may safely be 
 adopted ; at least, that we may be safe in trying the 
 experiment. 
 
 Several influences have been at work to bring about 
 a better condition of society. Among these influences, 
 we should, in justice, place the principles of the Qua- 
 kers. The community have seen a whole denomina- 
 tion living in peace and quietness, who have protested 
 against the Punishment of Death. True, they have 
 not accomplished so much as we could have wished. 
 They have protested against the law as unchristian, 
 but they have done little towards bringing into clear 
 light, and sending forth with new power, the spirit to 
 which the law must yield. 1 * Cutting themselves off, 
 by outward peculiarities, from the community ; seclu- 
 ding themselves from ordinary intercourse, through 
 fear of moral infection; living almost as a separate 
 race, they have been little felt in society, they have 
 done little to awaken that deep religious interest in 
 man as man, that sensibility to his rights, that hatred 
 of all wrong, that thirst for the elevation of every 
 human being, in which Christian love finds its truest 
 manifestation. In fact, every sect is too much imbued 
 with the spirit of sects, and too exclusive to under- 
 
 * It is a singular fact, that even in the colony of WILLIAM PENN, 
 murder was a capital offence, though he had great light, considering 
 the age in which he lived. The following was the statute : ' Murder, 
 wilful and premeditated, is the only crime for which the infliction of 
 death is prescribed, and this is declared to be enacted in obedience to 
 the Ian of God, as though there had not been any political necessity 
 even for this punishment, apparent to the legislature.' BRADFORD, 
 p. 16. See a very able work, entitled, ' Observations on Penal Juris 
 prudence and the Reformation of Criminals.' By WILLIAM Roscosj 
 Esq., p. 84. London : 1819.
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 215 
 
 stand or spread the true spirit of human brotherhood. 
 We have all been blind to the dignity and the value 
 of human nature. We have not realized the worth of 
 man. Oh ! could we but see that all are the children 
 of one common Father, what a love and sympathy 
 would fill every heart ! 
 
 VI. Another ground of encouragement may be 
 derived from the Washingtonian movement. A little 
 more than two years ago, six men commenced this great 
 moral revolution. It is a startling illustration of the 
 power of truth. It commenced at a time when the 
 friends of temperance had almost despaired ; when, 
 indeed, the community had settled down upon the 
 doctrine that there was no hope for the confirmed 
 drunkard ; that something, it is true, might be done to 
 secure the rising generation. In the midst of this 
 darkness, light came from heaven, and from a quarter 
 where the world had never looked. And so it has 
 been in every age. ' For the wisdom of this world is 
 foolishness with God.' It is ' a cloud by day and a 
 pillar of fire by night.' And, as ages roll on, the great 
 principle, which this moral revolution has developed, 
 will be extended till every prison is thrown open, and 
 every criminal reformed. In this mighty work, we 
 have not seen the literal dead arise, the cold, inani- 
 mate clay start into life, but we have seen more. We 
 have seen the cold heart, that had remained untouched 
 by all the influences of parental kindness, by all the 
 pleadings of a tender wife, by all the cries of affec- 
 tionate and starving children, moved and made to 
 respond to the pleadings of the Washingtonian. 
 And what a lesson does this movement teach the 
 world ! What room does it give for hope and
 
 216 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 faith.* We cannot refrain from closing this part of 
 our subject with the beautiful, touching language of 
 the Rev. Mr. Peabody, of Portsmouth, in one of 
 the best sermons we have seen upon this subject: 
 c Here is indeed a stone cut out of the mountain with- 
 out hands. It is at the very moment, when the cause 
 of temperance has sustained several serious checks 
 and revulsions, and its friends and leaders feel them- 
 selves peculiarly lame in counsel, and embarrassed in 
 effort ; when, in some communities, all exertions are 
 suspended, and, in others, conducted languidly and 
 despondingly ; when there is hardly a ray of promise, 
 and the enemies of the cause are rejoicing over its 
 decline. Least of all, is there hope among the 
 wretched inebriates themselves. As well may we 
 expect to see the paralytic take his own bed and 
 walk, as to see these men standing erect among their 
 fellows, and saying, " We too are men." And is it 
 in their own strength that these men arise and stand 1 
 I solemnly believe not. The finger of God is ,here. 
 It is a moral pentecost of his own sending, sent too at 
 
 * The far-reaching mind of Channing saw, before his death, that 
 the same principle which was adopted in the temperance movement, 
 might be applied to criminals. The following incident, which he 
 related to the writer, on a visit to him, may not be uninteresting : 
 'Last evening,' said Dr. Channing, 'Capt. H*******, the president of 
 the Washingtonian society, was here, relating to me the instances of 
 the power of kindness upon the intemperate.' I asked him 'if the 
 same principle could not be applied to other forms of crime.' He 
 replied, ' that he thought the circumstances were very different ; 
 that should the robber and the murderer relate their experience, they 
 would be prosecuted at once.' May we not live to see converted 
 thieves and murderers bringing back the degraded and the forsaken of 
 their own cast to truth and virtue ?
 
 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 217 
 
 the moment when the wisest counsel was baffled, and 
 the most ardent philanthropy discouraged, that the 
 glory may be his. I look back upon that period with 
 a sort of religious awe. I believe that, while God is 
 not far from any one of us, there are times and ways, 
 in which his spirit moves over the great heart of a 
 nation, and this is one of them.' 
 
 VII. But Christianity affords the greatest encourage- 
 ment. Its predictions are glorious. It looks forward 
 to a time when men of every tribe and language will 
 unite in one holy and harmonious society; when 
 ' violence shall no more be heard in the land ;' when 
 ' the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth ;' 
 when c the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the 
 leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and 
 the young lion and the falling together, and a little 
 child shall lead them.' Then 'judgment shall dwell 
 in the wilderness, and righteousness in the fruitful 
 field, and the work of righteousness shall be peace, 
 and the effect of righteousness quietness and assur- 
 ance forever ; and all people shall dwell in peaceable 
 habitations, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet rest- 
 ing places.' 
 
 19
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 CAPITAL OFFENCES IN THE CODE OF THE UNION AND 
 THE SEVERAL STATES. 
 
 WE have procured the number of capital offences in the code of 
 the Union, and the several states. We were kindly permitted 
 access to the State Library, and also to the Social Law Library. 
 We feel that we ought to express our thanks to GEO. BEMIS, Esq., 
 of this city. He has gone over the Criminal Law and prepared a 
 view of the various criminal offences in the several states. His 
 labors are invaluable, especially if we should wish to take a general 
 view of crimes and punishments, as they exist in this country. 
 But it should be remembered that, here, accuracy is unattainable, 
 more especially in respect to the slave-holding states. There is a 
 great want of system in their criminal code, and a great backward- 
 ness in regard to revision. Then the distinction between ' per- 
 sons' and ' slaves' is very perplexing, especially to one unac- 
 customed to the intricacy of the law. But we have done what we 
 could, and we should be grateful for any correction. Careful inqui- 
 ry will be made, and should the present work pass through any 
 number of editions, corrections will be made. But human laws 
 are fleeting and changeable. Even while we write, changes are 
 made ; while we are penning these very remarks, some Legislature 
 may be changing, or modifying essentially, some very important law. 
 We believe the present view may lead to many reflections, and per- 
 haps to important results.
 
 220 CAPITAL OFFENCES IN 
 
 CODE OF THE UNION.* 
 
 Gordon's Digest, 1835. 
 
 Treason. 
 
 Murder. 
 
 Arson ; dwelling-house or other buildings. 
 
 Rape on the seas. 
 
 Robbing mail, second time. 
 
 Forgery ; as passing counterfeit certificates or other public secu- 
 rity. 
 
 Piracy ; one species, slave-trade. 
 
 Confining slaves on shipboard, or offering them for sale. 
 
 Robbery on the high seas. 
 
 Setting fire to ship of war. 
 
 Burning ships of private property for the purpose of defrauding 
 underwriters. 
 
 CAPITAL OFFENCES IN ALL THE SEVERAL STATES. 
 
 MAINE." Law of 1842. 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 
 a The reader who is unaccustomed to our laws, must remember that there 
 is a code for the Union, and also a code for the several states. Some discus- 
 sion has ensued respecting 1 treason, whether there could be any against a 
 state without being against the Union itself. We suppose the laws against 
 treason would not apply to a slave, it being political in its character. We 
 would like to know how one could commit treason against a government of 
 which he was not recognised as a member ! To those who may feel any 
 interest on that point, we refer them to p. 94, where we have enlarged on 
 the great fact, that should ever be borne in mind, of the danger to political 
 and religious liberty, so long as the law of the Punishment of Death exists. 
 It may be safely laid down as a true position, that the very punishment of 
 treason would be likely to increase the evil. It would probably operate as 
 the law generally does, to make its own victims. 'Look,' said the execu- 
 tioner to an aged Irishman, showing him the bleeding head of a man just 
 executed for rebellion, ' look at the head of your son.' ' My son,' replied 
 he, ' has more than one head !' 
 
 It will be seen that the code of the Union punishes capitally the confining' 
 of slaves on thipboard or offering them for sale. 
 
 b The following is the law in Maine. No person, sentenced to death, is to 
 be executed under one year, nor then, till the whole record of his conviction 
 and sentence shall lie certified by the clerk, under the seal of the court, to 
 the Executive (governor) of the state, nor until a warrant shall be issued 
 by said executive authority, under seal of the state, directed to the sheriff, 
 commanding him to cause the sentence of death to be executed by hanging 
 the offender bv the neck, within the walls or enclosure of the Slate Prison in 
 Thomaston. The sheriff (unless sick) shall be present at execution, with two 
 of his deputies. He shall request the attendance of the county attorney and 
 twelve citizens, including a surgeon and physician to be present ; and shall 
 permit the prisoner's counsel, such minister at' the gospel as the prisoner
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 221 
 
 NEW HAMPSHIRE. C Law of 1842. 
 
