general assembly: they are written with ingenuity, but under the circumstances in which this state is placed, I cannot propose his scheme as either a practicable or an advisable mode of disposing of convicts.

Simple imprisonment has obvious defects; as a corrective, it is nearly the worst that could be applied. If solitary, it is, for most offences, too severe. If it be not solitary, it becomes a school for vice and every kind of corruption. The want of employment, even when men are at liberty, leads them to evil associations, and the proverb does not much exaggerate, which calls it the root of all evil. But when to idleness is joined an association with all that is most profligate and unprincipled, it may be easily imagined how quick must be the progress from innocence to vice, from vice to crime. The band of the guilty thus collected, acquire a knowledge of each other's capacity in the commission of offences; they feel their strength, they recruit their numbers, they organize themselves for their warfare on society, and come out completely disciplined and arrayed against the laws.

Imprisonment in irons has all the evils of simple imprisonment, and adds to them that of inequality, and the danger of arbitrary imposition. The weight of the chains, if regulated by law, must be a torture to the weak, while the robust delinquent will bear them without pain. If they are at the discretion of the jailor, there can be no better engine for petty tyranny and extortion.

Confiscation of property has few advocates, and ought to have none. It has every defect that can attach to a mode of punishment, except that it is in some degree remissible; it is unequal, because it forfeits for the same offence the largest and the smallest fortune. It is cruel, because it deprives numbers of the means of subsistence for the fault of one. It is unjust, for it punishes, without distinction, the innocent as well as the guilty. It is liable to the worst of abuses, because it makes it the interest of the government to multiply convictions. This last characteristic is perhaps the reason why it retains a place in the penal jurisprudence of Europe.

The next four heads may be classed together: the pillory, stocks, and other contrivances for public exposure, labour in chains, and on the public works, indelible marks of disgrace (always attended with bodily pain), and the infliction of stripes, all are liable to the same radical objections; they all discard the idea of reformation; all are unequal, and subject to arbitrary imposition; with the exception of public labour, they are all momentary in their application, and when the operation is over, they impose a necessity on the patient, with the alternative of starving, immediately to repeat his offence; he accordingly, with increased dexterity, commences a new career; forms a corps of similar associates to prey upon society; seduces others by the example of his impunity in the numerous instances in which he escapes detection; swells the list of convictions in those where his vigilance is defeated, and finally becomes a fit subject for the grand remedy-the punishment of death. I approached the inquiry into the nature and effect of this punishment with the awe becoming a man who felt, most deeply, his liability to err, and the necessity of forming a correct opinion on a point so interesting to the justice of the country, the life of its citizens, and the character of its laws. I strove to clear my understanding from all prejudices which education, or early impressions might have created, and to produce a frame of mind fitted for the investigation of truth,

and the impartial examination of the arguments on this great question. For this purpose, I not only consulted such writers on the subject as were within my reach, but endeavoured to procure a knowledge of the practical effect of this punishment on different crimes in the several countries where it is inflicted. In my situation, however, I could draw but a very limited advantage from either of these sources: very few books on penal law, even those most commonly referred to, are to be found in the scanty collections of this place, and my failure in procuring information from the other states, is more to be regretted on this than any other topic on which it was requested. With these inadequate means, but after the best use that my faculties would enable me to make of them; after long reflection, and not until I had canvassed every argument that could suggest itself to my mind, I came to the conclusion, that the punishment of death should find no place in the code which you have directed me to present. In offering this result, I feel a diffidence, which arises, not from any doubt of its correctness; I entertain none; but from the fear of being thought presumptuous in going beyond the point of penal reform, at which the wisdom of the other states has hitherto thought proper to stop; and from a reluctance to offer my opinions in opposition to those (certainly more entitled to respect than my own) which still support the propriety of this punishment for certain offences. On a mere speculative question, I should yield to this authority; but here I could not justify the confidence you have reposed in me, were I to give you the opinions of others, no matter how respectable they may be, instead of those which my best judgment assured me were right.

The example of the other states is certainly entitled to great respect; the greater, because all, without exception, still retain this punishment; but this example loses some of its force when we reflect on the slow progress of all improvement, and on the stubborn principles of the common law, which have particularly retarded its advance in jurisprudence.

