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 compelled 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 Massachusetts—Jewish code abolished-Moses referred to a higher prophet— Sixth commandment-Reasons for Jewish code-Voice of GodObjections.

'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 invariably 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 portion 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, and a peculiar condition of society. When the advo

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 supposed that his system was a vast, dreary waste, barren as the very wilderness through which he led Israel! The system contained many benevolent provisions.* 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 wisdom, 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 extended even to beasts: Exod. xxiii. 5; Deut. xxv. 4; Exod. xx. 10; Lev. xxv. 7.

relating to the penal jurisprudence. The third, relating 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 repression 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; we have our honor to preserve. They never pardon till they are revenged." "Les Persans," says Chardin, (“Voyages en Perse," &c., Tome III., p. 417,) "et tous les autres Mahometans, se conforment là-dessus absolument à la loi Judaïque, remettant à la fin du procès, le meurtrier entre les mains des plus proches parens du défunt." 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 ;" and there is no rule more rigidly observed among our North American Indians.'

protection. A legal investigation then took place. If guilty, the avenger' stood ready to cut down his victim. 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:

Eating leavened bread during the Passover, Suffering an unruly ox to be at liberty, if he kill; the ox also to be stoned,

* 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.'