the prisons how many have been remanded, and you will be easily convinced how few have repented.

Finally, examine all the remarkable criminals in state trials, judicial proceedings, follow them to the scaffold ; with what obstinacy do some deny the most evident facts! with what surprising audacity do they insult the witnesses who accuse them! with what unblushing sincerity, and scrupulous exactness, do others recount a series of horrible crimes! A soldier had committed robbery in twenty churches. They led him to the scaffold, where he still expected to receive pardon. But in place of showing any repentance, he said to auditor Weldermann, at Vienna, "I see there is no more to be done here; I must try to go elsewhere." At Vienna, one Z-murdered his mistress, in order to rob her of three hundred florins: he then cut up the body, in order to pack it more conveniently in a box. Instead of being troubled by this crime, he goes to a ball, there passes the night, spends all his money, and gives himself up to all the excesses of brutal enjoyment. M. Bruggmanns, professor at Leyden, showed us the skull of the chief of a band of Dutch robbers. This man had thrown several people into the canals, solely to see them struggle against death. "What can they do to me," said he at his trial, "am I not an honest man?" A girl who had aided her mother to kill her father, did not testify the least repentance; when they reproached her with the crime, she shrugged her shoulders and smiled, Schinderhannes, and Heckmann, his accomplice, derived great pleasure in recounting their crimes; their eyes sparkled during the recital. All the accessory circumstances, which seemed to them proper to convey a great idea of them, gave them great satisfaction.

Rossignol used to boast of his barbarity. "Look at this arm," said he; " well, it has cut the throats of sixty-three priests at the Carmes de Paris!" Repeatedly escaping from prison, he re-commenced, and, like all those who are born for wickedness, repeated his robberies, his cruelties, and the most revolting gluttony.

Gobrino Fondulo invited Charles Cavalcato, the head of his family, to come to his country house with nine or ten of his relations; he had them all murdered at a banquet. After this barbarous execution, becoming master of the government of the city, he there practised all sorts of cruelties, until Philip, Visconti duke of Milan, ordered him to be beheaded. His confessor vainly exhorted him to repent of his crimes; he fiercely answered, that he had but one thing to repent of, namely; that he had not hurled from the top of the tower of Cremona, (one of the highest in Europe,) Pope John XXIII., and the Emperor Sigismund, when they had the curiosity to ascend it with him. Read the biographies of the tyrants who have desolated the earth, who have spilled torrents of blood read the history of all the famous wretches, of the incendiaries; of the most atrocious robbers; and see if you can find one, who ever abandoned crime before justice overtook him. There have even been some, who, at the moment of their execution, in reviewing all the enjoyments with which they had satiated themselves, boasted that none equalled those which cruelty had caused them. But let us terminate these examples which are revolting to humanity! All judicial proceedings justify my observation, that a hardened criminal is rarely accessible to remorse and repentance.

This observation is even confirmed in criminals of an inferior order, whenever, through an unhappy but decided organization, they have been powerfully urged to debauchery, fraud, theft, &c. I have never seen such a voluptuary, to whatever excess he may have carried his indulgence such a villain, however unhappy he may have rendered numerous families--I have never seen a determined robber, &c., renounce, by sincere repentance, the horrors of their life; but I have seen many, who, being convinced of the abominable character of their habits, and feeling the impossibility of controlling them, have begged, as a favor, that they should be restrained from having it in their power, to give themselves up thenceforth to their destructive propensities.

Since, therefore, sad experience shows us, that this class of criminals is not led by repentance, or by natural remorse to resist their violent inclinations, it only remains to produce in them an artificial conscience, that is to say, a clear idea, a lively conviction of the immorality of their actions, and of the disorder and mischief which must result from them, not only for society, but for themselves; or, in other words, these men have more need than any others, to have supplied from without, what is wanting in them, on the part of their internal organization.

And here, again, appears a principle, which, however opposed to the precipitate conclusions of rash and inconsiderate persons, is immediately derived from a particular study of human nature in detail, viz. that the greater and more obstinate the resistance, which is offered by the natural dispositions and habits of men, the more necessary it becomes to multiply and strengthen the contrary mctives-the more necessary it is to proportion the punishments, and the more perseverance it is necessary to use, in combating them; so that if we cannot conquer, we may at least restrain and paralyze their exercise. For, the question no longer concerns internal criminality, nor justice in its most rigorous sense: the necessary protection of society is concerned in the prevention of crimes, and the correction of evil-doers, and in placing the community in safety, from the attempts of those who are more or less incorrigible.

The degree of culpability and of expiation differ according to the different condition of the individual, although the illegal act and the punishment be essentially the same.

I foresee with pain, that many years will elapse, before my doctrine on the nature of man, will be universally adopted. And even when this period shall have arrived for physiologists, instructors, philosophers, yet legis

lators will delay much longer to apply it to the criminal legislation. The laws are to them a sort of religion, the least modification of which appears to them a heresy. It is not a single enlightened man, it is an assembly of several men, who make the laws; and where shall we find a mass of legislators possessing equal knowledge? It is then to be feared that the true wants of human nature may yet remain too generally misunderstood, to allow the criminal code immediately to overcome this multitude of obstacles, prejudices, ancient customs, which hold it bound to the cradle of its infancy.

The penal code determines the nature of crimes and misdemeanors, and then fixes the punishment to be inflicted. It is the nature of the act itself, which furnishes the measure of punishment, without regard to, the person committing the act, or the person expiating the crime. Without doubt, we shall meet too many difficulties in proceeding otherwise, and this is judged to be the only means of obtaining perfect equality and impartiality in the administration of justice. But it is evident, that it is precisely in this manner that we render ourselves guilty of the most crying injustice, and, while we almost always fail to obtain a just estimate of the crime, fail equally in the proportionate application of the punishment.

I submit to the consideration of legislators, some considerations, which must necessarily have been presented a thousand times, and which will be refuted a thousand times, perhaps for the sole reason, that their principle has not been tested by an acquaintance with human nature in detail,

Crimes and misdemeanors are not committed of themselves; they cannot, therefore, be considered as abstract beings.

Crimes and offences are the result of the actions of individuals; they therefore receive their character from the nature and situation of these individuals; and they can only be estimated and determined, according to the nature and situation of these same individuals.

You appear to deny these axioms. Well! I shall prove them to you.

You judge, and you punish an act committed in intoxication, or in violent rage, differently from the same act when committed in the full possession of reason, and with premeditation. You judge a theft, a murder, committed by an idiot, a madman, otherwise than you judge a theft, a murder, committed by a man enjoying his reason.

You acknowledge, then, and you must acknowledge, that acts are nothing in themselves; that they receive their character from the individual who committed them.

But why do you refuse to be consistent in the greater part of your criminal prosecutions? I ask you, and let your conscience answer me :

Is that the same sort of robbery, which is committed by a dishonest gamester, by a robust idler, by a debauched usurer, as that committed by a feeble widow, lying in extreme want with numerous children, crying to her for bread?

Is that the same sort of murder, which is committed by an insulted brother, against the perjured seducer of his beloved sister, as that committed by a son-in-law, who, the sooner to riot in profusion and debauchery, poisons the parents of his wife?

Pursue, yourselves, the list of crimes and offences, the degree of whose criminality, differs totally, and which