creature of God, and anarchy fatal to society, are not facts to lessen the sacredness of life, but to guard it the more, and to fill us with awe of our own power over it. Is it not, then, a terrible fact, that life has been one of the lightest bawbles with which kings or subjects have ever played? Is it not the most melancholy phase of history, that more has been expended in the destruction of life, than for all other objects, that human blood has been spilled like water, not only by the hand of violence, but with the sanction of law and religion, — that governments, instituted to protect the lives and liberties of men, have held their lives cheaper than the smallest coin or the slightest fame, and have erected civil, martial, and ecclesiastical altars for the sacrifice of human hecatombs? Governments declare and sustain war; and war has slain its myriads, by a right which Christianity renders doubtful and fearful, at the very lowest point of view,

—at

at the highest, impious. Governments sanction duelling; and the real or attempted murderers walk among men unrestrained and honored. Governments have made capital punishment their special prerogative; and not an age or a year, probably not one day of the world, has passed since this prerogative was used, that it has not, in some quarter, cut short the life of an innocent man.

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The calmest retrospection will show that this statement is not extravagant. Take into account the reckless disposal of life under the despotisms of the earth, remember the multitudes that have been slain by heathen and Christian powers, either as victims or heretics, consider the number and rigor of penal laws in the best governments, until very recently, consider the proverbial uncertainty of the law, the necessary dependence on circumstantial evidence, the fallibility of human judgment, and the worse than fallibility of many judges and jurors, under the sway of prejudice, ignorance, excitement, interested or local considerations, and you have a countless host of doomed sufferers, wholly guiltless, or but partially guilty. The mind revolts, the heart grows sick, at the thought of the vast numbers of innocent beings who have been immolated on this shrine of assumed necessity. So many are known to have thus perished, with all the advantage of able and humane defenders, and without any malice, that, when we attempt to add the unknown and probable, it seems impossible to do less than say with La

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fayette," I shall ask for the abolition of the penalty of death, until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me."

England is a land of freedom and law. One of her best sons, and one competent to judge, Sir James Mackintosh, showed by careful returns, that, when capital punishments were very frequent in England, "the average had for many years been at the rate of one person executed every three years, whose innocence had been afterward satisfactorily established." A committee who have since followed up the inquiry there have found more than a hundred, a late account says, a hundred and fifty cases. Dymond tells us, that at one assizes not less than six persons were hanged, who were afterwards found to be innocent. Smollett, in his history of England, says, "Rape and murder were perpetrated upon an unfortunate woman in the neighbourhood of London, and an innocent man suffered death for this complicated outrage, while the real criminals assisted at his execution, heard him appeal to Heaven for his innocence, and in the character of friends embraced him while he stood on the brink of eternity." In Dublin, 1728, a surgeon of note was found alone in the house with his maid-servant who had been just murdered, and he himself was bloody; he was tried and convicted, protested his entire innocence, but was executed; a few years after, the actual murderer confessed to a priest, that he had entered the surgeon's house for robbery, when no one but the girl was there, and being stopped by her as the gentleman returned, killed her and fled. Mrs. Child, in her Letters from New York, gives the particulars of two cases of strong circumstantial evidence, one in New York, and one in Missouri, where the innocence of the accused appeared fully after they were hung. The case of Dr. Hamilton in Kentucky, some twenty-five years ago, made a deep impression. Dr. Sanderson was found murdered in a cross-road, with Dr. Hamilton's pistols lying by him. The latter, of course, was arrested and tried; he made his own defence, and showed that he could not have been such a fool as to take that mode and place of killing a friend, and leave his pistols to betray him; but it availed not; he was executed, and in three months, two robbers confessed on the gallows that they first stole Dr. Hamilton's pistols, and then committed the deed. In a speech at Exeter Hall, 1832, Mr.

O'Connell says: "I myself defended three brothers of the name of Cremming, within the last ten years. They were indicted for murder. I sat at my window as they passed by, after sentence of death had been pronounced. Their mother was there, and she, armed with the strength of affection, broke through the guard. I saw her clasp her eldest son, who was but twenty-two years of age; I saw her hang on her second, who was not twenty; I saw her faint when she clung to the neck of her youngest boy, who was but eighteen ; and I ask what recompense could be made for such agony ? They were executed, and they were innocent.”

