appearance upon earth then, and the serpent was the great agent in its introduction, it is not surprising that he should be regarded in some sort with religious awe; and that mankind should, in process of time, pay a devout homage to his representation or figure; especially as Satan is believed to have appeared to our first parents in the form of "one of the most illustrious angels," or as a serpent of great brightness, such as are designated Seraphim.* Every eastern nation of antiquity seems to have been subsequently addicted to serpent worship; and as communities were settled and grew into nations, it entered largely into their mythological notions, and was deified in almost every temple. When the miracle with Aaron's rod was wrought in Egypt,† that people worshipped it as the emblem of the Divine nature; the Hebrews offered incense to the brazen serpent erected by Moses in the wilderness, up to the time of Hezekiah, who, on that account, destroyed it; Phoenicia venerated it, and raised it to the chief place of honour in the consecrated fanes of Tyre and Sidon; Hindoostan sculptured it on its pagodas; Persia, Java, Tegra, Athens, and many other nations and capital cities, impressed its form on their sacred buildings; China too, and Mexico recognize it in their theology; and Britain preserved its figure in by-gone ages in avenues of stones once standing on the plain of Abury. Patrick on Genesis iii. The intelligent reader will also not fail to note here the language of Paul (2 Cor. xi. 14.) as confirmatory of this idea. Satan taking upon him to be a good angel, with pretension of kindness and good-will to man. + Exodus vii. 8-12. 2 Kings, xviii. 4. [TO BE CONTINUED.] 3 Step Backwards. It is some time now since philanthropists and moral philosophers, who either were legislators themselves, or exerted upon legislators the delegated power of public opinion, began to turn their attention to the mitigation and abolition of many legal abuses, by which the natural rights of some men were placed under the too absolute controul of others; mutual inhumanity encouraged and legitimized; and the worst and most malicious forms of human cruelty not only palliated but fully and unquestionably justified. The results of the exertions of those practical Christians have been, that even actual guilt of the darkest enormity has ceased to be regarded as a disqualification for all human kindness and sympathy; that human life has come to be estimated at a more sacred value; and consequently-which is an encouraging symptom of the instinctive tendencies of our nature-that in proportion as the punishments of crimes have been softened, those crimes themselves have less frequently alarmed and disgraced society. All this, of course, is not otherwise remarkable, than that it is a fact creditable to and indicative of our advancement in religion and civilization. But those philanthropists were not content with admitting the guilty alone within the pale of humanity and the operation of its charities: they saw around them in the world, a numerous class of fellow-creatures, whose only disqualification was mere misfortune, and they started to find that such misfortune was punished, under sanction of the law, more severely than crime. They saw, for instance, that the convicted felon, after undergoing his stated term of imprisonment, became once more a free man; while the debtor-made such by the chances and disappointments of life, by the skillful dishonesty of other men, or, at the worst, by mere imprudence-once he entered a prison, must dwell there, as a general rule, until death released him. This is not by any means an exaggerated statement of the case: because the liabilities of an imprisoned debtor-especially if he were poor and imprisoned for a small sumaccumulated so rapidly and so hopelessly, that if arrested for forty shillings, he might most probably have to purchase his return to the air and light of heaven and to his daily occupation, by the payment of fifty pounds-if he could anywhere upon earth find so large a sum. It may, naturally, be considered unaccountable that under a Government so traditionally jealous, as that of England, of the rights of personal freedom, any law, giving a direct sanction to a system of personal slavery, should be suffered to remain in operation; and that, to the other penalties of insolvency, a liability to heartless and conscienceless robbery, was permitted to be added. The Bedouin Arabs, we are informed, with all the delicate feeling and sentiment of gentlemen, cautiously refrain from the most distant allusion to debt in presence of any man whom they know to be unable to pay. The North American Indians, too, before their chivalrous barbarism was corrupted by the infection of European avarice, scrupulously adopted a similar etiquette, at the same time that they inflicted a frightful punishment upon the fraudulent debtor; this was to refuse payment from any man whom they knew to have evaded an opportunity of discharging his debts, and to leave him and keep him for ever under a painful and ignominious obligation. But, independently of the cruelty of the system prevailing in this country-the cruelty and injustice of inflicting the last of criminal punishments for a merely civil liability; let us consider its utter and indefensible absurdity. A man owes us money, which he is unable or unwilling to pay in addition to subjecting him to the heart-burning and maddening insults of a class of beings whom it is a profanation to call human, we consign him to a place where it is morally and physically impossible that, even if he be willing, he can effect the slightest good or make the slightest exertion either for himself or us ; and where, if he be unwilling, his resentment for the degradation to which we have exposed him, and the feeling that we have done our worst and can not possibly do more, will merely confirm his reluctance. Our readers need not to be reminded, we presume, that the sense of this withering disgrace has frequently operated so powerfully upon some high-minded and sensitive persons, that they have with their own hands cast away a life rendered worthless and intolerable by the persevering cruelty of a fellow-creature. We don't know we can