 Murder. 
 
 VERMONT. d Law of 1839. 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS." Law of 1843. 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 Arson. Rape. 
 
 desires, and his relations, to be present, and such other officer or guard as 
 he may see fit to employ. Doubts exist about the power of the Executive. 
 
 In a late journey in Maine, (1843,) we visited Thorn, now under sentence 
 of death. He did not believe, himself, that the execution would ever take 
 place. Such we found to be the general impression. The public are much 
 indebted there to the labors of Professor UPHAM, of Bowdoin College, a 
 man eminent for his learning and talents, and for his great moral worth. 
 His work on Peace contains many cogent arguments, written in a beautiful 
 style. 
 
 c Executions are private. The manner is similar to that of Maine. The 
 law was abolished in the House in 1843, but lost in the Senate. 
 
 < One year, at least, must elapse between the sentence and execution, and 
 then it is supposed it cannot take place without a warrant from the Execu- 
 tive. The law, though thought to be abolished, is certainly nominally 
 retained, or it will be seen that since the modification in 1842, a man has 
 been convicted of the murder of his wife. We present the sentence itself: 
 
 ' It is the judgment of this court that for this offence you suffer death by 
 hanging, to be executed upon you as soon as may be in due course of law, 
 after the expiration of one year from this Zlst day of April, 1843; and, in 
 the mean time, and until the Punishment of Death shall be inflicted upon 
 you, you will be forthwith committed to solitary confinement in the state 
 prison at Windsor, in the county of Windsor.' 
 
 e Our ancestors looked for precedents in the Jewish code, and punished 
 breaches of the first and second commandments, witchcraft, blasphemy, even 
 in Pagan Indians, cursing a parent, ravishing a maid, but not a married 
 woman, Sac. (See whole code, p. 159.) Several able reports have been 
 made in the years 1831, 1836, 1837 and 1843. We believe that in every 
 effort the substitute has been imprisonment for life. The present state of the 
 public mind seems to make that demand. Among the opposers of reform 
 on this subject, maybe found Rev. CHARLES HUDSON, a member of the 
 Senate in 1837. He urged against the abstract argument of taking life, 
 that by the same reasoning we had no right to abridge human liberty. The 
 point is well worthy the attention of legislators. Centuries may elapse 
 before that is definitely settled. The public are greatly indebted to the 
 labors of ROBERT RANTOUL, Esq. Both he and his father have been for 
 years the unflinching advocates of reform in this law. We cannot speak 
 too warmly of the labors of Mr. RANTOUL. His able Reports have done 
 much both here and abroad. He has been indefatigable in nis labors, both 
 through good and through evil report. The friends of the proposed reform 
 must ever feel largely indebted to him for his zeal in the cause of humanity. 
 
 Much has been gained. Executions are private. It was recommended, 
 in 1832, to have a black flag raised over the place of execution ! A very 
 appropriate emblem. 
 
 Since writing the above, we have learned from the Hon. Mr. ROBINSON,
 
 222 CAPITAL OFFENCES IN 
 
 RHODE ISLAND/ Law of 1838. 
 Murder. 
 Arson. 
 
 CONNECTICUT.* Law of 1839. 
 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 
 NEW YoRK. h O'Sullivan's Report, 1841. 
 Treason. 
 
 Murder. 
 
 Arson in first degree. 
 
 NEW JERSEY. Elmer' 1 s Digest, 1838. 
 
 Treason. 
 
 Murder, first degree. 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA.' Law of 1837. 
 Murder, in first degree. 
 
 president of the Senate, that the motion to abolish Capital Punishment 
 passed through the Senate in the last session, 1843, but was lost in the 
 House. The record of the House stands, nays 108, yeas 58. 
 
 f We have already noticed, on page 94, the very singular fact that treason 
 was not a capital offence in this state, but that, by a singular providence, it 
 was mainly done away by Mr. DORR himself, before the late movement was 
 thought of, in regard to a change of government in that state. See Essay 
 VIII., entitled ' Dangerous to Liberty.' 
 
 Probably treason would be considered a crime at common law, in all the 
 states in which there is no statute upon the subject. This would be hang- 
 ing a man by implication ! It is understood, however, to be the opinion of 
 JOHN Q.. ADAMS, that there can be no treason against a state under the fed- 
 eral law. 
 
 sThe public mind, to use a vulgar phrase, seems to be in a singular JLv, 
 in this state. During a journey there, in 1842, a gentleman of great intelli- 
 gence remarked that the people in that state dare not do two things. First, 
 they did not dare to abolish Capital Punishment. Second, they did not dare to 
 put the law into execution. As the power lies in the Legislature, (instead 
 of the Governor, as in Massachusetts,) the court was always sure to pass 
 sentence so that it could not take place till after the meeting of that body, 
 and then the friends would urge their petitions for commutation. 
 
 h Executions are private in this state. Whoever has read the Letters from 
 New York, written by Mrs. CHILD, will remember how graphically she de- 
 scribes the circumstances connected with the late intended execution of 
 JOHN- C.COLT. See Part II. Essay VI. 
 
 The friends of the proposed reform are much indebted to J. O'SULLIVAN, 
 Esq., of this state, for one of the ablest reports ever published; one that 
 should be in the hands of every legislator. 
 
 ' Two facts are worthy of notice here. Treason is punished, 'first offence, 
 six years. Capital Punishment was at one time abolished.
 
 THE "UNITED STATES. 223 
 
 DBLAWARE. Law of 1829. 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 Rape. 
 Burglary. 
 Arson. 
 
 MARYLAND.! Dorsey's Collection, 1840. 
 Treason, death, or six to twenty years' imprisonment. 
 Murder, death, or penitentiary for life. 
 
 Burning mills or barn, death, or three to twelve years' imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 Rape, death, or one to twenty-one years' confinement. 
 
 VIRGINIA. k 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA.' Revised Statutes, 1837. 
 
 Murder. 
 
 Rape. 
 
 Arson. 
 
 Mayhem. 
 
 Burglary. 
 
 Highway robbery, without benefit of clergy. 
 
 Forgery, second offence. 
 
 Horse-stealing, with benefit of clergy. 
 
 Slave-stealing. 
 
 Sodomy. 
 
 Buggery. 
 
 Bigamy, with benefit of clergy. 
 
 Duelling, if death ensues. 
 
 Crime against nature. 
 
 Burning a public building. 
 
 Accessaries. 
 
 Assault, with intent to kill. 
 
 Assault, second offence. 
 
 Circulating seditious publications among slaves, second offence, 
 without benefit of clergy. 
 
 Free person aiding in a conspiracy, without benefit of clergy. 
 
 Slave returning after transportation, without benefit of clergy. 
 
 Taking a free negro or person of mixed blood out of state, with 
 intention to sell, without benefit of clergy. 
 
 J See Remarks at the end of the codes. 
 
 k See Remarks, p. 227, and Tables following. 
 
 1 No provision is made for treason in this state, though we suppose it would 
 be considered here as crime at common law. (See opinion ofJ. Q. ADAMSJ 
 under note on Rhode Island.) The old superstitious law of the benefit of 
 clergy, which we have explained in a note at the conclusion, is still retained 
 in two crimes horse-stealing- and bigamy. Whether it was thought that 
 the clergy were more likely to steal horses, and have more than one wife, or 
 whether they meant to grant impunity to them, we leave the reader to imag-
 
 224 CAPITAL OFFENCES IN 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA. Brevard's Digest, 1814. McCord's Statutes, 
 
 1838. 
 Forgery. 
 
 Horse-stealing, second time. 
 Duelling, if death ensues. 
 
 GEORGIA." Prince's Digest, 1837. 
 
 Treason, first degree. 
 
 Murder. 
 
 Circulating insurrectionary papers, either by a white, a negro, 
 mustizzo, or free person. 
 
 Rape on a free white female, if a slave. 
 
 Assaulting free white female with intent to murder, if a slave. 
 
 Burglary or arson of any description contained in penal code of 
 state, if a slave. 
 
 Murder of a slave or free person of color, if a slave. 
 
 ALABAMA." Clay's Digest, 1843. 
 Crimes punishable with death, when committed by slaves, 
 Insurrection or rebellion against the white inhabitants. 
 
 inc. It might not be very inconvenient to commit both crimes at the same 
 time. It is rather singular that slave-stealing should be considered capital 
 in a slaveholding state. We suppose this is not intended to apply to slave- 
 holding. Killing a slave is also considered only as homicide, to which no 
 penalty is annexed. Great care has been taken to prevent the circulation 
 of seditious publications. It is said that in the preamble to the law, even 
 the alphabet is calculated to excite dissatisfaction. We suppose, as Mrs. 
 CHILD says, it is because ' freedom' can be spelt out of it. But we cannot 
 pursue this strain of remark, our business being rather to present the codes 
 than their peculiarities. 
 
 m It has been found difficult to get a correct view of the various capital 
 offences in this state. The state is still governed by the old common law of 
 England, which has remained unimproved by modern legislation. For 
 instance, perjury is punished by a law of 1562; rape by a law of 1285; 
 mayhem by a law of 1403 and 1 670. 
 
