Is Death, when evil against good has fought
With such fell mastery that a Man could dare
By deeds the blackest purpose to lay bare,-
Is Death, for One to that condition brought,
For him or any One, the thing that ought
To be most dreaded? Lawgivers! beware
Lest capital pains remitting till ye spare
The Murderer, ye, by sanction to that thought
Seemingly given, debase the general mind;
Tempt the vague will tried standards to disown;
Nor only palpable restraints unbind,

But upon Honour's head disturb the crown,
Whose absolute rule permits not to withstand
In the weak love of life his least command.'

In the fifth, the poet rejects the notion that the State has no right to exact the forfeiture of life, and repudiates a repeal of capital punishment on any such ground, as being not only of evil consequence in its effect upon crime, but as striking at all the public benefits which flow from a reverence on the part of the People for the authority of the State. This view is adduced, of course, not as in itself an argument in favour of punishment by death, but as bearing against that particular argument for its abolition which alleges a defect of authority on the part of the State :Not to the object specially designed, Howe'er momentous in itself it be, Good to promote or curb depravity, Is the wise Legislator's view confined.

His Spirit, when most severe, is oft most kind:
As all authority in earth depends

On Love and Fear, their several powers he blends,
Copying with awe the one Paternal Mind.
Uncaught by processes in show humane,
He feels how far the act would derogate
From even the humblest functions of the State,
If she, self-shorn of Majesty, ordain

That never more shall hang upon her breath
The last alternative of Life or Death.'

The sixth sonnet adverts to the effects of the law in preventing the crime of murder, not merely by fear, but by horror; not only by exciting a practical apprehension of the doom of death, but by investing the crime itself with the colouring of dark and terrible imaginations:

'Ye brood of conscience, Spectres! that frequent
The bad Man's restless walk and haunt his bed,
Fiends in your aspect, yet beneficent

In act as hovering Angels when they spread
Their wings to guard the unconscious Innocent,

Slow

Slow be the statutes of the land to share
A laxity that could not but impair
Your power to punish crime, and so prevent.
And ye, Beliefs! coiled serpent-like about
The adage on all tongues, Murder will out,
How shall your ancient warnings work for good
In the full might they hitherto have shown,
If for deliberate Shedder of Man's blood

Survive not Judgment that requires his own?'

With the seventh sonnet Mr. Wordsworth commences the consideration of the subject in reference to religious views. That has always appeared to us to be far from a religious view, though commonly advanced under the name of religion, which objects to what is called cutting a man off in his sins,' on the ground that it is taking into the hands of man issues which ought to be left in the hands of God, and which it belongs to God alone to dispose; as if man and man's hands, and all the issues that come out of man's hands, were not equally in the disposal of God's providence, and as if man were not ordained by that providence to be the minister of God's justice upon earth. The only really religious view of the subject in our minds, is that which recognises the responsibilities of man in respect of all the agencies and issues which human judgment can reach, and teaches that man must, as he would answer before God, do all that in him lies to prevent crime, and exercise the best of his human judgment to discover wherein that all consists, being assured that, in doing his best to prevent crime upon earth, he is doing the part which belongs to him in regard to issues beyond the grave. It is manifest that the sudden death of sinners enters into the dispensations of Providence ; and whenever it appears to be good for mankind, according to the arrangements of Providence, that such death should be inflicted by human ministration, it is as false a humility, as it is a false humanity and a false piety, for man to refuse to be the instrument.

But when this argument is extended to the abolition of the punishment by death even for Murder, it appears to us to be still more imperfect. Those by whom it is used consider it as overriding all other questions, and the inquiry whether the punishment is or is not efficacious for the prevention of the crime, is one which they will not entertain, because that, they say, is a question of mere human expediency, whereas the other is a point of religious obligation. Yet they admit that the religious obligation turns upon a sinner being cut off in his sins. Now, assuming that we are all sinners, and assuming also the efficiency of the punishment for prevention-say to the extent of preventing one half of the murders which would be committed without it—it fol

lows

lows that the State, by sparing to cut off A who murdered B, would be the occasion of C murdering D, and E murdering F;—that is, of two persons being cut off in their sins by the hand of the murderer, instead of one by the hand of the executioner. This is an issue which human judgment can distinctly reach and take account of, and in respect of which, therefore, God has devolved upon man a responsible agency.

The religious view of the subject is thus introduced:

'Before the world had pass'd her time of youth,
While polity and discipline were weak,

The precept, Eye for eye and tooth for tooth,
Came forth-a light, tho' but as of day-break,
Strong as could then be borne. A Master meek
Proscribed the spirit fostered by that rule,
Patience his law, long-suffering his school,
And Love the end, which all thro' peace must seek.
But lamentably do they err who strain

His mandates, given rash impulse to control
And keep vindictive thirstings from the soul,
So far that, if consistent in their scheme,
They must forbid the State to inflict a pain,

Making of social order a mere dream.'