scarcely imagine-how a detaining creditor feels when his victim commits suicide, and when death mercifully draws back the bolt which the turnkey, with an iron smile and a ruffian jest, has shot. We should hope at least that he feels satisfied that he has done his best for the protection of his property. But, we were going to account for the existence of such a law in free England. It is, of course, known to persons learned in the law, though the fact may not be familiar to the generality of the public, or the lower classes of legal practitioners, that the original source of much of our Common and Statute Law is the old Roman Civil Law. That system was shaped in its progress to the condition of a perfect code, which it assumed in the time of Justinian, by the Roman aristocracy who were, in the republican ages, almost universally usurers, and of course recorded the most stringent enactments against defaulting debtors. The provisions of the Roman Law respecting debtor and creditor were these. It was necessary, in the first instance, that the debt be proved before a magistrate, and judgment obtained; if the amount were not paid within thirty days, the debtor was arrested and brought in person before the magistrate when, if he neither paid the money nor provided a surety, his creditor took him away in custody and confined him in any place he might choose, for two months; if before the expiration of those two months the debt were not discharged, the debtor was compelled to make another and final appearance in court, in order to be assigned in slavery to his creditor, who was then authorised to compel him to work for his profit, or to sell him, or put him to death; accordingly as it might please his humour at the time. In cases of bankruptcy, the principle of the law was very similar: for the several creditors were empowered to put the defaulter to death and divide his body in equal shares between them. The intention and obvious effect of those laws were to place the debtor in the possession of the creditor, in order that he might use him in such a manner as to repay the debt; and for this purpose it was necessary to invest him with all the rights of a slave-holder. But the Roman creditors very seldom strained their privilege to the full extent of the law; they treated their debtors in general just as they would treat any other slaves, and refrained from the absurdity of any superfluous cruelty. Now the English Law, in its horror of slavery, retained the heavier and dispensed with the lighter element of bondage; confirming to the creditor his right to imprison the person of his debtor, it deprived him of the power of making any profitable use of his labour and services. So long as a system like this is perpetuated, we must be allowed to question the consistency of maintaining a fleet on the Coast of Africa to intercept the South American slave-transports, or of organizing sympathy meetings in harmony with the transatlantic abolitionists. We have no right to complain that other nations employ human beings as beasts of burden, which have no interest in the results of their own toil, when we allow any usurer, whose money may not be forthcoming by a specified day, first to insult, and then to punish a free and innocent man, as if he were a burglar or a murderer. The American slave-holder, it is true, can tyrannize, if he chooses, over all the sacred relations of domestic life; he can tear asunder husband and wife, parents and children. And what tenderness, we ask, does the disappointed creditor in England entertain for those relations? One case that came under the personal notice of the writer of this article not long since-a case which he believes to be by no means exceptional-furnishes an emphatic answer to this question. A young man, who had been a short time engaged in mercantile business, was arrested for a comparatively trifling debt, the payment of which a little patience might have secured, and the accumulation of lawyers' costs, to about four times the amount of the debt, had rendered utterly impossible. His only resource was the Insolvent Court; bnt the difficulty and expense of procuring bail for his appearance, obliged him to remain in prison until his examination. In the mean time, his wife, to whom he had been but a few months married, died of fever, induced partly by the blight cast upon her prospects, and partly by the brutal insults of the sheriff's representatives who came to take possession of her household furniture. It was in vain that appeals were made to the humanity of the detaining creditor: the debtor undertook to return to his durance after paying one farewell visit to the cold clay that was, but a few days before, his wife; but it was "not so nominated in the bond," and the dead wife was taken to the grave unseen by her husband. We have also known more than one instance, where the principal defaulter in a bankruptcy was seen walking at large about the streets, enjoying not only his personal freedom, but all his undiminished and unrestricted domestic comforts, while the indorsers of his accommodation bills and some of the small debtors to his estate, were expiating their connection with him in the sheriff's prison. But, we may be told that we are wasting our indignation upon a shadow; that the state of things of which we are complaining, has disappeared long ago with mail coaches and sailing packets; and that the law of debtor and creditor has been, some time since, brought into harmony with the other elements of our civilization. Well! we know that, somewhere about twenty-seven years ago, an alteration in the law abolished the system of arrest by what was called "mesne process," under which a debtor might be taken to prison at any hour, on the mere affidavit of his creditor, who was not required to give any notice whatever of his intention. This was felt to be-as it really was a great relief to all who were so unfortunate as to owe money. It became necessary to forewarn them of their danger; first, by a polite invitation from a solicitor, demanding payment before a certain hour, on a certain day, under certain mysterious and awfully sounding penalties, and of course including the eternal "six-and-eightpence," the costs of said appli |