mitted in the period when there were 18 executions, than in the period when the executions amounted to the large number of 177. Making all allowance for the increased protection given to property, and the moral influences of civilization, results so broad, so uniformly sequential upon a given antecedent, can only be attributed to that antecedent. But even were these benefits justly referred to advancing civilization, how fatal would such a conclusion prove to the advocates of Capital Punishments. If morality advance with civilization, what excuse can remain for the continuance of an uncivilized and domoralizing law?

ARTICLE LX.

The Executioner,

BY PROF. H. S. PATTERSON.

THERE is a conservative feeling in the hearts of all men, leading them to cling to the present, however defective. rather than try the doubtful future. It requires faith to cast off the Actual, and endeavor to embody our better Ideas. It is FAITH,-faith in God and faith in man; that is the true thaumaturgic, miracle-working power of the world. It is this which has done all that has been done for the improvement of the race; and if any farther advance is made, it will be by the same mighty power, which leads men to cast themselves boldly forth upon the great ocean of change, in confident reliance upon the good word and spirit of their Heavenly Father. The want of this faith is the great want of this age, as it has been of all others. Men are afraid of innovation. They seem to think that a present evil is better than a possible good. The most deformed error, if crowned and enthroned, has something venerable and precious to their eyes, and they would be reluctant to dethrone it even if they should see the spirit of truth_waiting to take its place, radiant with celestia. beauty. This is the feeling which stands in the way of the great reform for which we contend.— Were the great question now introduced for the first time, the answer would be very different. Had the life of man always been held sacred, and some one should nov propose, for the first, to destroy it as a judicial punishment, the whole soul and heart of the community would rise up in indignant protest and refusal. Even as it is, with minds habituated to the dreadful infliction and filled with a belief of its divine authority, there is not one of our opponents but shudders at it. It is horrible to the unhardened heart of every man, and nothing but a long familiarity with blood, can reconcile any one to it. The late act of our Assembly, ordering executions to be done privately, within the prison-walls, is a triumphant assertion of this principle. The public eye could not bear 10 see a fellow-being hanging by the neck in the open field as a matter of amusement to a debauched and howling mob, but it is less offensive merely to hear that such a thing has taken place, behind that thick stone wall and in secret. The same feeling would lead men to abolish the punishment entirely, were it not conscrecrated by ancient usage and the general consent of society. Under existing circumstances, this genuine impulse of our better nature requires argument to enforce it and prove its truth.

Why is it that we regard the executioner with such horror? In every age and country he has been an object of abhorrence. Even where hu

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The Executioner.

[Dec. man blood has been poured out like water, the Headsman has been looked upon with terror and disgust. It is rarely that any one is found willing to assume the office. Commonly it is filled by some hardened convict as the price of a pardon, and he goes masked and disguised, because he knows that if recognized he would be driven out from among society as a monster of depravity. His feeling is that of Cain, and with the same self-condenination, he apprehends that "whosoever meeteth him shall kill him." This involuntary and unconscious recognition of the inviolable sanctity of human life, is itself a powerful argument in favor of our position. Why are not the other officers of the law objects of hatred and disgust? Why is not the judge or the jailor driven out like an Ishmael, against whom every man's hand is turned? The prosecutor, the constable, the tipstaff, the turnkey, are considered legitimate officers of the law, and are respected accordingly, They walk abroad in the face of day, and no one points the finger of scorn at them. They are good citizens and members of society, enjoying all their social and domestic relations. The hangman alone is an outcast and vagabond. And why is this? Simply because the still, small voice of every man's conscience condemns the savage punishment of which he is the (perhaps unwilling) instrument. But if the punishment is proper and expressly ordained by God, should this be so? Assuredly not. The hangman is a minister of the law, as worthy the respect and esteem in his station as the judge who pronounces the sentence or the governor who signs the death-warrant. Indeed, if we may believe the assertion of our opponents, he occupies a much higher station. All other judicial officers execute merely the will of man, but the JACK KETCH IS A MINISTER OF THE EXPRESSED WILL OF GOD! Your judges and juries simply carry out the commands of erring human legislation; he stands there as the authorized agent for the infliction of the righteous sentence of the Almighty Judge, in the only instance in which he has seen proper to legislate expressly. And now, another word with you, my excellent Dr. Frybabe. In your anthemas and your advocacy of hanging you have displayed an entire unanimity of feeling with your brother minister of wrath. Even Dennis, in Barnaby Rudge, could not show greater reluctance than you do to see the culprit "worked off" otherwise than in due course of law. In the estimation of the public and of impartial history you must stand side by side with him, for the uninterrupted exercise of whose functions you so eloquently plead. How then can you conscientiously withhold your friendship from your fellow minister? You are bound to give him the right hand of fellowship, nay, to receive him as commissioned to bear the sword of the Lord, while your duty is only to proclaim, not to enforce his law. Give him your hand, sir. What though his iron fingers have choked the life out of your fellow-beings, he has done it on high authority, and there can be no pollution in the touch. Introduce him to your family. Your children should be proud to associate with one whose high mission it is to execute God's law upon earth. Claim for him precedence over the executive officers of mere human law. Give him his true position as your superior in the church militant. When next your Conference, or Convention, or Assembly meets, give him his place above all your bishops. There is no escaping from this position, sir. Either you must abandon your high scriptural ground, or clasp to your bosom the savage executioner, reeking with human blood.