 We suppose it will not be said that these laws were made in consequence 
 of the movements of modern abolitionists! Would it be incendiary at the 
 south to circulate their own laws '? 
 
 A storekeeper in South Carolina was nearly ruined by having uncon- 
 sciously imported certain printed handkerchiefs. 
 
 n We find here that legislation has been employed to keep out incendiary 
 publications, and the usual distinction made between 'persons' and 
 1 slaves,' in regard to the penalty ; yet the poor slave is not permitted to 
 read the very law by which he is condemned. Even to learn rum to read 
 or write, is said to be a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars. Very con- 
 sistent legislation, to doom a large portion of the community to ignorance, 
 and then put them to death for it ! 
 
 It is a singular fact in this state, that the prisoner has to pay for his own 
 execution, if his estate be not insolvent. Whether (if the remark is not 
 impious) he has a right to make his own bargain or not, we cannot learn. 
 We suppose the price of hanging varies in different states. The price for 
 murdering a man, in the enlightened, humane state of Massachusetts, on 
 the gallows, for one or more, is TWENTY DOLLARS ! 
 
 A distinction is made between persons and slares. Legislation is rather
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 225 
 
 Murder, or attempt to kill any white person. 
 
 Rape, or attempt to commit, if a slave, free negro or mulatto. 
 
 Burglary. 
 
 Arson. 
 
 Accessary to any of the above crimes may be deemed principal. 
 
 Crimes punished with imprisonment when committed by whites. 
 
 Manslaughter, first degree, two to ten years' imprisonment in 
 penitentiary. 
 
 Rape, penitentiary for life. 
 
 Selling or buying any free person for a slave, knowing him to be 
 free, penitentiary not less than ten years. 
 
 Slave dying under correction, where no intention to kill, not less 
 than ten years in penitentiary. 
 
 Burglary, imprisonment in penitentiary three to fifty years. 
 
 Arson, first degree, imprisonment in penitentiary not less than 
 fourteen years. 
 
 Encouraging insurrection, by any free person, death or peniten- 
 tiary for life. 
 
 Circulating any writing, drawing, &c., or books to excite discon- 
 tent, penitentiary not less than ten years. 
 
 MISSISSIPPI. Law of 1839. 
 Murder. 
 
 Duelling, where death ensues within the state. Principal and 
 second. 
 
 LOUISIANA. P Bullard <Sf Curry's Digest, 1841. 
 Murder. 
 Rape. 
 Arson. 
 Burglary. 
 
 Assault with a dangerous weapon. 
 Poisoning. 
 
 a perplexing business at the south, on this account. It is convenient some- 
 times, to recognise the slave as a man ; at other times, ' a personal chattel.' 
 In the one case he is a subject of law ; in the other, his master may sue for 
 damages or sell him as one of his cattle. As ' a personal chattel,' he cannot 
 testify in court against any white man, nor form any contracts. But we 
 cannot carry out the comparison. The laws themselves present a faithful 
 exposition of the feelings and views of slaveholders. We may find laws 
 better than a people, but we seldom find the people better than their laws. 
 Five crimes are punished with death here, when committed by slaves, while 
 not one is capital when committed by the whites. The manslaughter of a 
 slave by a slave, or free negro, is punished hy thirtv-nine stripes or less, or 
 branding in the hand. How carefully the life of the 'personal chattel' is 
 guarded. Thirty-nine stripes if a slave kill a slave ; but death if the same 
 slave kill his master. Death or imprisonment is the law here against the 
 circulation of incendiary publications by a white, certain death if a slave. 
 
 P We find no law against treason in this state. It is death in the code of 
 the Union, and in every state where any provision is made, except Pennsyl- 
 vania and Delaware. It is rathei a complex question, we believe, with 
 politicians, whether there could be treason against a state and not against
 
 226 CAPITAL OFFENCES IN 
 
 Writings of a seditious nature. 
 Killing in a duel. 
 
 ARKANSAS. Revised Statutes, 1836. 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 Sodomy. 
 
 TENNESSEE. Caruther's and Nicholson's Collection, 1836. 
 Murder, first degree. 
 
 KENTUCKY. Morehead <5f Brown's Digest, 1834. 
 Treason, six to twelve years' confinement. 
 Murder. 
 Arson of the penitentiary. 
 
 OHIO. Revised Code, 1831. 
 Murder, first degree. 
 
 MICHIGAN. Revised Statutes, 1838. 
 Treason. 
 Murder, first degree. 
 
 INDIANA. Revised Statutes, 1838. 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 
 ILLINOIS. Revised Statutes, 1833. 
 Treason. 
 Murder. 
 
 MISSOURI. Revised Statutes, 1835. 
 
 Treason. 
 
 Murder, first degree. 
 
 Exciting insurrection among slaves, free blacks, or mulattoes. 
 
 Rape, by castration, if committed by negro, mulatto, or free 
 colored person. 
 . DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 
 
 This portion of territory is governed by the laws of Maryland and 
 Virginia, both having ceded a portion of their territory. Congress, 
 however, has passed laws relating to slavery at different periods. 
 
 the general government. For some remarks touching this point, see Essay 
 VIII. p. 83, and a remark of JOHN Q. ADAMS, in the note on Rhode Island, in 
 these notes. 
 
 Mr. Livingston's code was never adopted in Louisiana. It excluded the 
 punishment of death. We cannot mention his name without emotions of 
 pleasure. Possessing a mind of great energy, a retentive memory and a 
 brilliant imagination, he soon rose to distinction in the profession of the 
 law. He early and zealously advocated an amelioration in the penal juris- 
 prudence of his country, especially in regard to the punishment of death. 
 His writings display uncommon vigor, keenness and refinement. His merits 
 may well claim for him one of the most distinguished places in the annals 
 of philanthropy. When he raised his roice, but few had thought of our 
 Mood-stained code, or of the awful desolation of the gibbet. His writings 
 have tended to enlighten many minds, and they will continue to have their 
 influence till the law of blood shall no longer stain our statutes.
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 227 
 
 VIRGINIA. 
 
 We have found no thorough revision since 1819. There have been some 
 modifications. The tables were carefully prepared by Judge STROUD, in his 
 Sketch of the Slave Laws in 1827. We hope that alterations have been 
 made, for the honor of the state. Should it be so, it will show us slavery 
 as it was. It presents indeed a black catalogue. It shows how much blood 
 it takes to preserve the ' patriarchal institution,' ' the corner-stone of our 
 republic.' Only five crimes are punished with death when committed by 
 whites, and among these is duelling. The negroes never descend so low 
 as that. At least, we have never heard of a negro duel. It would be some- 
 thing new in the annals of crime. The blacks probably leave that for their 
 enlightened Christian masters. Adultery, according to the law, is punished 
 with a fine of twenty dollars, while setting fire to a bridge of the value of 
 one hundred dollars, by a slave, is death. How humane ! How carefully 
 morals must be guarded in Virginia ! Really, with such a code, we should 
 feel, were we an inhabitant of this state, that we were sleeping upon a rock- 
 ing volcano. 
 
 For the better understanding of this code, we present Judge STROUD'S 
 explanation: 
 
 ' The reader will bear in mind, that the numeral signs PREFIXED to the 
 crimes named in the first column of this table, [see table,] are not designed 
 to convey the idea, that they are severally EXPONENTS of one crime ONLY ; 
 but are used, in connection with similar numeral signs, occupying similar 
 places in the second and third columns of the table, merely as a convenient 
 means of indicating the correspondence of the crimes, and their specific pun- 
 ishments. So far from having the former signification, it will be found that 
 the table comprises at least 71 crimes for which SLAVES are CAPITALLY 
 punished, though in none of these are -whites punished in a manner more 
 severe than imprisonment in the penitentiary. Thus, No. 3 contains at least 
 FIVE crimes; No. 11, TWO ; No. 13, at least FOUR; No. 14, at least THIRTY; 
 No. 15, at least FIVE ; No. 16, at least TWELVE.' 
 
 P. S. Since writing the above, we have learned that, by a law of March, 
 1824, persons convicted of any offence, which by any existing law would 
 subject them to imprisonment for life in the penitentiary, are to be punished 
 with death by hanging. This is what we might call a retrograde improve- 
 ment. 
 
 March 12, 1834, a committee was appointed to revise the Criminal Code, 
 and to report on the expediency of abolishing the Punishment of Death.
 
 228 
 
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 THE UNITED STATES. 231 
 
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 232 CAPITAL OFFENCES IN 
 
 REMARKS ON THE PHRASE 'WITHOUT BENEFIT OF 
 CLERGY.' 
 
 THE phrase ' without benefit of clergy,' is very generally misapprehended. 
 It is supposed to mean that the culprit was to be deprived of the attendance 
 of a spiritual guide in his last moments. BLACKSTONE says it meant 
 ' exemption of the persons of clergymen from criminal process before the 
 secular judge in a few particular cases.' This was the true and original 
 meaning of the ' privilegium clericale.* As clergymen increased in wealth, 
 power, honor, number, and interest, they took advantage of the exemption. 
 The test originally was, that no one should be admitted to the privilege but 
 such as had the rwbitum et tonsuram clericalem. But afterward, another 
 criterion was established. Every one that could read was accounted a 
 clerk or clericus. But when the art of printing was discovered in the four- 
 teenth century, it was no longer a test, for soon the laity learned to read as 
 well as the clergy. Other expedients were soon adopted. Persons were 
 admitted only once to the benefit of the clergy. When laymen were allowed 
 the privilege, they were burnt with a hot iron in the brawn of the left thumb. 
 
