The same continued-Further reply to the Courier. Your readers may not be aware that such severity is peculiar to England-to Protestant England!-to modern times, not the days of our forefathers. In Catholic countries offences of this nature are not punished with death. The Ruler of Austria, for instance, aided by the counsel of even a Metternich, spares the lives (traitors excepted) of all but murderers; and these are not executed until they have confessed their guilt. Some time since, indeed, there was a resolution taken at Vienna to hang incendiaries; but it was scarcely acted on before it was abandoned, and for very good reasons. These facts Himself a I have from a most respectable inhabitant of Prague. Catholic, he expressed to me his astonishment at the sanguinary laws of the English 'Protestant' Government, as he termed it. But be it remembered that in America Protestantism has long since been absolved from this national sin. But what shall we say, if even the Muscovite Government-that barbarous and despotic Power-that prototype to English minds of nearly all that is bad-if that Power is an age before us in the science of legislation? We should do well to improve our boasted laws, by taking a lesson from the 94th and 95th Articles of the Russian Code, formed under the reign of the Empress Catherine. They run thus : 'Article 94. It were unjust to inflict the same punishment upon the highway-robber, as upon him who both robs and assas'sinates. For the public security, therefore, it is evidently necessary to make some difference in the punishment prescribed for 'these several crimes.' Again Article 95. There is a country, where thieves do not 'commit murder :-the reason is, because, while thieves are there 'left to hope for transportation to the Colonies, murderers were 'excluded from that hope."* Not long since, being within the Prussian dominions, I learned that the laws there are mercy itself compared with the sanguinary code of Britain. "The Frequency of Capital Punishments inconsistent with Justice, sound Policy, and Religion: Being the Substance of a Sermon. By WILLIAM DODD, LLD., Chaplain to THE KING." last time, to the cases of the men who are ordered to suffer Passing afterwards through the great commercial town of Hamburg, I enquired whether they hanged men for the crime of forgery; and was informed by a gentleman of high literary character, Editor of one of the Public Journals in that City, that it was eleven years since any person was executed at Hamburg, and then the offence was that of murder. In Holland similar enquiries were made; but still the laws of my own country, England, were considered by reflecting men as pre-eminent for severity and injustice. An occurrence happened, which I will just mention, at Antwerp, where I had no acquaintance. A trunk of mine was left behind upon the public quay, at midnight. The loss was not perceived till we had proceeded eighty miles farther. An inhabitant here undertook to make some enquiries, which I expected to issue to no purpose: it was, however, found, although bearing no other mark than a ticket, and this, to our surprise, without incurring the smallest expense. But particular instances are unnecessary: it is an admitted fact that property is less liable to plunder in many parts of the Continent than in England. Why is this? A different system of Police is not the sole cause. What share, I would ask, is attributable to the uncertainty of punishment produced by our lottery-like laws, which, while they assign to murder and theft the same penalty, do, by the non-enforcement for the most part of the sentence, permit the offenders to hope they may draw the prize of impunity? But I contend that death is frequently dreaded less than other punishments which are more lasting. Only look at the language in Court of a culprit hanged on Monday last at Glasgow, for burglary. On receiving sentence, he said, I have your good-will, my Lord; death is sweeter than confinement:-cowards die many 'times-I will die but once.'* Such an occurrence should be borne in mind by legislators. And again, among the cloud of witnesses' on this subject, look at the admirable reasoning of Sir William MEREDITH in Parliament, which, in the short compass of six octavo pages, shews the various bearings of the argument. It is impossible to withstand his powerful eloquence. True, he lived near fifty years ago, when the science of cruelty was in greater perfection; but he still lives, and still speaks, as does his great contemporary * Glasgow Chronicle. death this morning ;*-not that any thing we can now say HOWARD, and his noble and consistent successor, ROMILLY— undying names, though not dignified by office. I am glad that MEREDITH'S speech is reprinted separately, and appears to be gaining extensive circulation. Permit me to enclose a copy, and to subscribe myself, The Public's humble and faithful Servant, JUSTITIA. *These two men suffered death on the day appointed at the PRIVY COUNCIL, upon the eve of a change in the law by which their respective crimes ceased to be capital—a melancholy reflection! The Bill, by which this change took place, had been some months upon the list of Notices of the House of Commons, but was postponed by the pressure of other business. It passed the very next session of parliament, being the 2 and 3 of Will. IV. cap. 62, one of Mr. EWART's Acts for the mitigation of the Penal Laws.At whose hand will ❝ the blood of these men be required ?" The reader will be gratified to observe the good effects produced in London and Middlesex by removing the punishment of death, and substituting one more certain of infliction. Parliamentary Returns furnish the subjoined results : LONDON & Middlesex-SHEEP-STEALING. Executed. Committed. First period, three years, 1827-28-29.. 