Heaven, to make the angels weep.' There has been too much of this work already; and a very little of the same spirit in future will be more than is wanted. There is enough of it lurking in the prejudices and vindictive passions of men; and it need not be fomented by panders and sophists. No punishment, we believe, will in the end be found to be wise or humane, or just or effectual, that is not the natural reaction of a man's own conduct on his own head, or the making him feel, in his own person, the consequences of the injury he has meditated against others. It is impossible to force this sentiment in the individual or the community up to the same degree of horror against the smallest as against the highest crimes by a positive law. Every such unequal enactment is in fact so much outrage and injury done to the very foundation and end of all law: But where a punishment is in conformity to this sentiment, the mind, instead of resisting and resenting, acquiesces in it as a dictate, not of caprice or will, but of equal justice between man and man; and anticipates it, by a sure instinct of moral arithmetic, as a necessary and direct consequence of its own actions. A punishment that has not this natural as well as legal sanction, fails to bend and overawe the will: it only hardens and irritates, as was said before. It does not strike upon the mind even in the shape of terror; for the imagination easily rejects, as incredible, that which it regards as wholly unfounded and unwarrantable. It is the link of moral and social sympathy alone which can ever bring the penalties affixed by law to any crime home to the mind of the criminal, so as to produce, 1. intimidation, 2. conviction and reform. For instance, to show how punishment operates when the sense of natural justice and necessity goes along with it, we will suppose the case of a murderer in his cell, and consider how his situation affects himself and the community. We will not say that the latter feel no pity for him (God forbid !)-but they feel it, as he almost feels it himself, not altering the stern sense of justice. In fact, he appears to the imagination less a sacrifice to the vengeance of the laws, than a ready accomplice with them-a victim selfdoomed and self-condemned. His limbs are not only manacled, his life a forfeit; but his conscience is limed, his reason is in the strong toils of the law, that has pronounced sentence upon him. He is delivered up, bound hand and foot, body and mind-is his own judge and executioner. He seems to be tainted all over-a mass of corruption wasting away with loathing of itself-falling in pieces for want of support from the fellow-feeling of a single fellow-creature. He breathes thick and short the stifling closepent air of guilt; and waits for the parting of soul and body as

a timely release from his own reflections, and the general enmity of the community. Not so the terrified victim of an arbitrary law, a woman perhaps condemned for uttering forged Bank of England notes, dragged, torn to the place of execution with shrieks like mandrakes,' whose fate excites equal agony in her own mind, and dread in the public; who hear indeed a great outcry about the alarming increase of contempt for the laws, but whose only real object of terror and disgust is the execution of them. This is a state of the law which ought not to continue a moment longer than it can possibly be helped. That we are bold to say. There should be a marked and acknow~ ledged difference in the punishment of crimes, or there must be a loss of all sense of moral distinction, or of all respect for the laws that systematically hold it in complete scorn.

So far it should seem, then, that the Committee have been right in recommending the abolition of capital punishment in the cases in which they have done so, if in no others. It remains to consider what other punishments are fit to be substituted for it, and what other securities may be found for the community. On this question the evidence of Mr Harmer, on which the Committee lay considerable stress, is of great weight and importance.

'I mention,' he says, these circumstances, to show what little fear common thieves entertain of capital punishment; and that, so far from being arrested in their wicked courses by the distant possibility of its infliction, they are not even intimidated at its certainty; and the present numerous enactments to take away life, appear to me wholly inefficacious. But there are punishments which I am convinced a thief would dread, and which, if steadily pursued, might have the most salutary effect; namely, a course of discipline totally reversing his former habits. IDLENESS is one of the prominent characteristics of a professed thief-put him to labour:-DEBAUCHERY is another quality, abstinence is its opposite, apply it :-DISSIPATED COMPANY is a thing they indulge in; they ought, therefore, to experience solitude:-They are accustomed to UNCONTROLLED LIBERTY OF ACTION; I would consequently impose restraint and decorum; and were these suggestions put in practice, I have no doubt we should find a considerable reduction in the number of offenders: I say this, because I have very often heard thieves express their great dislike and dread of being sent to the House of Correction, or to the Hulks, where they would be obliged to labour, and kept under restraint; but I never heard one say he was afraid of being hanged. Formerly, before Newgate was under the regulations that it now is, I could always tell an old thief from the person that had for the first time committed crime: the noviciate would shudder at the idea of being sent to Newgate; but the old thief would request that he might be committed at once to that prison by the magistrate, because

he could there associate with his companions, and have his girl to sleep with him, which, some years back, used to be allowed or winked at by the upper turnkeys: but, since the late regulations, certainly I have not heard of such applications being made by thieves, because now they are as much restrained and kept in order in Newgate as in other prisons. From my observation, I am quite certain that a thief cannot bear the idea of being kept under subordination. As to transportation, I with deference think it ought not to be adopted, except for incorrigible offenders, and then it ought to be for life; if it is for seven years, the novelty of the thing, and the prospect of returning to their friends and associates, reconciles offenders to it, so that in fact they consider it no punishment; and when this sentence is passed on men, they frequently say, "Thank you, my Lord." Indeed this is a common expression, used every Session by prisoners, when sentenced to seven years' transportation.' p. 109.