 The distinction now is scarcely recognised in our country, though it exists 
 nominally in Virginia, Kentucky, North and South Carolina. In this last 
 state, Judge STROUD says, ' a distinction is made by express law, between 
 males and females convicted of dergyable offences. Both are branded ; but 
 a male is discharged without further punishment ; a female may be whipped, 
 placed in the stocks, or imprisoned for the space of a year afterwards, at 
 the discretion of the court.' It is not to be wondered at that ' benefit of 
 clergy ' should still be retained in some of the slaveholding states, when we 
 remember that only one in one hundred and fifty-five can read ! But we 
 close by giving an anecdote, and the form of this ancient custom, handed to 
 us by ROBERT RANTOUL, Esq. : 
 
 The clerk of the court handed the prisoner a missal. If he read the 
 PATER NOSTER, the officer cried out, ' Legit, clericus est ;' he reads ; he 
 is a clerk; and his punishment was remitted. Sometimes the prisoner 
 deceived the court by getting some one to prompt him as he apparently 
 read. A story is tola of one who could not read, but who held up the mis- 
 sal or parchment, with his thumb on the place. ' Take away thy thumb,' 
 said the prompter. The poor ignorant prisoner, supposing this to be in the 
 book, cried, ' Take away thy thumb ;' and he was detected. See BLACK- 
 STONE'S Commentaries, vol. iv. chap. 28. 
 
 WE have presented all the capital offences in the code of the 
 Union and the codes of the several states. Such a survey suggests 
 a variety of reflections, but we have not room for them. The list is 
 presented to the reader to use in any manner that may have a moral 
 or religious bearing on the community. Our laws are written in 
 blood. In all the twenty-six states, only Maryland has arranged 
 its code so that the offender may be punished capitally or by im- 
 prisonment. And even here the reign of blood is not over ; for, at 
 this moment, a poor fellow-being lies there in his cell, awaiting the 
 hour of his execution. Twenty days must elapse between the 
 sentence and the execution. In Maine and Vermont also, two
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 233 
 
 convicts are under sentence of death. (See notes on their codes.) 
 In the first state we have conversed with the convict himself. 
 Humanity has partly triumphed in these two states. The public 
 vengeance has time to cool. One year at least must elapse between 
 the sentence and the execution. In Maine, it must be in private, 
 and takes place, if not forbidden by the executive ; in Vermont, if 
 ordered. Doubts exist, however, in both states, respecting the 
 authority of the executive. 
 
 We believe our labor will do good. Very few persons know the 
 number or character of the various capital offences in the several 
 states. It will be found, generally, that those who violate the 
 laws, have the least opportunity of becoming acquainted with them. 
 Indeed, very few prisoners know even the meaning of the terms 
 employed, such as Arson, Burglary, Mayhem, &c. And how 
 should they know ? We have a large class of men who spend 
 their whole lives in studying the laws, and even they differ about 
 their meaning. What can be expected, then, of those who have 
 no such advantages ? And then the very language is indistinct ; it 
 is sometimes mere jargon. But we cannot enlarge on so fruitful a 
 theme as the 'glorious uncertainty of the law.' This we did in 
 Essay X., where we presented the Irremediability of the present 
 law. To illustrate our views, we will give two anecdotes, where 
 persons were condemned, who, from their ignorance, could proba- 
 bly have not understood the law. A youth was condemned for 
 burglary. He afterwards wrote a very feeling letter to the judge, 
 stating that he did not know the name of the crime which he had 
 committed. 
 
 The other case is that of a country lad who was condemned, and 
 supposed to be innocent. He wrote the following letter to his 
 parents : 
 
 ' i Now took my pen for these last time to write to you Father 
 Mother brother sister and All my Realtions wich [while] it is but a 
 short time before i [am] called hence to apear before that tribunle 
 
 Judge may the lord have Mearcy on Me wich [while] i took 
 
 my trile before the Judge and Jury wich [while] they past the videct 
 [verdict] of death on me what I lay to heartt is when it comes 
 over me to think that on [one] fleow [fellow] creature should Swear 
 
 a nother folowe creature life away worngfuly i write to you 
 
 the Sentement of mind to tell you that when i Mount the Fatle 
 Sacffold [fatal scaffold] that the lord from heaven Nowes that i ams 
 inocent As child unborn.' 
 
 Mr. LIVINGSTON suggests that this is a subject which might be 
 made familiar in our common schools. A good suggestion. 
 
 20*
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF KINDNESS. 
 
 IN the course of our labor, we have frequently alluded to the 
 power of kindness upon the human "soul. We did not commence 
 this work so much with a view to bring out and illustrate by exam- 
 ples, that point, but rather to show the injustice and the inhumanity 
 of the Punishment of Death. We have not laid before the reader 
 any very distinct plan respecting the proper mode of discipline with 
 prisoners. We want to see the criminal spared. We have pro- 
 ceeded to a certain point. We say to the state government under 
 which we live, spare the criminal; he is my brother ; do not mar the 
 image of God. The taking his life will not bring back his victim ; 
 it will not prevent others from the commission of crime. And 
 here we have been obliged to stop in this volume. The proper 
 treatment of the criminal, and the various causes and remedies of 
 crime, will furnish abundant materials for another volume, should it 
 be thought advantageous to the cause of humanity. 
 
 But to open the way, and to meet the frequent objection that 
 criminals are beyond the reach of moral influences, we present a 
 few anecdotes which have a direct bearing on that view of the 
 subject. We regret, with the reader, that we could not have gone 
 farther. Bat when the community are prepared to appreciate the 
 great doctrine of the Inviolability of Human Life, then we may hope 
 to see some way opened, some new development of moral power, 
 by which the heart of every criminal can be touched, and prisons 
 become churches, schools or hospitals. For some instances of the 
 power of kindness, we are indebted to the Rev. Mr. MONTGOMERY, 
 of Portsmouth, N. H., whose labors in this department have done 
 great service to the cause of humanity. 
 
 MRS. FRY'S VISIT TO NEWGATE. 
 
 She applied for leave to the governor to visit the female prisoners. He 
 attempted to dissuade her. ' You will he disgusted with their behavioi 
 and language,' said he. ' I am almost afraid, myself, to enter their apart- 
 ment, they are so vile.' 
 
 ' I am fully aware of the danger,' meekly replied Mrs. Fry. ' I do not go 
 in my own strength. God will protect me.'
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF KINDNESS. 235 
 
 But, madam, if you are determined on entering this den of iniquity, 
 pray, leave your purse and watch behind,' said the governor. 
 
 ' I thank thee ; I am not afraid ; I do not think I shall lose anything, 1 
 replied this heroic woman.* 
 
 She addressed them in the most gentle accents. ' You seem unhappy,' 
 said she ; ' you are in want of clothes ; would you not be pleased if some 
 one came to relieve your misery ?' 
 
 'Certainly,' said one, 'we need clothes.' 'But nobody cares for us, and 
 where can we find a friend ?' said another. 
 
 ' I am come to serve you, if you will allow me,' said Elizabeth Fry. 
 She then went on to express her sympathy for them, and offer them hope 
 that they might improve their condition. She did not say a word about the 
 crimes they had committed, nor reproach them. She came to comfort, and 
 not to condemn. When she was about to depart, the women thronged around 
 her. 
 
 ' You are leaving us,' said they, ' and you will never come again.' 
 
 ' Yes, I will come again, if ye desire it," she replied. 
 
 1 We do ! we do !' was echoed round the apartment. 
 
 She read to them the Bible ; the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. 
 Some asked who Christ was. Others said he did not come for them ; 
 others, it was too late for them. She passed the whole day with them, 
 softening, by her words of peace, the most turbulent and perverse tempers. 
 The reform was most astonishing ; and, thanks to her perseverance and the 
 years she has devoted to this pious undertaking, a total change has been 
 effected in the female department of this prison. The influence of virtue 
 has prevailed, and many wretched beings have found Newgate an asylum 
 of repentance and heavenly hope. 
 
 CONDUCT OF CAPTAIN PILLSBURY, OF WEATHERSFIELD 
 PRISON, CONNECTICUT. 
 
 [From the ' Retrospect of Western Travel,' by Miss Martineau.] 
 
 His moral power over the guilty is so remarkable, that prison-breakers, 
 who can be confined nowhere else, are sent to him to be charmed into 
 staying their term out. I was told of his treatment of two such. One was 
 a gigantic personage, the terror of the country, who had plunged deeper and 
 deeper in crime for seventeen years. Captain Pillsbury told him when he 
 came, that he hoped he would not repeat the attempts to escape which he 
 had made elsewhere. ' It will be best,' said he, ' that you and I should 
 treat each other as well as we can. I will make you as comfortable as I 
 possibly can, and shall be anxious to be your friend ; and I hope you will 
 not get me into any difficulty on your account. There is a cell intended for 
 solitary confinement, but we have never used it, and I should be sorry ever 
 to have to turn the key upon anybody in it. You may range the place as 
 freely as I do, if you will trust me "as I shall trust you.' The man was 
 sulky, and for weeks showed only very gradual symptoms of softening under 
 the operation of Captain Pillsbury's cheerful confidence. At length, infor- 
 mation was given to the captain of this man's intention to break prison. 
 The captain called him, and taxed him with it; the man preserved a 
 gloomy silence. He was told that it was now necessary for him to be locked 
 up in the solitary cell, and desired to follow the captain, who went first, 
 carrying a lamp in one hand and the key in the other. In the narrowest 
 part of the passage, the captain (who is a small, slight man) turned round 
 and looked in the face of the stout criminal. ' Now,' said he, ' I ask you 
 
 *To show the honesty of prisoners, a fact now lies before us, related by Howard 
 himself. ' I never received an insult from either jailer or prisoner, nor lost one article, 
 except a pocket handkerchief, which was afterwards returned to me by a prisoner, 
 who had picked it up when it dropped from my pocket.'
 
