rable on this subject, shall we resolve to have nothing? Must we be demoralized, because we cannot create a Utopia? When the advocates of the abolition can change the heart of man, tear his passions from his bosom, and uproot his selflove, then, but not before, let them expect to banish crime from the earth; then, they may with reason complain of capital punishments. At present, it is mere nonsense to say, they have not destroyed the evil; if they have lessened it, it is all we hope or can realize. We may take it for an axiom, that if a great and certain punishment does not deter from offence, a small one never can. If a few are found hardy enough to brave that, which all by nature dread, more will be found to risk that, which is far less terrible. Give a malefactor, who has incurred the sentence of death, his choice between that punishment, and imprisonment or transportation, and we are almost certain he will choose one of the latter. From this we may infer, beyond the possibility of contradiction, that he will have less fear of incurring the smaller than the greater penalty. It is in accordance with the very instinct of human nature, that he should do so. That which we most dread must have the greatest preventive power over us, so long as selflove continues to be the chief spring of our actions. a powerful passion is to be gratified, or an immense advantage to be obtained, a man will throw his life into the opposite scale, calculating in the meantime on the chances of escape; and, certainly, he will more readily stake his liberty. Where In order to show the inefficacy of the punishment of death, allusion has been made to the unwillingness of individuals to prosecute, and the reluctance of juries to convict. This ar gument holds good only so far as the offence does not deserve the penalty: there, this natural feeling will operate. But this is not the case in regard to the more atrocious crimes. We defy our opponents to cite an instance, in which witnesses were unwilling to give evidence against a murderer, or in which the jury were not ready to convict him, when his guilt was proved. The common feeling of mankind is decidedly with the law. If, however, the punishment of death is to be abolished, those who propose such a measure, ought to give us a substitute, before they require us to part with our protection. They do not, indeed, like the office of supplying the deficiency which they would occasion, but cannot avoid it. Being driven to the wall, they are compelled to offer imprisonment of limited or perpetual duration. They have no other equivalent to give us; but we tell them boldly, that this has failed. Even perpetual imprisonment has, in the instance of America, been tried and found wanting. In our own country, imprisonment of definite duration has failed in preventing crime; it has not had sufficient terrors to effect its object. The official papers on the subject prove the fact, which, even without such assistance, it would have been natural to conjecture. What does the evidence of officers and jailors prove, but that criminals laugh at imprisonment? They tell us, that offenders, discharged from prison in the morning, are often reconducted to it at night; that they are seldom absent long, and are much more in than out of jail. Whether they are better off there than elsewhere, we do not presume to say; but the fact convinces us, that, as a preventive of crime, imprisonment is totally ineffective. Again, it is notorious, that the number of offences so punished preponderates ten to one over those which are followed by death: a hundred criminals will risk the loss of liberty, dear as it is, where not ten will stake their lives; and if the greater gain, which is often to be attained by the greater crime, were to be followed by no greater risk than that which they are known to be so indifferent about incurring, the rational conclusion is, that crime would be frightfully increased. If our opponents tell us, that it is because the duration of the punishment is short or limited, let` them recollect, that some of these offenders spend so great a part of their lives within the walls, from their frequent committals, that it almost amounts to a perpetual confinement. If the punishment were as terrible as we are required to believe it is, they certainly would not be so ready to incur it again, and that for very trifling advantages. If the infliction were at all effective, a life of honest industry would have irresistible charms in the comparison. It must be supposed, that they pursue the course in which they find the most enjoyment, and therefore imprisonment is proved not to be a sufficient punishment. Besides, there is a class of offenders who calculate to a nicety, how far they can go in criminality without endangering their lives; to that point they will venture, but they will not pass the Rubicon, beyond which is death. This fact is well known to those who are conversant with our criminal courts, and it proves beyond denial, that the last penalty is the only one which restrains such men from the last offence. But, that severe punishments are not inefficacious, may be proved by the example of China. We are not going to recommend the Chinese code of laws; we admit that many of their punishments are atrocious, but they do prove the effect of severity. From the excessive terror which is there excited by the consequences of crime, many atrocious offences, which are common here, are there very rare, notwithstanding the immense superiority of the population of that empire. A Chinese dare not venture to commit treason, because he knows, that not only himself, but his whole family, will be exterminated, an in famous practice confessedly, but still an effective one. And yet our opponents, notwithstanding the array of fact and argument by which they are confronted, assume that they have proved the punishment of death to be inefficacious, and, on that account, unnecessary! But, not satisfied with this, they charge its advocates with inhumanity; and they also tell us, that we inflict a new injury on society by putting a murderer to death, as we thereby dispossess it of another of its members. But surely we may be allowed to ask, what injury we do society by depriving it of an assassin? The surgeon amputates a limb, to save the life which would otherwise be lost; and the safety of the community imperiously demands, that the individual whose existence has been, and may be again, fatal to others, should be cut off. We think that the charge of inhumanity comes with a bad grace from those who would expose society to the dagger of the assassin; but we deny the charge, as far as it relates to the punishment of death for murder, or even to other crimes of great atrocity, although the former is sufficient for our present purpose. We deny that we do not feel, even for an assassin, on