The advocates of the death-punishment are very much in the habit of sneering at this natural repugnance to bloodshed as a sickly sentimentalism. This is hardly a matter of argument. No man ever gave credence to a sentiment of which he himself is unconscious. A libertine will deny the existence of virtuous love. Old bachelors are apt to think

fondness for children an affectation. Savages laugh at pity as a woInanish weakness. So, a man who has never felt the soft impulse of mercy in his own breast is unable to understand it in others. It is nevertheless a genuine sentiment, and I appeal to the great heart of man throughout the world for its truth. There never was a time when a brother's blood did not cry out from the ground against him who shed it, and God grant it never may come. In this movement, we but act in obedience to that dictate of our better nature, which bids us pause before we take a human life, and see whether we can find no lawful means of escape from the dreadful duty.

Our opponents have also made a great outcry against us, as endeavoring to loosen the bonds of the law, and give free scope to the action of men's evil passions. Such a charge is scarcely worthy of serious refutation. The character of the then against whom it is made is a sufficient answer. In the ranks of those who contend for the abolition of capital punishment will be found most of the ablest writers on criminal jurisprudence for the last fifty years, together with nearly all those who have been in the least conspicuous in the great philanthropic movements of the day. It has been urged by the logic and eloquence of such men as Beccaria and Bentham, Lafayette, Franklin and Livingston; and who will denounce them as enemies of good government?

Judge Not.

BY JULIA A. FLETCHER.

Is there one mortal who may look
With tearless eye through Memory's book;
Or truthfully and solemly say

He hath not once been led astray?

No each will find from youth to age
Some sin-blurred words on every page.
This sentence, tells of time misspent ;
And that, to deeds unworthy lent;
One, that a promise hath been broken;
The next, of words unkindly spoken;
Here, hath some petty wrong been done,
Or some unfair advantage won;
Some doubtful art hath been concealed,

Or secret carelessly revealed.

O'er all, as calmly looking back

With searching gaze we scan our track,

Each thought, each word, each action try
By duty's mandate, stern and high,
Temptation's voice no longer heard,
We read the sentence, "Thou hast erred!"

Ye who earth's guilty ones despise !
Who deem each pitying word unwise'
And harshly deem the prison cell
A fitting place for them to dwell,
Cheered in its solitude by nought
Save the dark range of gloomy thought,
Or worse, by guilty plans, to be

Achieved when they again are free!

Ye who, the forfeit period o'er

Would give him to the world once moro,
Unshielded by life's tender ties,

By fear to fall, or hope to rise,

(Far worse than prison-walls, the ban

Thai shuts him from his fellow man.)

Vainly for honest toil to seek,

To bear his share with spirit meek,

In the long hope at last to win

A better fame than that of sin,

44

Punishment of Death.

At length, when this vain hope hath fled,
Again the guilty path to tread,

Again to bear the indignant frown

Of those whose virtue hurled him down!
Have ye no sins ye wish to blot?
No deeds ye wish recorded not?

Harsh Censor of another's crime!
Go! read within the book of time,
Thy own life's records, scan them all,
Its daily errors, great or small.

This course of wrong thou didst pursue,
This deed of good thou didst not do.

A tone hath some sad spirit riven,

A word ungentle hath been given,

Where one more kindly might have won,
Repentance for the evil done.