 236 ILLUSTRATIONS OF KINDNESS. 
 
 whether you have treated me as I deserved ? I have done everything i 
 could think of to make you comfortable ; I have trusted you, and you have 
 never given me the least confidence in return, and have even planned to get 
 me into difficulty. Is this kind ? And yet I cannot bear to lock you up. 
 
 If I had the least sign that you cared for me ' The man burst into 
 
 tears. ' Sir,' said he, ' I have been a very devil these seventeen years ; but 
 you treat me like a man.' ' Come, let us go back,' said the captain. The 
 convict had the free range of the prison as before. From this hour he began 
 to open his heart to the captain, and cheerfully fulfilled his whole term of 
 imprisonment, confiding to nis friend, as they arose, all impulses to violate 
 his trust, and facilities for doing so which he imagined he saw. 
 
 Conduct of the same individual to a prisoner who had sworn to murder him. 
 
 He sent for him to shave him, allowing no one to be present. He eyed 
 the man, pointed to the razor, and desired him to shave him. The pris- 
 oner's hand trembled, but he went through it very well. When he had 
 done, the captain said, ' I have been told you meant to murder me, but I 
 thought I might trust you.' ' God bless you, sir ! you may,' replied the 
 regenerated man. Such is the power of faith in man. 
 
 Conduct of the same individual to a prisoner who had attempted to escape. 
 
 He fell, and hurt his ankle very much. The captain had him brought in 
 and laid on his bed, and the ankle attended to, every one being forbidden to 
 speak a word of reproach to the sufferer. The man was sullen, and would 
 not say whether the bandaging of his ankle gave him pain or not. This 
 was in the night, and every one returned to bed when this was done. But 
 the captain could not sleep. He was distressed at the attempt, and thought 
 he could not have fully done his duty by any man who would make it. He 
 was afraid the man was in great pain. He rose, threw on his gown, and 
 went with a lamp to the cell. The prisoner's face was turned to the wall, 
 and his eyes were closed, but the traces of suffering were not to be mis- 
 taken. The captain loosened and replaced the bandage, and went for his 
 own pillow to rest the limb upon, the man neither speaking nor moving all 
 the time. Just when he was shutting the door, the prisoner started up and 
 called him back. ' Stop, sir. Was it all to see after my ankle that you 
 have got up ?' 
 
 ' Yes, it was. 1 could not sleep for thinking of you.' 
 1 And you have never said a word of the way I have used you !' 
 ' I do feel hurt with you, but I don't want to call you unkind while you 
 are suffering as you are now.' 
 
 The man was in an agony of shame and grief. All he asked was to be 
 trusted again when he should have recovered. He was freely trusted, and 
 gave his generous friend no more anxiety on his behalf. 
 
 CONDUCT OF AN AGENT OF THE BIBLE SOCIETY IN THE 
 MEXICAN PROVINCE OF TEXAS. 
 
 [From the Manual of Peace, by T. C. Upham.] 
 
 His course lay through a piece of woods, where two men waylaid him 
 with murderous intentions ; one being armed with a gun, the other with a 
 large club. As he approached the place of their concealment, they rushed 
 towards him ; hut finding that no resistance was offered, they neither struck 
 nor fired. He be^an to reason witb them ; and presently they seemed less 
 eager to destroy him in haste. After a short time he prevailed on them to 
 sit down with him upon a log, and talk the matter over deliberately ; and 
 finally he persuaded them to kneel with him in prayer ; after which, they 
 parted with him in a friendly manner.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF KINDNESS. 237 
 
 ANECDOTE OP WILLIAM LADD. 
 
 [From the Democratic Review.] 
 
 The following anecdote is one of the best we have ever seen. 
 Mr. LA.DD was often requested to permit it to be published before 
 his death, but he said he preferred to keep'it as his best. Since 
 his decease, Mr. SAMUEL E. COUES, his friend and associate in 
 the great Peace enterprise, has given it to the world. There 
 would be few quarrels, if all were governed by the principle devel- 
 oped in this admirable anecdote. 
 
 It was not mere good nature, but the adoption of the peace principles, 
 which made him thus gentle-hearted. A story, which he often told with 
 peculiar relish, will illustrate the moulding of his character the gradual 
 
 Erogress of his mind in adopting the peace principles. ' I had,' said he, ' a 
 ne field of grain, growing upon an out-farm, some distance from the home- 
 stead. Whenever I rode by, I saw my neighbor Pulsifer's sheep in the lot, 
 destroying my hopes of a harvest. These sheep were of the gaunt, long- 
 legged kind, active as spaniels ; they could spring over the highest fence, 
 and no wall could keep them out. I complained to neighbor Pulsifer about 
 them, sent him frequent messages, but all without avail. Perhaps they 
 would be kept out for a day or two, but the legs of his sheep were long, and 
 my grain rather more tempting than the adjoining pasture. I rode by again 
 the sheep were all the,re ; I became angry, and told my men to set the 
 dogs on them, and if that would not do, I would pay them if they would 
 shoot them. 
 
 I rode away much agitated ; for I was not so much of a peace man then 
 as I am now, and I felt, literally, full of fight. All at once a light flashed 
 in upon me. I asked myself, would it not be well for you to try, in your 
 own conduct, the peace principles you are preaching to others ? I thought 
 it all over, and settled down my mind as to the best course to be pursued. 
 
 The next day I rode over to see neighbor Pulsifer. I found him chopping 
 wood at his door. 'Good morning, neighbor.' No answer. ' Good morning, 1 
 I repeated. He gave a kind of grunt, like a hog, without looking up. '1 
 came,' continued I, ' to see you about the sheep.' At this he threw down his 
 axe, and exclaimed in a most angry manner, ' Now, a'n't you a pretty 
 neighbor, to tell your men to kill my sheep ! I heard of it ; a rich man 
 like you to shoot a poor man's sheep !' 
 
 ' I was wrong, neighbor,' said I, ' but it won't do to let your sheep eat up 
 all that grain ; so I came over to say that I would take your sheep to my 
 homestead pasture, and put them in with mine ; and in the fall you may 
 take them back, and if any one is missing, you may take your pick out of 
 my whole flock.' 
 
 Pulsifer looked confounded ; he did not know how to take me. At last 
 he stammered put, ' Now, Squire, are you in earnest ?' ' Certainly I am,' 1 
 answered ; ' it is better for me to feed your sheep in my pasture on grass, 
 than to feed them here on grain ; and I see the fence can't keep them out.' 
 
 After a moment's silence ' The sheep shan't trouble you any more,' ex- 
 claimed Pulsifer ; ' I will fetter them all. But I '11 let you know that when 
 any man talks of shooting, I can shoot too ; and when they are kind and 
 neighborly, I can be kind too.' The sheep never again trespassed on my 
 lot. 
 
 'And, my friends,' he continued, addressing the audience, ' remember that 
 when you talk of injuring your neighbors, they talk of injuring you. When 
 nations threaten to light, other nations will be ready too. Love will beget 
 love a wish to be at peace will keep you in peace. You can only overcome 
 evil with good there is no other way.'
 
 A NEW WORK, 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 NAMES AND TITLES OF JESUS, 
 
 WITH BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 BY CHARLES SPEAR, OF BOSTON 
 SIXTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 THIS work is of a peculiar character; embracing a field 
 in the religious world never fully occupied before. The 
 great object is to give a moral and practical view of the 
 Saviour, and to illustrate all the various Names and Titles 
 by which he is distinguished in the Scriptures. For 
 instance : He is called ' The Light of the World ;' ' The 
 True Vine;' 'The Physician;' 'Wonderful,' &c. &c. 
 The Author finds eighty appellations applied to Jesus, and 
 thus actually brings before the reader EIGHTY different viewa 
 of the Saviour of the World. The Author was some 
 years in preparing the work for publication. 
 
 About one thousand copies were engaged before the 
 work went to press. It was published in January, 1841, 
 and has now reached the SIXTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 The volume contains 406 pages, duodecimo, handsomely 
 printed, elegantly bound, with splendid Engravings from 
 one of the first artists in the United States. Price $1,00. 
 
 The Author has been advised, in consequence of ill 
 health, and other circumstances, to travel with his own 
 work, instead of placing it in the hands of booksellers. 
 
 All orders may be sent to the Author's address, Rev. 
 CHARLES SPRAR, 24 London Street, Boston.
 
 The following Testimonials have been received 
 of this Work, 
 
 FROM REV. HENRY A. MILES, OF LOWELL. 
 
 " LOWELL, SEPT. 16, 1841. I have had the pleasure of examining a 
 book on the names and titles applied to our Saviour in the Bible, 
 written by the Rev. Mr. Spear. I am much pleased with the plan and 
 execution of the work, and am confident that the reader will find it to 
 contain much valuable information, and to breathe a delightful spirit 
 of devotion. It seems to me to be one of those books which ought to 
 have a place in every family library, by the side of the Bible and the 
 Hymn Book. Divided into short chapters, it can be conveniently read 
 in leisure moments, and will form a useful part of morning and even- 
 ing devotions. HENRY A. MILES." 
 
 FROM REV. WM. WARE, OF CAMBRIDGE, EDITOR OF THE 
 CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. 
 