There are no words for such facts. They are unutterably awful, and should make the whole civilized world pause. ONE only knows how many they are. It is useless to say they cannot be numerous, when, besides those not ascertained, there is the glaring fact, that those which are known were seemingly among the least doubtful cases. This is the most serious and terrible feature. The evil is in no way accidental, and no one's fault. It is not haste, it is not malice, it is not the sin or error of judge, jury, or witnesses. The law is plain, the evidence direct, the guilt proved, and yet there is no guilt! It is perfectly astounding, to see the weight of evidence all refuted by subsequent events. A father has been murdered at home; the only person there a son, sworn by a sister to have been dissolute and anxious for the father's property; his shoes are tracked from the house to the spot of the murder, and his hammer is found concealed with marks of blood; he is necessarily condemned, — and on her death-bed that sister confesses herself both the parricide and the fratricide. Two men have been seen fighting in a field, old enemies; one is killed by a pitchfork known to belong to the other, and too late this other has been found innocent; the true murderer sitting on the jury that tried him. A father and daughter have been overheard in violent dispute; the former goes out and locks the door behind him; groans issue from the room, with the exclamation, "Cruel father, thou art the cause of my death!" the daughter, found stabbed and dying, signifies by a sign that her father is the cause; he returns,

betrays every sign of guilt, and is hung;- a year afterward, a letter is found in her own hand, declaring her determination to kill herself, because her cruel father forbade her marrying as she wished; and the public authorities, to atone for the

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error, wave colors over his grave, in token of his innocence!

We refer to none of the cases of innocent death caused by the confession of the sufferers themselves; for though frightful, they are few, (yet if we take the case of witchcraft, these innocent and fatal confessions have not been few,) and belong to a kind of monomania, for which no human wisdom can account and no law provide. But we protest, in the name of justice, religion, and humanity, against every unnecessary peril of this awful character. And we repeat, it belongs to the very nature of the penalty. Continue that, and you cannot avoid the peril, by all the wisdom and care of a combined world. Those proved guilty must be punished. Punish them in a way not irremediable. Do you say, If innocent, any punishment is a wrong, and cannot be recalled? True, this is a necessary evil. But death is not necessary. And death, death only, is wholly irremediable. This is the point; this is the mighty wrong. And until it can be demonstrated that it is an absolute necessity, — as it never can be, - no fallible creature, no earthly power, can pronounce the irrevocable doom, without assuming a sovereignty and defying a danger that are perfectly appalling.

6. We come to our last position. Capital punishment has been abolished, with safety and advantage. It has been abolished universally for a vast many offences to which it was once attached; and though fears for the consequences were not wanting in any case, and in some were as terrible as those that now prevent the last change, the offences themselves, thus relieved, have materially lessened, and no government now could be forced back in the experiment. But the abolition has not been restricted to minor crimes; it has been carried to the greatest; and it will require more sophistry than has yet been found to prove it a failure.

We have used too much space to give the historical details on this point, and we will hope they are not unknown to our readers. They begin with Rome, where the Portian law forbade the infliction of the punishment of death upon a . Roman citizen for any cause, and continued in operation two centuries and a half. Montesquieu, Gibbon, and Blackstone speak of the good effect. The last says:-"In this period, the republic flourished; under the emperors, severe punishments were revived, and then the empire fell." In

those laws will be again and

seemingly unjust and vindictive, again broken. Here is one of the causes of the pernicious effects of all capital punishment. Let it be avoided, if there be a change. Let imprisonment be real and enduring, consuming all the active portion of life, or let it be perpetual; but fill it with healthy occupation, with mental and spiritual blessings. Let earth be shut out, but heaven freely come in. Above all, let it be certain. Why can it not be? For no reason but the use and abuse of the pardoning power. That, at the worst, would not be worse than at present. It might be infinitely better. The court that condemns has now the power to order a new trial, if new evidence appears. But this is a mockery, if you kill the man before the evidence can appear. Some of the States, as Vermont and Maine, have recently extended the interval between sentence and execution to a year or more. This is the beginning of mercy, though it seems little more than justice. Why not go Allow a longer interval. Let the period before death be five years, ten, forty, a life, - where is the danger, either to society or the prisoner, if there be a power lodged solely in the court of ordering another trial, should circumstances in their judgment demand it ?

on ?

Ay, but the murderer may commit another murder, says one more objector. The prisoner may kill his keeper. This, it has been confidently said, is alone a sufficient reason against the change. Then is it a sufficient reason for hanging the insane man who kills his keeper. If you can protect the state by confinement in the one case, you can in the other. But though you were compelled to punish the repetition of murder with death, it would be no argument for the law as it now stands and works. Besides, most of those who have killed their keepers have been men doomed to die themselves. It is an evil of the present system, and we throw back the objection. Let men live, deal with them mercifully as well as justly, and what motive will they have for violence, what desire to refuse lenity and provoke a severer punishment? Let them live to repent, not to destroy. Let them live to work for society which they have defrauded, or for the families which they have bereft. Then may all the purposes of law and penalty be accomplished; condemnation, confinement, suffering, reparation, and probable reform. Is not the bare possibility of this better than the certainty of the present accumulation of wrongs and evils?