In England, their parliament had been debating for near a century before they would take off capital punishment from two or three cases, in which every body allowed it was manifestly cruel and absurd: they have retained it in at least an hundred others of the same description; and when we reflect on these facts, and observe the influence which the prevailing opinions of that country have always had on the literature and jurisprudence of ours, we may account for the several states having stopped short in the reform of their penal law, without supposing them to have arrived at the point of perfection, beyond which it would be both unwise and presumptuous to pass. As to the authority of great names, it loses much of its force since the mass of the people have began to think for themselves; and since legislation is no longer considered as a trade, which none can practise with success, but those who have been educated to understand the mystery; the plain matter of fact, practical manner, in which that business is conducted with us, refers more to experience of facts than theory of reasoning: more to ideas of utility drawn from the state of society, than from the opinions of authors on the subject. If the argument were to be carried by the authority of names, that of Beccaria, were there no other, would ensure the victory. But reason alone, not precedent nor authority, must justify me in proposing to the general assembly this important change;

reason alone can persuade them to adopt it. I proceed therefore to develope the considerations which carried conviction to my mind, but which being perhaps now more feebly urged than they were then felt, may fail in producing the same effect upon others. A great part of my task is rendered unnecessary, by the general acknowledgement, universal, I may say, in the United States, that this punishment ought to be abolished in all cases, excepting those of treason, murder and rape. In some states arson is included; and lately, since so large a portion of our influential citizens have become bankers, brokers, and dealers in exchange, a strong inclination has been discovered to extend it to forgery, and uttering false bills of exchange. As it is acknowledged then to be an inadequate remedy for minor offences, the argument will be restricted to an inquiry, whether there is any probability that it will be more efficient in cases of greater importance. Let us have constantly before us, when we reason on this subject, the great principle, that the end of punishment is the prevention of crime. Death, indeed, operates this end most effectually, as respects the delinquent; but the great object of inflicting it is the force of the example on others. If this spectacle of horror is insufficient to deter men from the commission of slight offences, what good reason can be given to persuade us that it will have this operation where the crime is more atrocious? Can we believe that the fear of a remote and uncertain death will stop the traitor in the intoxicating moment of fancied victory over the constitution and liberties of his country? While in the proud confidence of success, he defies heaven and earth, and commits his existence to the chance of arms, that the dread of this punishment will "check his pride;" force him, like some magic spell, to yield obedience to the laws, and abandon a course which, he persuades himself, makes a "virtue" of his "ambition." Will it arrest the hand of the infuriate wretch, who, at a single blow, is about to gratify the strongest passion of his soul in the destruction of his deadly enemy? Will it turn aside the purpose of the secret assassin, who meditates the removal of the only obstacle to his enjoyment of wealth and honours? Will it master the strongest passions and counteract the most powerful motives, while it is too weak to prevent the indulgence of the slightest criminal inclination? If this be true, it must be confessed, that it presents a paradox which will be found more difficult to solve, when we reflect that great crimes are, for the most part, committed by men whose long habits of guilt have familiarized them to the idea of death; or to whom strong passions or natural courage have rendered it, in some measure, indifferent; and that the cowardly poisoner or assassin always thinks that he has taken such precautions as will prevent any risk of discovery. 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. Ambition, 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 debasement of the passion that prompts the only other crime, thus punished by our law, is proverbially blind to consequences, and regardless of obstacles that impede 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 detection. But present other consequences

more directly opposed to the enjoyments which were anticipated in the commission of the crime, make those consequences permanent and certain, and then, although milder, they will be less readily risked than the momentary pang attending the loss of life; study the passions which first suggested the offence, and apply your punishment to mortify and counteract them. The ambitious man cannot bear the ordinary restraints of government-subject him to those of a prison; he could not endure the superiority of the most dignified magistrate-force him to submit to the lowest officer of executive justice; he sought, by his crimes, a superiority above all that was most respectable in societyreduce him in his punishment to a level with the most vile and abject of mankind. If avarice suggested the murder-separate the wretch for ever from his hoard; realize the fable of antiquity; sentence him, from his place of penitence and punishment, to see his heirs rioting on his spoils; and the corroding reflection that others are innocently enjoying the fruits of his crime, will be as appropriate a punishment in practical as it was feigned to be in poetical justice. The rapacious spendthrift robs to support his extravagance, and murders to avoid detection; he exposes his life that he may either pass it in idleness, debauchery and sensual enjoyment, or lose it by a momentary pang-disappoint his profligate calculation; force him to live, but to live under those privations which he fears more than death; let him be reduced to the coarse diet, the hard lodging, and the incessant labour of a penitentiary. Substitute these privations, which all such offenders fear, which they have all risked their lives to avoid; substitute these, to that death which has little terror for men whose passions or depravity have forced them to plunge in guilt, and you establish a fitness in the punishment to the crime; instead of a momentary spectacle, you exhibit a lesson, that is every day renewed; and you make the very passions which caused the offence the engines to punish it, and prevent its repetition.