 " The volume before us consists of short essays or sermons, upon 
 each of the names or titles applied to our Saviour in the Bible. 
 Of these names or titles the author, by the exercise here and there of 
 some ingenuity, discovers the large number of eighty. The remarks 
 upon them are principally of a practical and devotional character, with 
 criticisms upon the passages used as texts intermingled, drawn from 
 approved authorities. The work has already reached a fourth edition ; 
 which seems to prove an adaptation to the wants of a large class of 
 readers. The thought and the language of the discourses are some- 
 times striking and vigorous." 
 
 FROM REV. 0. A. SKINNER, OF BOSTON. 
 
 " We would take the liberty of again calling the attention of our 
 readers to a work by Rev. Charles Spear, on the names and titles of 
 the Saviour. It is one of the best books on theology, that has ever 
 come under our notice. The style is chaste and elegant, and in many 
 parts of the work truly eloquent. The criticisms are correct, the rea- 
 soning clear and satisfactory, and the practical reflections persuasive 
 and excellent. None can read it, without having their faith in the 
 Saviour strengthened, their hearts elevated and improved, and saying, 
 _n the strong language of grateful admiration, never man lived and 
 spake like this man. The work is enriched by two neat and appro- 
 priate engravings."
 
 FROM REV. S. K. LOTHROP, EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN REGISTER, 
 OF BOSTON. 
 
 " This work is somewhat novel in its pian, and altogether more 
 thorough and complete than any work with which we are acquainted. 
 It embraces within a short compass a vast amount of just and rational 
 interpretation of Scripture ; and is yet more valuable for the catholic 
 spirit and the deep and fervent piety which pervade its pages. "We 
 do not concur in all its ideas and opinions, but we can commend it to 
 our readers, as a book worthy to be read thoroughly, and from which 
 they cannot fail to derive much valuable instruction and many good 
 impressions." 
 
 FROM REV. S. COBB, or BOSTON. 
 
 " "We had looked over some of the manuscript before it was put to 
 press, and were expecting a good and valuable work, but on perusing 
 it in its finished state, we find ourselves greatly and agreeably disap- 
 pointed. It is much above what we had expected. It is chaste in 
 style and replete with rich and profitable instruction. It comprises 
 eighty chapters, under the head of as many names or titles of Christ. 
 And from the various names of Christ, the author has drawn lessons 
 of faith, hope, and practice, adapted to every circumstance and relation 
 of life. To get a good idea of the work, you must read it. Every 
 family ought to purchase a copy." 
 
 FROM THE SALEM OBSERVER. 
 
 " A book of 406 pages, from the pen of Rev. Charles Spear, was 
 issued from the press a few months ago, and has met with uncommon 
 success. It is read with pleasure and profit by people of all denomi- 
 nations. The book has been read, and highly recommended, by emi- 
 nent clergymen of different denominations ; and as it contains a large 
 amount of useful information, such as all persons need, and is free 
 from all objectionable matter, it is hoped that no one, who can afford 
 to purchase the work, will suffer the opportunity to secure a copy to 
 pass by unimproved." 
 
 FROM REV. HOSEA BALLOU, 2n, OF MEDFORD. 
 " It is with much pleasure that I recommend the 'Names and Titles 
 of Christ ' to the religious community. The reader will find it a work 
 carefully prepared, and well written, containing much scriptural 
 instruction, and breathing the purest air of piety throughout. The 
 influence it will exert on the affections, as well as the understanding, 
 cannct fail of being salutary,"
 
 FROM "THE NAZARENE," PUBLISHED AT PHILADELPHIA. 
 ' To those who are acquainted with the author, it would be useless 
 for us to say a word in commendation of this work. He is weL known 
 as an able and experienced writer ; and the deep spirit of Christian 
 piety and humility which has ever characterized his conduct, and been 
 diffused through the productions of his pen, will show at once his fit- 
 ness to handle in a proper manner, the peculiar subjects discussed in 
 this book. The work cannot be otherwise than interesting to every 
 reader ; aqd it will form a valuable addition to the library of every 
 Christian." 
 
 FROM REV. JAMES FLINT, D. D., OF SALEM. 
 
 SALEM, JUNE, 1841. " I have examined a large number of the arti- 
 cles in Mr. Spear's book ; and from this examination I feel myself 
 authorized to recommend the work, as comprising in a small compass 
 the substance of the interpretations, in which the most learned and en- 
 lightened biblical critics have agreed, of the Names and Titles applied 
 to the Saviour in the Bible. It cannot fail to afford valuable infor- 
 mation to the general reader, and, what is still better, to awaken in 
 the heart of the Christian deep and delightful emotions of thankful- 
 ness and love to God and his Son, to the Father, who sent, and to the 
 Son, who came to be the Saviour of the world, j A MFS FT TN'" 1 " 
 
 FROM THE BOSTON QUARTERLY REVIEW. 
 
 " This book would seem to be, as the trade would say, a successful 
 one ; for although it has been published but a few months, it has 
 already reached a fourth edition. * * ** It is the production of a 
 serious, earnest mind, disposed to religious reflection, and possessed 
 of much genuine religious feeling. The book is rather a devotional 
 book than otherwise, and is quite creditable to the industry, the 
 acquirements, the intellect, and the heart of the writer. It is a 
 book from which, we doubt not, many may derive much spiritual 
 nutriment." 
 
 FROM REV. JOHN G. ADAMS, OF MALDEN. 
 
 " With very few exceptions, we have never perused a gospel work 
 that has yielded us purer spiritual pleasure than this. While we have 
 lingered over its pages with full heart and eye, we have felt the burn- 
 ing of that love within us which we pray may wax warmer and 
 warmer, and go up a pure and steady flame of devotion to Him ' who 
 spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all,' and 
 who will 'with him also freely give us all things.' "
 
 FKOM REV. CHARLES ~W. UPHAM, OF SALEM. 
 "SALEM, JUNE 8, 1841. A book has been placed in my hands, 
 written by Rev. Mr. Spear, on the ' Names and Titles of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ,' and commended to my notice by a learned and eminent 
 Unitarian Minister. I have had opportunity to examine some of the 
 chapters particularly, and to look over the whole work, and it gives 
 me pleasure to say that I think it a valuable and acceptable publication. 
 It is a book which all may understand, and conveys much important 
 information. Its plan is good, and its spirit is excellent ; and in a popu- 
 lar form, it presents the results of much learned labor and research. I 
 consider its circulation desirable, and earnestly recommend it to all 
 friends and seekers of Christian truth, and scriptural knowledge. 
 
 CHARLES W. UPHAM." 
 
 FKOM REV. JOHN M. MERRICK, OF WALPOLE. 
 "WALPOT.E, MARCH 24, 1842. I have read with pleasure and 
 profit the greater part of a work entitled the ' Titles of Jesus,' by the 
 Rev. Mr. Spear, and am happy to add my testimony to the many he 
 has already received, of its great worth. I cordially recommend it as 
 a book of a serions, practical character, admirably adapted to the pur- 
 poses of Christian instruction and edification. 
 
 JOHN M. MERRICK." 
 
 FROM THE NEW YORK CHRISTIAN MESSENGER. 
 " We have had no opportunity to peruse the work, but from the 
 nature of the subject, and the well-known abilities and deep devotional 
 spirit of the author, we have no doubt that he has produced an excel- 
 lent a useful work. But aside from this, we can indulge great con- 
 fidence in it, from the universal commendation it has met with, 
 wherever it has been known, and the almost unparalleled sale which 
 has attended it. It is but a few months since it was first published, 
 and the fifth edition is just issued from the press." 
 
 FROM REV. HENRY BACON, OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 "This work will be found very interesting and useful. The name 
 admits the mind in a moment into the variety that will spread before 
 it as soon as the book is opened ; and we vent-re to promise any 
 individual, who has the least taste for religious reading, that ne will 
 prize this volume highly as socn he becomes acquainted with its 
 contents."
 
 6 
 
 FROM REV. WM. NEWELL, OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, OCT. 18, 1841. From a cursory examination of your 
 work, and the strong testimonies in its favor which you have received 
 from competent judges of its merits, I do not hesitate to recommend 
 it to all who are interested in the subjects of which it treats. Though 
 I may differ from you in some of your conclusions and criticisms, 
 I cordially approve of the spirit and tendency of the work, and think 
 it calculated to do good. WM. NEWELL." 
 
 FROM REV. J. M. AUSTIN, OF DANVERS. 
 
 DANVERS, MARCH 14, 1842. It is difficult to express the pleasure 
 which I have received, and continue to receive, in perusing this book. 
 So richly abounding in useful instruction so pathetic and touching, 
 so persuasive to purity and goodness, in its moral influences and yet 
 so child-like and unostentatious in its pretensions as a whole, it be- 
 longs to the first class of the religious works of the age. I am confi- 
 dent it cannot be read without benefit both to the head and the heart, 
 nor without an increased sense of the claims of the Saviour upon our 
 gratitude and love. It is with the utmost confidence and pleasure 
 that I recommend it to Christians of every sect, as a most valuable 
 family manual. Let all obtain it, and they will secure a treasure of 
 the highest worth. 
 
 " The eighth edition is rendered more attractive, by the addition of 
 two beautiful engravings, illustrative of the raising of the Widow's 
 Son, and of the parable of the Lost Sheap. These plates are executed 
 with skill, and are very expressive. J. M. AUSTIN." 
 
 FROM REV. JOSEPH ANGIER, OF MILTON. 
 