2 22 Second period, three years, 1832-33-34, no longer punishable with death In each case, then, it appears that a diminution of crime has resulted from abolishing the scaffold, and providing another penalty -more certain of infliction, because prosecutors, witnesses, and jurors assist in the enforcement of the law, instead of conspiring to defeat it. (See BLACKSTONE, Vol. iv. Ch. i.)—Christian legislation and sound policy are inseparable. can possibly avail them, but with a view to exposing the fallacious arguments which have been used in defence of those disgusting spectacles, by which, for offences like those in question, England alone, of all the nations of the civilized word, is disgracefully distinguished. When we first stated that the offences for which these men were doomed to suffer, did not in any point of viewwhether a moral or a social one-whether one of justice or expediency-deserve death, we were told by the Courier, that enquiry had been made into their characters, which being found to be bad, they were selected for the vengeance of the law; for even the advocate of this melancholy selection condemns the law as inhuman, and thereby admits that its punishment rather partakes of the nature of vengeance than justice. We answered that, to hang convicts for bad character, would be to hang them, not upon evidence given on oath openly in a Court of Justice, and determined on by a Jury, but upon statements made under no responsibility, and by a mode of proceeding which was arbitrary and extrajudicial. Now we are told that the rigid enforcement of the law is not in consequence of the badness of character of the convicts, but that their having bad characters prevented the extension of mercy. Is not this merely putting in other words, that the men were selected to be hanged, not on account of the offences of which they were found guilty in open Court, but on account of another charge, that of being of ill reputation, of which they were not found guilty in any judicial Court whatever? The argument stands thus:The men's lives would have been spared, notwithstanding the verdicts against them, if their general character had been good; but the badness of their character prevented it: therefore they were ordered to be hanged, because they had bad characters. Nothing can be clearer than this. It was not the sentence of the law which, upon this admission, fixed their doom, but another sentence of which the law, bad as it is, knows nothing; for the law condemns no man to death for having a bad character. We are glad to have such a high authority to refer to, in support of our position, as the late Sir Samuel ROMILLYa man who was, in his legislative career, deservedly, the oracle of the members of the present Government, on all questions touching the reform of our criminal jurisprudence-a subject to which he devoted for a long time the best energies of his great mind, and the honest zeal of a heart which No POLITICAL TEMPTATIONS EVER CAUSED TO SWERVE from vindicating, against the doctrines of a tyrannical expediency, the eternal principles of justice. In his speech, on moving for the total repeal of the Shoplifting Act, and two other Acts, which made it death to steal to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, or on board a vessel in a navigable river, he says, in reference to the sort of arbitrary discretion which has been exercised in the cases of Widgett and Broach, by selecting them for execution on account of something extrinsic to the crimes of which they were convicted A man is convicted of one of those larcenies made capital by the law (such as sheep-stealing, or privately stealing in a dwellinghouse), and is besides a person of very bad character. It is not to 'such a man that mercy (according to the present system) is to be 'extended-and the sentence of the law denouncing death, the remission of it must be called by the name of mercy-the man, therefore, is hanged; but in truth it is not for his crime that he 'suffers death, but for the badness of his reputation. Another man is suspected of murder, of which there is no legal evidence to ⚫ convict him: there is proof, however, of his having committed a larceny to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, and of that he is convicted. He, too, is not thought a fit object for 6 clemency, and he is hanged, not for the crime of which he has 'been convicted, but for that of which he is only suspected. A third, upon his trial for a capital larceny, attempts to establish his innocence by witnesses whom the Jury disbelieve; and he is ⚫ left for execution, because he has greatly enhanced his guilt by 'the subornation of perjured witnesses. In truth, he suffers death, |