Reformation is lost sight of in adopting this punishment, but ought it to be totally discarded? May not even great crimes be committed by persons whose minds are not so corrupted as to preclude the hope of this effect. They are, sometimes, produced by a single error. Often are the consequences of a concatenation of circumstances never likely again to occur, and are very frequently the effect of a momentary hallucination, which, though not sufficient to excuse, ought sometimes to palliate the guilt; yet the operation of these several causes, the evident gradation in the degrees of guilt which they establish, are levelled before this destructive punishment. The man who, urged by an irresistible impulse of nature, sacrifices the base seducer who has destroyed. his domestic happiness; he who having been calumniated, insulted and dishonoured, at the risk of his own life takes that of the slanderer; are, in the eye of this harsh law, equally deserving of death with the vile assassin who murders for hire, or poisons for revenge; and the youth, whose weakness in the commission of a first offence has yielded to the artful insinuations or overbearing influence of a veteran in vice, must perish on the same scaffold with the hardened and irreclaimable instigator of his crime. It may be said, that the pardoning power is the proper remedy for this evil; but the pardoning power, in capital cases, must be exercised, if at all, without loss of time; without that insight into character which the penitentiary system affords. It is therefore, necessarily liable to abuse; and there is this further objection

to its exercise, that it leaves no alternative between death and entire exemption from punishment; but in every degree of crime, some punishment is necessary; the novice, if subject to no reclaiming discipline, will soon become a professor in guilt: but let the corrective be judiciously applied, and its progress will discover whether he may be again trusted in society, or whether his depravity is so rooted as to require continued confinement.

In coming to a resolution on this solemn subject, we must not forget another principle we have established, and I think on the soundest reasons, that other things being equal, that punishment should be preferred, which gives us the means of correcting any false judgment, to which passion, indifference, false testimony, or deceiving appearances, may have given rise. Error from these, or other causes, is sometimes inevitable, its operation is instantaneous, and its fatal effects in the punishment of death, follow without delay: but time is required for its correction; we retrace our steps with difficulty; it is mortifying to acknowledge that we have been unjust, and during the time requisite for the discovery of the truth, for its operation on our unwilling minds, for the interposition of that power, which alone can stop the execution of the law, its stroke falls, and the innocent victim dies. What would not then the jurors who convicted; the judges who condemned; the mistaken witness who testified to his guilt; what would not the whole community who saw his dying agonies, who heard, at that solemn moment, his fruitless asseverations of innocence; what would they not all give to have yet within their reach the means of repairing the wrongs they had witnessed or inflicted?

Instances of this kind are not unfrequent; many of them are on record; several have taken place in our own day, and a very remarkable example which was given but a few years since, in one of the northern states, shows, in a striking manner, the danger of those punishments which cannot be recalled or compensated, even though the innocence of the sufferer is rendered clear to demonstration. A few such instances, even in a century, are sufficient to counteract the best effects that could be derived from example. There is no spectacle that takes such hold on the feelings as that of an innocent man suffering by an unjust sentence; one such example is remembered, when twenty of merited punishment are forgotten; the best passions take part against the laws, and arraign their operation as iniquitous and inhuman. This consideration alone, then, if there were no others, would be a most powerful argument for the abolition of capital punishments; but there are others no less cogent.

To see a human being in the full enjoyment of all the faculties of his mind, and all the energies of his body; his vital powers attacked by no disease; injured by no accident; the pulse beating high with, youth and health; to see him doomed by the cool calculation of his fellow-men to certain destruction, which no courage can repel, no art or persuasion avert; to see a mortal distribute the most awful dispensations of the Deity, usurp his attributes, and fix, by his own decree, an inevitable limit to that existence which Almighty power alone can give, and which its sentence alone should destroy; must give rise to solemn reflections, which the imposing spectacle of a human sacrifice naturally produces, until its frequent recurrence renders the mind insensible to the impression. But in a country where the punishment

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