 " Mr. Spear has given us, in his ' Titles of Jesus,' a good book. It 
 contains much valuable information, is characterized by good sense 
 and liberality, and breathes a spirit of sincere and fervent devotion, 
 which cannot fail to recommend it to the unprejudiced of all denomi- 
 nations. From some of its opinions and criticisms it becomes me 
 candidly to avow my dissent. But the book is rather practical and 
 devotional than doctrinal ; and as such, I consider it a valuable 
 addition to our religious literature, and give it my confident and 
 hearty approval and recommendation. JOSEPH ANGIER."
 
 FROM REV. A. P. PEABODY, OP PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 I have examined to some extent the work on the Titles of Jesus, 
 by Rev. Mr. Spear, and cheerfully testify that the views which it pre- 
 sents seem to me sound and correct, and that the book is adapted to 
 the instruction and edification of Christian readers generally. 
 
 A. P. PEABODY. 
 
 FROM THE AGE, AUGUSTA, ME. 
 
 1 This work gives evidence of much industry and research, as well 
 as genuine religious feeling. We take pleasure in saying that, in 
 our judgment, it will form a valuable addition to the library of any 
 Christian of any sect.' 
 
 FROM REV. FREDERICK A. FARLEY, OF BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 Such a work may prove very useful to various classes of readers 
 of the sacred text, and be very serviceable to Sunday School teachers. 
 I cheerfully unite with many of my brethren in the ministry in com- 
 mending it to the patronage and study of my brethren in the faith. 
 
 ' FRED. A. FARLEY. 
 
 FROM REV. JASON WHITMAN, OF PORTLAND. 
 
 Without undertaking to endorse every sentiment expressed by the 
 author, I must say that I believe the work well calculated to enlighten 
 the mind and warm the heart. I can therefore recommend the work 
 to all who wish for a better knowledge of the Saviour, or a more pure, 
 devout and intimate communion with him. JASON WHITMAN. 
 
 PORTLAND, August 10, 1842. 
 
 REV. AND DEAR SIR : Your book is a treasure. The only won- 
 der to me is that you ever found time to make it so short. Vol- 
 umes must have accumulated upon your hands in preparing eighty 
 chapters upon as many distinct titles of the Saviour; and you must 
 allow me to congratulate you on your extraordinary success upon two 
 points : In condensation, and in the avoidance of everything, so far 
 as I can perceive, which smacks of sectarianism. Wishing you the 
 reward you so well deserve, here and hereafter, for your labors in 
 this behalf, 
 
 I am, dear sir, 
 
 Your friend and sincere well-wisher, 
 
 JOHN NEAL
 
 R 
 
 FROM THE EASTERN ARGUS. 
 
 We do not hesitate to say that this work ought to be in the library 
 of every Christian family no matter to what denomination its mem- 
 bers may belong. 
 
 FROM REV. SYLVESTER JUDD, JR., OF AUGUSTA, ME. 
 The book of the Rev. Mr. SPEAR, on the Titles of Jesus, I cheer- 
 fully recommend to the attention of all, and believe it well adapted to 
 the great purposes of faith and practice. SYLVESTER JUDD, JR. 
 
 FROM REV. WILLIAM A. DREW, OF AURUSTA, ME. 
 
 A beautiful book, and a good one ; ay, one that does credit to the 
 author and which does credit also to the denomination of which he 
 is a member. It evidently was not prepared, as some other books 
 are, to sell, but to instruct and edify its readers. 
 
 FROM THE EVENING GAZETTE, OF BOSTON. 
 
 The value and high estimation in which the work before us is held, 
 may be conceived from the fact, that it has in less than two years 
 reached twelve editions. The subject, in itself most beautiful, has 
 been handled by the writer, Rev. Charles Spear, of Boston, in such a 
 manner as to diffuse upon the pages of the volume the light of a 
 Christian spirit, shining calmly and peacefully from every sentence. 
 Now and then we notice a passage which will of course find oppo- 
 sition from sectarian feeling; but the tenor and spirit, in which even 
 this is conveyed, are so truly Christian, that it does not jar upon the 
 spirit of devotion. It is an instructive and pleasant work for the 
 Sabbath, and the style of its execution does great credit to the author. 
 It is for sale by the author. 
 
 FROM REV. BARZILLAI FROST, OF CONCORD, MASS. 
 I have examined several important chapters of Mr. Spear's book, 
 called "Names and Titles of the Lord Jesus Christ." From these 
 chapters, and from the manner in which it is recommended by the 
 best judges, I am satisfied that it is written with ability and learning, 
 and in an excellent spirit ; and that it contains much useful in 
 struction, especially for the common reader and the Sunday-school 
 teacher. BARZILLAI FROST.
 
 Notices from Europe. 
 FROM "THE INQUIRER," PUBLISHED is LONDON. 
 
 "The author has brought together, with great diligence, all the 
 NAMES and TITLES which are in Scripture applied to Christ, we 
 might almost add, or have been imagined to be so applied, amount- 
 ing altogether to EIGHTY. Each of these he explains and illustrates 
 practically conveying much useful comment in a popular style, 
 accompanied by a great variety of valuable, moral and devotional 
 sentiment. That the work is adapted for general usefulness, is evi- 
 dent from its extensive and rapid sale in America. We believe it is 
 as yet scarcely known at this side of the Atlantic, but it would proba- 
 bly suit the wants of many, and be esteemed a valuable addition to 
 our stock of practical divinity. We have no hesitation in 'expressing 
 our approbation of its prevailing opinions and tendency, and our 
 hope that it will meet with a welcome amongst us. 
 
 " We believe Mr. Spear is right in thinking that no attempt so exten- 
 sive as his own had previously been made. The Titles of Christ, 
 which could be supposed to involve controversial considerations, have 
 been examined by writers on opposite sides of the great disputed 
 questions ; but the treatment of them so extensively, as subjects for 
 useful explanation and sources of practical improvement, is, we think, 
 novel, and must have cost a good deal of labor and thought." 
 London, Jan. 28, 1843. 
 
 FROM "THE BIBLE CHRISTIAN," BELFAST, IRELAND. 
 "We cordially recommend all our readers to purchase this work. 
 We recommend it to Christian- families as a useful and interesting 
 auxiliary to their devotional exercises. We recommend it to congre- 
 gational libraries, as a work that will seldom be allowed to rest upon 
 the shelves. We recommend it to Sunday-school teachers as one of 
 the best Manuals we know, for rational explanation, and for practi- 
 cal lessons of piety and morality. And since it is one of the goodly 
 fashions of the present day for all persons who would aspire to any 
 degree of literary taste, to display literary ornaments on their drawing- 
 room tables, we can confidently recommend it for this purpose too. 
 In typography, paper and binding, it is beautifully got up. It contains 
 two fine engravings, by an eminent American artist. And if visitors 
 have occasionally to wait a few minutes for the appearance of the 
 mistress of the house, we do not know how they could spend the time 
 more pleasantly or more profitably, than in perusing a section of the 
 ' Names and Titles of Jesus.' "
 
 10 
 
 Among the thousands who have purchased this work may be 
 named the following : 
 
 Hon. Josiah Quincy, LL. D., President of Harvard University. 
 Rev. "William E. Channing, D. D. ^ 
 
 " Ezra S. Gannett, 
 
 " Francis Parkman, D. D. 
 
 " John Pierpont, 
 
 " Chandler Bobbins, 
 
 " C. A. Bartol, 
 
 " R. C. Waterston, 
 
 ,. . T -r T, , . , f Boston. 
 
 " N. L. Frothmgham, 
 
 " James I. T. Coolidge, 
 " F. D. Huntington, 
 " F. T. Gray, 
 " Samuel Barrett, 
 " F. "W. P. Greenwood, 
 " John T. Sargent, 
 
 Rt. Reverend Alexander Viets Griswold, D. D., Bishop of Massa- 
 chusetts, Maine and Rhode Island ; acting Bishop of New Hamp- 
 shire ; and senior and presiding Bishop of the Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church of the United States of America. 
 
 Rev. Henry Giles, of England. 
 
 Hon. S. Longfellow, Me. 
 " Marcus Morton. 
 
 Rev. Addison Searle, Chaplain U. S. Navy. 
 
 Thomas H. Perkins, Boston. 
 
 Thomas C. Upham, Prof, of Metaphysics and Ethics, and Instructor 
 in the Hebrew Language in Bowdoin College, Me. 
 
 Rev. S. J. May, Principal of the Normal School, Lexington. 
 " George E. Ellis, of Charlestown. 
 " Ichabod Nichols, D. D., of Portland. 
 " Henry W. Bellows, of N. Y. 
 " W. B. Peabody, of Springfield, Mass. 
 
 S. B. Woodward, Superintending Physician of State Lunatic Hos- 
 pital, Worcester. 
 
 W. C. Bryant, ofN. Y. 
 
 Benjamin Abbot, formerly Principal of Exeter Academy, N. H. 
 
 Hon. John Q. Adams. 
 
 Hon. Charles Jackson, Boston. 
 " William Prescott, Boston. 
 
 S. E. Sewall, Esq., Boston. 
 
 Samuel E . Coues, President of American Peace Society.
 
 A New Work, 
 
 ESSAYS ON THE PIMSHMENT OF DEATH, 
 
 BY CHARLES SPEAR, OF BOSTON; 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' TITLES OF JESUS ;' ' ESSAYS ON IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT,' ETC. 
 
 WITH A FINE ENGBAVING. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 THIS work is intended to present a concise and practical view of the sub- 
 ject of Capital Punishment. For years the author has felt deeply interested 
 in it, and has spent much time in the collection of facts. In its preparation 
 he had access to many valuable foreign publications, scarcely known in this 
 country. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 N. 
 
