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 gave 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,' answered 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 reverend gentleman gave me the wink; the drop fell--one kick-and 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 people; to make them gentle and good; to give them a feeling of respect 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 Cheever-Singular confession of Buonaparte.

'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 apprehension, 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, and 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, throughout the better age of the Roman republic, that the infliction of the punishment of death was expressly forbidden by the famous Porcian 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 when his ambi

*Livy, x. 9. Cicero pro Rabirio, iii. 4: In Verrem, v. 63; Sallust, Cat. 51. See Adam's Roman Antiquities.

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 consequence of the Valerian law, made by Valerius Publicola, shortly after the expulsion of the kings, or else in consequence of the Porcian 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, rather as a political measure than as one of ordinary social justice. The Count de Ségur, on his return from his embassy at St. Petersburgh, in a letter published in the Moniteur, 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.”

6

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.

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 society, 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 Bombay, 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 unexampled) a circumstance, as the disuse of Capital Punishment, for so long a period as seven years, or among a population so considerable, 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 convictions 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, councillor of the court of His Imperial Majesty, the emperor of Russia. London, 1830.

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 factories 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 territories. From May, 1797, to May, 1804, there were eighteen convictions 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 substance a case of manslaughter with some aggravation. The murders 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 parliament, in May, 1837, that, in visiting a prison in which he found several persons who had been condemned for capital offences, he 'learned from the officer 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 WRIGHTSON. p. 55. London: 1837.