Such is the deliberate opinion, gleaned from twenty years' thought and experience, of one who has been concerned during that period in constant trials at the Old Bailey, and who is equally distinguished by assiduity, acuteness and humanity, in his profession. It is amusing, however, to see how it has been treated by the enemies of all improvement. If a speculative philosopher, unused to the ways of the world, gives an opinion on what he thinks best, it is set down as romantic extravagance, or pitiable simplicity, that will not bear the test of experience. If a person conversant (to a painful degree of intimacy) with vice and infamy comes to the same general conclusion, a delicate prudery is assumed on the occasion, and a sensibility to the nice gradations of vice and virtue is arrogated for those whose purity of imagination has not been contaminated by the contact of actual depravity; and we are referred to the respectable classes of the community for the most authentic information as to the motives, feelings, and mode of operating on the minds of rogues and vagabonds, these last being supposed (from habitual obduracy) utterly ignorant of what passes in their own minds, and of the only things that do or can affect them!

In proposing to put a stop to the alarming increase of crime, by the continual threat, or the more frequent infliction of capital punishment, we do not find any attempt made to suppress, by such extreme severity, any other offences but offences against Property. We hear the number of common prostitutes spoken of as an enormous evil, and as tending to increase the number of thieves and pickpockets: and Seduction, which leads to this deplorable consequence, is itself a great evil; yet we hear of no attempt to punish seduction with death, which yet does a great deal more harm, one year with another, than the mischievous propensity for cutting down young trees, or rooting up whole

plantations. The reason is, seduction is practised by the rich, as well as others. Drunkenness is a beastly vice, and does all the mischief in the world to the health and to the morals: but it is common to all classes of the English nation; and no one, therefore, thinks of putting down this alarming and extensive evil, by making it capital to take a drop too much. Yet, would it not lessen the crime, if a man inclined to commit it were to be told- If you get drunk to-night, you will be hanged, or with a headach to-morrow;' instead of being only told You cannot be hanged, but you will probably have the headach tomorrow?' Gambling is another very prevalent vice, and does incalculable mischief; but it is not confined to the lower orders; and therefore no one proposes a sweeping clause to make it capital without benefit of clergy. Thieves, on the contrary, are never persons of distinction or independent fortunes. It is a most ungentlemanlike vice, uniformly committed by the lower against the upper classes; and therefore there is so little hesitation in making it a capital felony, and so much difficulty and fuss about taking away the capital part of the penalty in the most common and trivial instances of it. Yet, in spite of this alarming and unheard-of increase of crime (the crime of privately stealing from the pocket, the dwellinghouse, or counter), which one would suppose had, like an Egyptian plague, infested every corner of the land, made our streets impassable, and our homes uncomfortable, we live and do well, we sleep sound in our beds, and do not dream of shop-lifters or cutpurses. The evil complained of may have alarmingly increased; but still it is confined within petty limits. It does not burst asunder any of the great bonds of society, nor practically disturb human life: it does not give a moment's annoyance to one individual in a thousand, in the course of a year, nor an hour's serious concern even to the person who may chance to suffer by it. He reads the account of his disaster the next day in the newspaper, and is satisfied. Why, because he knows that the practice is necessarily confined to certain classes of persons, which can never increase to an unlimited extent. It is agreed, that only the lowest of the lower classes turn common thieves; and this is construed into a proof of the greater depravity of those classes. This requires explanation.

The man of ten thousand a year confessedly does not steal: he has no possible temptation. Again, the man of a thousand a year does not. The lawyer, in the full career of his profession, does not violate the law in this respect, nor the merchant in a large way of business. They do not want the money; or they can get it in a much easier and more reputable way. But the

man who has not a penny in his purse, nor any means of getting a farthing, steals to save himself from starving. Theft is not, at least in the first instance, a voluntary or a malicious crime; and therefore should be distinguished from those that

It is not a vice of general inclination, or of inherent depravity, but of particular circumstances. Place a thief in the circumstances of a gentleman, and he will no longer be a thiefthough he may carry all his other bad propensities into his new character.

Take the most common case of the first lapse into this offence, and consider with what feelings it would be just or natural to view it. What, then, is the meaning of the outcry against the lawless depravity of the lower classes in this country? A man is a labourer or a mechanic; he has a wife and children to support; he works night and day; he denies himself almost every thing; still he finds it difficult to live. He is taken sick, or thrown out of employ; he is reduced to the utmost extremity; he still holds out, and clings to the last chance of hope and honesty; but in vain-his patience and his principle will last no longer and he steals! Why? Not from want of industry; he had the greatest-not from want of economy; he observed the strictest-not from want of abstinence; he almost starved himself to death-not from want of fortitude; he bore every sort of distress and hardship without repining-not even from want of honesty; for the first departure from it almost broke his heart. Yet he and his class are accused of a total want of decency and moral principle, from his not having an heroic degree of these virtues, not one of which the higher classes are so much as ever called upon to practise, or to make the smallest sacrifice to. To argue, therefore, against the good disposition of the lower classes generally, because they alone are subject to those temptations which produce a particular violation of the law, when the truth is, that by far the greater part of them are continually holding out to the last extremity of despair, of sickness, and often of life itself, in struggling against those temptations, is most base and unmanly.

The increased distress of the lower classes will accordingly account, if not for the whole mass of petty depredation, for the present alarming increase of this crime. Suppose an unusual tendency to idleness and extravagance to operate in producing this result in some characters sooner than in others, yet it would not produce it even in those characters without the great hardships and privations they have to undergo. A lawyer who sells golden opinions to all sorts of people,'-in whose chambers it snows of bank-notes, '-feels no temptation to be idle: he has his sti