 PART I. HISTORY AND OBSERVATION. 
 
 ESSAY I. SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 ESSAY II. REVENGEFUL. 
 
 ESSAY III. SCRUPLES OF JURORS AND WITNESSES. 
 
 ESSAY IV. EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE PRISONER. 
 
 ESSAY V. EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE SPECTATORS; 
 
 ESSAY VI. EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 ESSAY VII. EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. 
 
 ESSAY VIII. DANGEROUS TO LIBERTY. 
 
 ES:sAY IX. FUTURE CONDITION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 ESSAY X. IRREMEDIABILITY. 
 
 PART II. SACRED SCRIPTURES. 
 
 ESSAY I. CAIN. 
 ESSAY II. COVENANT WITH NOAH. 
 ESSAY III. MOSAIC CODE. 
 ESSAY IV. TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 
 ESSAY V. OBJECTIONS. 
 ESSAY VI. ENCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 O'CONNELL'S Speech on the subject is embodied in the work. 
 
 A list of all the capital offences in the Union is given; a labor said by dis- 
 tinguished jurists never to have been accomplished before. 
 
 The work is published and sold by the Author, 24 London street, Boston. 
 Having incurred great expense in the publication, and being of infirm health, 
 with a large family, he looks to a generous public to sustain Mm in his 
 humble efforts to ame'.nrale the condition of the poor criminal.
 
 2 COMMENDATORY NOTICES. 
 
 COMMENDATORY NOTICES. 
 
 (FnoM THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.) 
 
 We have here a most compact and forcible array of facts and considera- 
 tions which forbid the legal slaughter of human beings the best work by 
 far that has ever appeared on the subject simple, Incid, cogent and affect- 
 ing. Every proposition usged against the continuance of the gallows is for- 
 tified by abundant citations of facts, accounts of executions, &c. &c., till it 
 would seem impossible that any one should read and reflect on this book 
 without a deep loathing for the code of blood, and an amazed pity for the 
 infatuation of its advocates. If any man can read these 'Essays,' and not 
 be convinced that legal killing has incited to foar murders for every one it 
 has prevented, he must, it seems to us, be steeled against the force of evi- 
 dence and the fear of shedding innocent blood. 
 
 We hope this hook will be widely circulated, though the author, being 
 poor, publishes his book himself, and goes about to sell it as he can, which 
 will retard its dissemination. We are sure a bookseller, who shall first pro- 
 cure some copies for this city, and let the public know it, must sell them 
 rapidly. The facts here industriously collected the recorded opinions of 
 BECCARIA, BLACKSTONE, MONTESQ.UIEU, FRANKLIN, RUSH, SMOLLETT, LA- 
 FAYETTE, CHANNING, EDWARD LIVINGSTON, O'CONNELL, &c. &c., are 
 alone worth double the cost of the volume. To the more general reader, 
 this work must be more interesting than the freshest novel can be so vari- 
 ous and thrilling are its incidental portraitures of the human heart and life 
 of our criminal laws, and their hardly more criminal victims. Let it be 
 widely disseminated. 
 
 The Appendix gives tallies of all capital offences by the laws of the sev- 
 eral States and me code of Moses, respectively, and must be valuable to 
 lawyers and others. 
 
 [FROM THE BAY STATE DEMOCRAT, OF BOSTON.] 
 
 The subject is most ably treated upon by the author, who has condensed 
 into a book of about 250 pages much valuable information of a highly inter- 
 esting character. 
 
 Mr. Spear gives many pertinent extracts from high authorities to sustain 
 his benevolent views, ana among others we notice a very interesting quota- 
 tion from a speech made by O'Connell before the London meeting for the 
 diffusion of information upon the subject of Capital Punishment. 
 
 [FROM THE BOSTON OLIVE BRANCH.] 
 
 With Mr. Spear's benevolent views we most heartily accord, and we feel 
 fully assured that he has done the public a great service, not only in his own 
 reasoning, but also in the many pertinent extracts which he has made from 
 high authorities, on this important subject. We hope the work will be ex- 
 tensively read and its principles carried out. 
 
 [FROM THS BOSTON BEE.] 
 
 This is a work that evidences the devotion of no little time, labor and 
 thought, to its composition ; is written in a plain, forcible and logical man- 
 ner, with an earnestness and clearness of style which show how much the 
 author is impressed with the truth of what he writes, how thoroughly he has 
 given the subject his attention, and how ardently he desires to convince the 
 judgment of his readers. To give completeness to the book, he has annexed 
 to his essays a list of capital offences in the code of the Union and in the 
 codes of the several States ; an arrangement that is not to be found in any 
 other work, and one of great service to the reader, by enabling him to turn 
 at any moment to see what is a capital offence in the code of the Union or. in 
 either of the twenty-six stntes of our republic.
 
 COMMENDATORY NOTICES. 3 
 
 [FROM TUB NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD.] 
 
 We would that we could induce every one of our subscribers to buy this 
 book. It is the clearest and most condensed array of facts and arguments, 
 on the subject of Capital Punishment, that we ever met with. Portions 
 of it are thrilling in the extreme. We do not envy the head or the heart 
 of the man, who can rise from its cerusal without an utter abhorrence 
 of this bloody relic of barbarism, and a determination to do bis utmost to 
 sweep it from our criminal code with or without benefit of clergy^ The 
 author is a poor man, well known for his philanthropic efforts, and*^ love of 
 the human race. He has printed it at his own expense. Buy the book, and 
 lend it far and wide. It will scatter good seed, and yield a noble harvest. 
 
 [FROM THE BOSTON TRUMPET.) 
 
 Having examined this recently and timely issued work, I feel it my duty 
 as well as privilege, to recommend it to the serious attention of an enlight 
 ened and Christian public. The author has taken great pains to bring the 
 merits and importance of his general subject before his readers,-and has sup- 
 ported his positions with such facts, authorities, and arguments, as cannot 
 fail to command the serious consideration of the sober and candid on both 
 sides of the great question which now deeply interests the community, and 
 on which humanity will not cease to plead with legislators until the punish- 
 ment of death is abrogated from our criminal code. 
 
 [FROM TUB BOSTON LADIES' REPOSITORY.] 
 
 The work is written in an excellent style and with a truly Christian spirit. 
 It carries its own evidence of diligence and research on the part of the 
 author, and that he engaged in the labor of obtaining and arranging facts 
 with an earnest and solemn purpose. We hope the volume will be widely 
 circulated and extensively read ; and let any one read it, considering the dif- 
 ference between the appeals therein made, and those contained in the works 
 on the opposite side, and he will see the difference between the tempers 
 awakenea by the opposite opinions. And we cannot but add, that he will 
 also see how the best interests of society will be promoted by the abolish- 
 ment of sanguinary laws. 
 
 [FROM THE NEW YORK CHRISTIAN MESSENGER.] 
 
 We commend this work to public attention, with great confidence, as a 
 valuable collection of facts and reflections upon the subject of which it treats 
 perhaps the best that can be obtained. It seems to us impossible for a 
 calm, dispassionate person to rise from a careful perusal of it, without strong 
 doubts of the utility or propriety of the death-penalty, if not with strong 
 convictions against it. We wish it might be broad cast over the world, and 
 appeal, with its startling facts, to every heart which may yet harbor a doubt 
 on this subject. 
 
 [FROM THE MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE, NEW YORK.] 
 
 We have read this admirable series of Essays on the Punishment of Death 
 with deep interest; and, in connection with the agitation of the subject in 
 several of the legislatures of the states, and other signs of the time, it seems 
 to us to indicate the progress of reform in regard to this relic of barbarism, 
 which must eventually yield to the spirit of the Gospel. The author seems 
 to have compassed the whole subject ; and to us his arguments, figures, and 
 facts, strengthen a conviction that our whole heart and judgment assent to, 
 viz., that the punishment of death should be stricken from the statute-books 
 of every government whose laws are professedly based upon the ethics of 
 Christ." We hope the honest, but mistaken advocates of legalized murder, 
 as well as those who have one lingering doubt upon the subject, will read 
 this book; as its force and truthfulness must lead the former to review their 
 opinions, and scatter to the winds the misgivings of the latter.
 
 In Preparation by the Author, 
 
 I. 
 
 ESSAYS ON PEACE; OR, THE INVIOLA- 
 BILITY OF HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 THE author proposes publishing a work bearing the 
 above title. Such a work, he sincerely believes, is much 
 needed at the present day, when human life is recklessly 
 taken, and violence fills the land. The great object of 
 the author will be to show, not only that all wars are 
 wrong, but that all preparation is inexpedient, unnecessary, 
 and contrary to the principles of Christianity. 
 
 The author has had the subject in view for many years. 
 He has been enabled to collect a variety of facts, statistics 
 and incidents inaccessible to the general reader. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Inviolability of Human 
 
 Life. 
 II. Sufferings of War. 
 
 III. Causes. 
 
 IV. Effects. 
 
 V. "War, a Violation of the 
 
 "Word of God. 
 
 VI. Objections from the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 VII. Popular Objections. 
 VIII. American Revolution. 
 IX. Measures to promote 
 
 Peace. 
 
 X. Encouragements. 
 XI. Anecdotes illustrating the 
 practicability of Peace 
 Principles. 
 
 The work will be comprised in a single volume, 12mo., 
 embellished with a rich and spirited steel engraving. 
 
 Having been at great pains to prepare the work, and 
 being of infirm health, the author intends to sell his own 
 work, instead of placing it in the hands of booksellers. 
 
 Address, CHARLES SPEAR, Boston.
 
 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which It was borrowed.
 
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