In the eighth sonnet Mr. Wordsworth disavows the doctrinesometimes fallaciously employed on his own side of the question. -which would strive to measure out the punishments awarded by the law in proportion to the degrees of moral turpitude. Legislative enactments can be but rough and general, either in their admeasurements or in their definitions, and the jurisdiction which they create must be limited to subject-matter for which it is in their power to provide means of adequate inquiry and adjudication that is, for crime, as distinguished both from guilt and from sin. This limitation is admitted by Mr. Wordsworth; but at the same time he does not allow that prevention of crime is the sole end of punishment. On the contrary, he considers the State as representing, guiding, and supporting the moral sense of the community, and only abstaining from giving effect to that sense by penal law, in so far as it may labour under an incapacity for doing so :• Fit retribution by the moral code

Determined, lies beyond the State's embrace;
Yet, as she may for each peculiar case,
She plants well-measured terrors in the road
Of wrongful acts. Downward it is and broad,
And the main fear once doomed to banishment,
Far oftener then, bad ushering worse event,
Blood would be spilt, that in his dark abode
Crime might lie better hid. And should the change

Take

Take from the horror due to a foul deed,
Pursuit and evidence so far must fail,
And Guilt escaping, Passion then might plead
In angry spirits for her old free range,
And the "wild justice of Revenge" prevail.'
Though to give timely warning and deter
Is one great aim of penalty, extend
Thy mental vision farther, and ascend
Far higher, else full surely shalt thou err.
What is a State? The wise behold in her
A creature born of Time, that keeps one eye
Fixed on the statutes of Eternity,

To which her judgments reverently defer:

Speaking through Law's dispassionate voice, the State
Indues her conscience with external life

And being-to preclude or quell the strife

Of individual will, to elevate

The grovelling mind, the erring to recall,
And fortify the moral sense of all.'

In the tenth, the religious view is resumed:

'Our bodily life, some plead, that life the shrine
Of an immortal spirit, is a gift

So sacred, so informed with light divine,
That no tribunal, though most wise to sift
Deed and intent, should turn the being adrift
Into that world where penitential tear

May not avail, nor prayer have for God's ear
A voice-that world whose veil no hand can lift
For earthly sight. "Eternity and time,"

They urge, "have interwoven claims and rights,
Not to be jeopardized through foulest crime:
The sentence rule by mercy's heaven-born lights."
Even so; but measuring not by finite sense
Infinite Power, perfect Intelligence.'

In the eleventh and twelfth the alternatives of secondary punishment are adverted to-solitary imprisonment and transportation. One-half of the question respecting punishment by death turns, no doubt, upon a comparison of it with other punishments; but these must be punishments of which we have experience in this country, or in some country in a similar social state. For as to American experience, which was often referred to a few years ago, we believe it is now acknowledged to be inapplicable; and as to mere visions of a preventive and reformatory efficacy in untried methods of punishing crime, they may lead to inventions or experiments, and the result may possibly be the discovery of a preferable substitute for punishment by death; but, until the disco

very shall have been made, and shall have been tried and proved by an adequate experience, to say that methods ought to be discovered which no man has yet succeeded in discovering, is no argument for the precedent abolition of the method which exists: yet this was the whole drift of the argumentation of Mr. Kelly and his friends on this part of the subject.

With regard to imprisonment, the "Silent System" may be considered as justly renounced by all competent authorities on the subject.* Nature is too strong for it, and the attempt to permit society, yet forbid communication, results in perpetual endeavours at evasion on the part of the prisoners, by which their minds are kept in a fraudulent state, and which can be met only by such incessant severities on the part of the prison officers as must keep their minds in a state almost equally to be avoided. The "Separation System" will be tried more fully than it has yet been, by the model prison now in course of construction. It will produce, we conceive, as many different results as there are differences in men. Our impression is, that in the majority of cases violent passions will be tamed by it, some vicious propensities subdued, and the mind reduced to a weak, blank, and negative condition. But this, though good as far it goes, is in truth merely a work of destruction; the work of reformation is yet to be begun; and towards this, though books, tracts, and chaplains may do much for the moment (and we are far from undervaluing even a transitory moral impression), yet the dispositions of the mind which are thus nurtured must not be accounted for virtues. It is only by the exercise of virtue that virtue can be cultivated; and virtue can have no exercise in solitude-in the absence of all social relations, of all transactions, of all temptations, and even of the power and opportunity of doing evil. That which purifies us is trial,' says Milton,* and trial is by what is contrary.' This is yet to come when the solitary imprisonment ends; and when that term arrives, the prisoner is sent forth into a world of which the wicked portion only will receive him, in the infancy of his virtue-a moral weakling.

With regard to the alternative of transportation, the Archbishop of Dublin's pamphlet, in 1832, seems to have been fatal to the system as it was then conducted, and at the same time to have raised the most serious doubts whether it could ever be conducted in a manner to give it preventive efficacy. Lord John Russell appears by his instructions to the Commissioners on Criminal Law to have been persuaded that these doubts might be set aside; but even admitting that it may be or has been made a formidable punishment, there remain objections of great force derived from

*See the Reports of the Home Inspectors of Prisons for 1837-8.