5thly. But let us suppose, that criminals are viewed without sympathy-indignation-or contempt.-This will be the case, either when the spectators are themselves hardened with vice, or when they are too young, or too ignorant, to connect the ideas of crimes and punishments together. Here, then, a new source of injury arises from the public nature of punishments. Every portion of them will appear, to spectators of this description, to be mere arbitrary acts of cruelty: hence will arise a disposition to exercise the same arbitrary cruelty over the feelings and lives of their fellow creatures. To see blows, or a halter, imposed in cold blood upon a criminal, whose passive behaviour, operating with the ignorance of the spectators, indicates innocence more than vice, cannot fail of removing the natural obstacles to violence and murder in the human mind. 6thly. Public punishments make many crimes known to persons who would otherwise have passed through life in a total ignorance of them. They moreover produce such a familiarity, in the minds of spectators, with the crimes for which they are inflicted, that, in some instances, they have been known to excite a propensity for them. It has been remarked that a certain immorality has always kept pace with public admonitions in the churches in the eastern states. In proportion as this branch of ecclesiastical discipline has declined, fewer children have been born out of wedlock. 7thly. Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death. Let it not be supposed, from this circumstance, that it operates more than the fear of death in preventing crimes. On the contrary, like the indiscriminate punishment of death, it not only confounds and levels all crimes, but by increasing the disproportion between crimes and punishments, it creates a hatred of all law and government; and thus disposes to the perpetration of every crime. Laws can only be respected and obeyed, while they bear an exact proportion to crimes.-The law which punishes the shooting of a swan with death, in England, has produced a thousand murders. Nor is this all the mischievous influence, which the punishment of ignominy has upon society. While murder is punished with death, the man who robs on the high-way, or breaks open a house, must want the common feelings and principles which belong to human nature, if he does not add murder to theft, in order to screen himself, if he should be detected, from that punishment which is acknowledged to be more terrible than death. It would scem strange, that ignominy should ever have been adopted, as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth upon any subject, till it has first reached the extremity of error. Sthly. But may not the benefit derived to society, by employing criminals to repair public roads, or to clean streets, over balance the evils that have been mentioned? I answer, by no means. On the contrary, besides operating in one, or in all the ways that have been described, the practice of employing criminals in public labour, will render labour of every kind disreputable; more especially that species of it, which has for its objects the convenience or improvement of the state. It is a well-known fact, that white men soon decline labour in the West Indies, and in the southern states, only because the agriculture, and mechanical employments of those countries, are carried on chiefly by negro slaves. But I object further to the employment of criminals on the high-ways and streets, from the idleness it will create, by alluring spectators from their business, and thereby depriving the state of greater benefits from the industry of its citizens, than it can ever derive from the labour of criminals. The history of public punishments, in every age and country, is full of facts, which support every principle that has been advanced. What has been the operation of the seventy thousand executions, that have taken place in Great Britain from the year 1688, to the present day, upon the morals and manners of the inhabitants of that island? Has not every prison-door that has been opened, to conduct criminals to public shame and punishment, unlocked, at the same time, the bars of moral obligation upon the minds of ten times the number of people? How often do we find pockets picked under a gallows, and highway robberies committed in sight of a gibbet? From whence arose the conspiracies, with assassinations and poisonings, which prevailed in the decline of the Roman Empire? Were they not favoured by the public executions of the amphitheatre? It is therefore to the combined operation of indolence, prejudice, ignorance, and the defect of culture of the human heart, alone, that we are to ascribe the continuance of public punishments, after such long and multiplied experience of their inefficacy to reform bad men, or to prevent the commission of crimes. : If punishments were moderate, just, and private, they' would exalt the feelings of public justice and benevolence so far above the emotions of humanity in witnesses, juries and judges, that they would forget to conceal, or to palliate crimes and the certainty of punishment, by extinguishing all hope of pardon in the criminal, would lead him to connect the beginning of his repentance with the last words of his sentence of condemnation. To obtain this great and salutary end, there should exist certain portions of punishment, both in duration and degree, which should be placed by law beyond the power of the discretionary court before mentioned, to shorten or mitigate. ૧ ૧ upon I have said nothing upon the manner of inflicting death as a punishment for crimes, becausé 1 consider it as an improper punishment for any crime. Even murder itself is propagated by the punishment of death for murder. Of this we have a remarkable proof in Italy. The duke of Tuscany soon after the publication of the marquis of Beccaria's excellent treatise this subject, abolished death as a punishment for murder. A gentleman, who resided five years at Pisa, informed me, that only five murders had been perpetrated in his dominions in twenty years. The same gentleman added, that after his residence in Tuscany, he spent three months in Rome, where death is still the punishment of murder, and where executions, according to Dr. Moore, are conducted with peculiar circumstances of public parade. During this short period, there were sixty murders committed in the precincts of that city. It is remarkable, the manners, principles, and religion, of the inhabitants of Tuscany and Rome, arc exactly the same. The abolition of death alone, as a punishment for murder, produced this difference in the moral character of the two nations. I suspect the attachment to death, as a punishment for murder, in minds otherwise enlightened, upon the subject of capital punishments, arises from a false interpretation of a passage contained in the old testament, and that is, "he that sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." This has been supposed to imply that blood could only be expiated by blood. But I am disposed to believe, with a late commentator* upon this text of scripture, that it is rather a prediction than a law. The language of it is simply, that such will be the depravity and folly of man, that murder, in every age, shall beget murder. Laws, therefore, which inflict * The reverend Mr. William Turner, in the second vol. of Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. death for murder, are, in my opinion, as unchristian as those which justify or tolerate revenge; for the obligations of christianity upon individuals, to promote repentance, to forgive injuries, and to discharge the duties of universal benevolence, are equally binding upon states. The power over human life, is the sole prerogative of him who gave it. Human laws, therefore, rise in rebellion against this prerogative, when they transfer it to human hands. If society can be secured from violence, by confining the murderer, so as to prevent a repetition of his crime, the end of extirpation will be answered. In confinement, he may be reformed and if this should prove impracticable, he may be restrained for a term of years, that will, probably, be coeval with his life. There was a time, when the punishments of captives with death or servitude, and the indiscriminate destruction of peaceable husbandmen, women, and children, were thought to be essential to the success of war, and the safety of states. But experience has taught us, that this is not the case. And in proportion as humanity has triumphed over these maxims of false policy, wars have been less frequent and terrible, and nations have enjoyed longer intervals of internal tranquillity. The virtues are all parts of a circle. Whatever is humane, is wise-whatever is wise, is just-and whatever is wise, just, and humane, will be found to be the true interest of states, whether criminals or foreign enemies are the objects of their legislation. A worthy prelate of the church of England once said upon seeing a criminal led to execution, "There goes my wicked self." Considering the vices to which the frailty of human nature exposes whole families of every rank and class in life, it becomes us, whenever we see a fellow creature led to public infamy and pain, to add further: "There goes my unhappy |