the scaffold, but we also feel for the victim of the crime and his surviving relatives; we feel for society, and it would be a mistaken humanity that would lead us to expose the lives of the good to the fiendish passions of cupidity or revenge. Our sympathies are not so exhausted in behalf of the malefactor, that we have none left to bestow upon those who are more entitled to them. And how can this punishment be proved to have brutalized mankind, when, after ages of its infliction, we have been progressively advancing in civilization and refinement? when it is resorted to by the most polished and the best informed nations in the world? When men advance from barbarism to light and knowledge, they find it necessary to protect society by the penalty of death. If it be not necessary, then we must be compelled to admit the monstrous proposition, that knowledge makes us cruel, and that the arts render us ferocious. If it be so, we had better have remained savages to this day. As an example to deter others, imprisonment is on many accounts nugatory. It appears, by its effect, not to be sufficiently terrible to excite the necessary fear,-death does do that, as far as human power extends. But the chief objection to imprisonment is, that it is not seen, and therefore is in a great degree ineffective. However the individual may suffer under it, it is not witnessed by those whom we wish to deter, and as an example, therefore, it would only be a means without an end. The victim would be incarcerated and forgotten; the very recollection both of him and his crime would pass away together, and none would be deterred from offending, by a punishment of which they knew nothing. Besides, the perpetual hope of escape would militate against the reformation of the criminal. The consciousness that no change could make his situation worse, would induce him to use every means, even to the commission of murder, in order to effect his enlargement, which would be attended with new danger to society. The punishment of transportation has also failed-notoriously failed. So far is it from exciting any thing like terror, that persons have been known to commit crimes for the purpose of being transported: they have solicited it as a boon; and government has been compelled to alter the prac tice merely on this account. So comparatively happy was their lot, and therefore not at all dreaded, that it was become a question, whether it were not rather a stimulus to crime than a preventive. And even now, when we consider the numbers annually sentenced to transportation, it must be allowed to have very little effect in preventing crime. It does not prevent the lesser offences, by which the criminal can gain but little, but for which little he will risk the penalty; and therefore will never avail against the greater and more profitable. When our opponents tell us, that the punishment of death ought to be abrogated, because we may sometimes be mistaken, and destroy the innocent, they should reflect, that this principle would go to prevent our inflicting any other sentence, and would leave to all offenders perfect impunity. However such an event is to be deplored, (and none can lament it more than we do,) it is the inevitable consequence of our own finite faculties. But, to refrain from punishing all who are found guilty, on this account, would be to involve society in ruin. We can but do that which we believe to be right, and leave the event with Him, who will remedy our errors, and do the innocent justice. The same doctrine would deter us from inflicting imprisonment, or any other punishment; since, although we might indeed rescind the sentence, we could not undo the suffering which it had occasioned. We could not recompence the mental agony, nor replace the individual in the same state in which we found him. We could not add, to his span of being, the years of liberty of which our error had deprived him, nor reinstate the health which had been undermined, nor heal the broken heart. With friends lost, life shortened, spirit sinking, and hopes blasted-what could we do? Would money compensate, or sympathy reward? Impossible: man must remain subjected to the errors and contingencies of this life, and he can no more resist or alter them, than he can change his nature. There is but One infallible, and that One is not man. We are further accused of inhumanity, in sending a fellowcreature before the great Judge of all, with all his crimes upon his head. But, we may ask, whether the laws of society are to be nullified, and the earth to be overwhelmed by a deluge of crime, because a few men choose so to live and so to act, that they are unfit to die? Have we the eternal destinies of men in our hands? Who, acting under the influence of this feeling, could dare to draw his sword against the invaders of his country, or smite the assassin who attempted his life? If the punishment, which man has inflicted on the criminal, has been more than commensurate with the crime, we are sure that we send him to be judged by One, who can do no wrong himself, and will remedy that which we have done. If we have committed error here, it will be corrected at that bar where infallibility presides. Besides, our opponents present us with but one side of the picture: they talk of the cruelty of sending a murderer" to his account," though he knows his doom,-(and he knew it beforehand,) and has also time to prepare to meet it; but they say nothing of the victim of the crime, who was hurried into eternity with all his sins upon his head, without a moment's notice. The doom of the assassin is, surely, less terrible than this! If repentance, even at the eleventh hour, may avail, as we hope and believe, then is he happier than his victim, who had "No moment given to breathe one instant prayer, Can he complain, who, after all the forms of law and justice, and the most cautious enquiry, is sentenced to die,-when, by the impulse of his own guilty passions, he had deprived his fellow of existence, without any just cause, or the least warning at all? Such a statement as that of our opponents, seems intended to palsy with fear the "stern hand of justice;" it would let crime go unscathed, and blood would cry in vain from the ground. If the criminal endure future punishment, it is not for us to impugn the justice of the Deity; if he there obtain pardon, he is happier than in dragging out a lingering and hopeless existence in a dungeon. We must do our duty, and leave the hereafter to Omnipotence. A reference has been made to France, and a comparison drawn between the number of capital sentences passed there and in this country; but the statement does nothing for the other side of the question. It is said, that, in the year 1820, there were 1236 sentences of death passed in Great Britain, and only 361 in France. This statement is brought to shew, that |