of anarchy, when the laws are silent, and disorder and confusion occupy their place if an individual, though deprived of his liberty, has still such credit and connections as may endanger the security of the nation, or by his existence is likely to produce a dangerous revolution in the established form of government, he must undoubtedly die. But, under the tranquil authority of the laws, what necessity is there for taking away the life of a subject? Such a procedure can be authorized only by the impossibility of curbing crime in any more lenient way; and this constitutes the second motive above referred to.

The experience of all ages proves, that the punishment of death has never prevented determined villains from infesting society. It is not the intenseness of the pain, which has the greatest effect upon the mind, but it's continuance, Our sensibility is more easily and more permanently affected by weak but repeated impressions, than by a violent but momentary impulse. The power of habit is despotic over every sensitive being. As it is by that we learn to speak, to walk, and to satisfy our necessities; so the ideas of morality are stamped upon our minds by reiterated impressions. The death of a criminal is a terrible, but a momentary impulse; and is therefore a less efficacious. mode of deterring others, than the continued example of a man deprived of his liberty, and condemned, as a species of beast of burthen, to repair by the toils of his whole life the injury which he has done to society.

The execution of a criminal ought to excite in the spectators more of terror, than of compassion; and the legislator should limit his severity to the point, when this latter feeling begins to prevail in their minds, as the punishment appears in that case rather intended for them, than against the criminal.

A punishment, to be just, should have only that degree of severity, which is sufficient to deter others. Perpetual slavery would

have as much power as death, to deter even the most hardened. Nay, it would have more. There are many, who can look upon death with firmness and intrepidity. To the eye of fanaticism it is embellished: by vanity, which faithfully attends us to the grave, it's horrors are concealed: despair regards it with indifference. But amidst iron cages and chains and hard usage the illusions of fanaticism vanish, the visions of vanity are dispersed, and the voice of despair, which prompted the wretch to terminate his woes by death, is now employed solely in describing those which are opening upon him. Our minds are framed more easily to endure extreme anguish, than perpetual wretchedness.

If I am told that perpetual slavery is as painful, and therefore as cruel a punishment as death; I answer that, were all the miserable moments in the life of a slave collected into one point, it would be still more so. But these moments, scattered over a whole life, can be compared with the terrible moment of execution only by the spectator, who computes their duration and their aggregate; not by the sufferer, who is prevented by the misery of the present from thinking of the future. All evils are increased by the imagination; and the sufferer finds resources and consolations, of which the spectators are ignorant, judging by their own sensibility of what passes in a mind through habit grown callous to misfortune. Such are the advantages of perpetual slavery, which is more beneficial as an example, than intolerable as a punishment.

What an anticipation!-to pass a great number of years, or perhaps his whole life in servitude and sorrow, a slave to the laws by which he was protected, exposed to the view and the contempt of his fellow-citizens, to the disgrace and the detestation of his former equals! How striking, to compare this miserable futurity with the uncertain issue, or the precarious enjoyment of the fruits, of his transgressions! The example of such wretches, continually before his eyes, must make upon him a much deeper

impression than that of punishments, of which the sight is calculated rather to harden than to correct.

***

The punishment of death is still farther pernicious to society by the examples of barbarity which it displays. Is it not absurd that the laws, professing to be the expression of the general will, and to detect and punish murder, should themselves order it to be publicly committed? The laws of most indisputable utility, are assuredly those which all men would propose and observe in moments when the voice of private interest is silent, or mingles with the cries of public utility. Now, what is the general feeling upon the subject of capital punishment? It is indelibly portrayed in the indignation and contempt awakened by the mere sight of the minister of the cruelties of justice; who nevertheless contributes to the welfare of society, as the innocent executor of the public will, and (as good soldiers are without) is the instrument of the general security within. * **

The history of mankind is an immense sea of errors, in which a few obscure truths are here and there observed to float. Let it not be urged then, that almost all nations in all ages have punished certain crimes with death. The force of example and of prescription vanishes, when opposed to truth. Is it any plea in favour of the barbarous superstition, which has sanctioned the sacrifice of man upon the altar of the Divinity, that human victims have bled in almost every temple?

On the contrary, if I find some societies, though few in number, who even for a very short time have abstained from the punishment of death, I may refer to them with propriety. It is the fate of great truths, to glow only like a flash of lightning amidst the dark clouds in which error has enveloped the universe. The happy epoch is not yet arrived, when the fascinated eyes of

nations shall be fully opened, and the truths of revelation shall cease to be the only ones employed in the illumination of mankind.

V.

MABLY.

THOUGH the laws can never be too mild, it is still impossible wholly to abolish capital punishments. If our natural depravity occasionally hurries us into heinous excesses, and all the resources of policy have been ineffectually exhausted for its restraint; is it unreasonable to hold out regulations of terror, and ought not the laws to exert themselves in curbing it with a more powerful hand? To place the sword in the grasp of the legislator, by no means implies a previous right in us to dispose of our own lives as we please. On the contrary, it is in order to defend them against the open or covert attack of the muderer, that we call for those sanguinary and revolting enactments. In the state of nature I have a right to take the life of him who lifts his arm against mine: this right, upon entering into society, I surrender to the magistrate. Why should he not make use of it? Mankind never authorize the legislator to take away their lives in sport: for this would be a ridiculous and a useless concession. But they require him to watch over their safety; to repel hand in hand any dangers by which they may be threatened and to protect them from the domestic foe who may meditate their destruction.

The necessity by which a state is impelled to oppose force to foreign aggression is, it is affirmed, a certain demonstration of its right to do so. By the same unanswerable argument I think I can prove, that the laws should in certain instances inflict capital punishment. Wherever persons exist capable of committing voluntary and deliberate murder, by poison or the dagger, there exist

persons whom the legislator ought to doom to death. Farewell to all order, regulation, security, and sacred right among mankind, if the lot of the innocent citizen is to be worse than that of the murderer; which must necessarily be the case, should I lose the first, the greatest, and the most irrecoverable of blessings, and my assassin be still permitted to live. The laws against murder, indeed, I am perfectly convinced would be superfluous, if they ordained any punishment short of death. Under any other system the hatred or the revenge of a villain would be permitted to indulge itself by playing (if I may so express myself) a very unequal game against the object of his malignity; the former staking only his liberty, whereas the latter stakes his life.

I am not unacquainted with the reasonings of some philosophers, who are anxious for the abolition of capital punishments. If a convict, imprisoned for life, could throughout life preserve the same feelings of agitation, alarm, and despair, which he feels when first hurried into a jail, he would undoubtedly suffer a punishment heavier than that of death. But in this case it would not be right, out of mere humanity, to ease him of the burthen of life. Do not let us impose upon ourselves. Life will always be regarded by mankind as the greatest of blessings: and the fear of death indubitably so much enhances the terror and the sufferings of a dungeon, that there is not a single felon • ever dragged to a gibbet, who would not regard as an indulgence the closest confinement and the most toilsome labour. A murderer, in taking away his enemy's life, believes he does him the greatest possible evil. Death then, in his estimation, is the greatest of evils. By the fear of death, therefore, the excesses of hatred and of revenge must be restrained.

People talk with the utmost fluency of the labours, which they propose to substitute in the place of capital punishment: but it might perhaps interrupt their volubility, if they

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