Thus calmly back bid Memory go,
Note where thou cansed another's wo,
Mark where thy spirit, stronger made,
Forgot a weaker one to aid;
Or hath, itself, scarcely proud,
To unforseen temptation bowed;
Each instance, great or small, observe
In which thou didst from duty swerve,
Then sum them all-aud, if you can,
Judge harshly of your brother-mun!

[Dec.

ARTICLE LXI.

Punishment of Death.

Lectures addressed to the Working Classes. By W. J. Fox. Published from the Reporter's Notes. Vol. II. London: Charles Fox. 67 Paternoster Row. 1845.

AMONG the most able and efficient friends of the Abolition of the death penalty in England, we must ever place the name of W. J. Fox. He has been a member of the British Parliament, and by his writings and speeches, he has done good service to our cause. We presume that the reader will be pleased to see a specimen of his course of reasoning. He begins by giving his views of the right of society, and though we may not agree with him in every point, yet we think he ably argues the subject:

* * *

"The right of society over the lives of its members, cannot, I think, be satisfactorily disproved. Society exists for the protection of life, liberty, property and the means of happiness. It exists by the sacrifice of a portion of these, to give security to the rest; and as, for this purpose, it requires some sacrifice of property, liberty and means of enjoyment, so, by purity of reasoning, there may be cases in which it requires the sacrifice of life also; for society gives that which renders life most valuable, which makes it life to live. If society has a right to the lives of its best members,-if there is something good, true, beautiful, and honorable, in the devotion of its service of existence, so rich in thought, which may do so much, by its prolongation, for the progress of humanity, surely it must have a right also to the lives of its worst members, stained by crimes, if it should deem the sacrifice of those lives necessary to its own security and wellbeing.

Mr. Fox then proceeds to show that though society may have the right, yet the question of its infliction is another matter. He would have the penalty tried by its results. He then sums up in a very able

manner the great object of punishment which he resolves into three; and it can be easily shown that the penalty accomplishes neither.

"The right of inflicting Capital Punishment, however, is one thing, and the wisdom or necessity of so doing is another, and very different matter. It is not merely by the construction of right that society should try its victims, but by their tendency to good. Punishment should be julged by its likelihood to answer the great objects of punishment, and these seem, by the common consent to have been resolved into three; the reformation of the offender, remuneration to the injured, and the prevention of future crime.”—P. 91.

The lecturer shows that Capital Punishment effects neither object. It prevents the reformation of the offender by cutting him off from all chance of reformation. It fails in remunerating the wronged, because, as in the case of murder, the only one in which Capital Punishment is usually resorted among us, it cannot bring back the dead, or restore them to their place in connexion with hearts that loved them, and eyes that delighted to look upon them. And as a preventive, it is notorious that at every execution crime is perpetrated at the very foot of the gallows, and within sight of the dying agonies of the executed criminal; nay, murder itself has been planned and matured at the very moment when a murderer has been expiring by the hands of justice.

'Seeing then that Capital Punishment fails in accomplishing these three objects, Mr. Fox proceeds:

"Without foregoing the right, let us say that we need not exercise it; that in the strength of wisdom there is a higher and noble power; that the multitudes shall be so instituted and trained, that humane feelings and ample knowledge shall be so diffused, as by raising the whole tone of existence, to make life much more safe than it can be rendered by any punishment, even by the infliction of death. By doing this, we shall render good service to society; cherishing in our own minds that view of the objects of society, which last accords with the dictates of nature, and into which all punishment and the influence of legislation should be ultimately resolved."-P. 97.

ARTICLE LXII.

The Model Boarder.

He is quite a gentleman. A smile permanently settled on his clean face. He wipes his boots on a mat before he walks up stairs. He pays high rent and has but few friends. He leaves his drawers open. He has a cellar of coal at a time. He takes a newspaper, and is not in a hurry for it in the morning. He is never out later than ten. He shaves with cold water. He never adds up a bill. He is fond of children.— He likes to buy them sweatmeats, and to take one occasionally to the theatre. He never dines at home, except Sundays, and that rarely. The landlady orders him his dinner; it is generally a very large joint, with plenty of vegetables, a very large pie, and a very large slice of cheese. He never inquires for the joint, or the pie, or anything the next day. He lends his books cheerfully. He is in doubt about the exact number of his shirts. He rarely rings the bell. He pays for extras without a murmur. Rather likes music. Does not object to a piano and a flute playing different tunes at the same time. He is never in arrear with his rent; if it is not paid the very day it becomes due, the reason is because he has paid it the day before. The Model Boarder is sheepish, rich, and contented.-Punch.