port of law in its dignity, the strength of the government, the confirmation and support of virtue, and the restraint of vice.

Other crimes, again, are of such a nature, or committed under such circumstances, that the reformation of the offender may be the principal thing for which punishment is regarded. But it is evident that there are crimes so dreadful, as to make it necessary that justice and the good of society solely shall be considered.

If now all these three ends of the punishment of crime could be always attained together, it would be the very perfection. of criminal jurisprudence; but it is very far from being the perfection of criminal jurisprudence to have it as mild as possible. There are ends to be attained much higher and more important than that of mildness and benevolence to the offender.

Yet even in the punishment of a murderer by death it is possible to unite all the three objects of the law, justice, the good of society, and the reformation of the

offender. Not indeed his reformation in point of morality merely, or his living a moral life as a correct member of society; for this the alternative of perpetual imprisonment contemplates as an impossibility, even if the punishment of death were abolished; but his spiritual and eternal reformation, his repentance towards God, a deep and holy change in his character, the pardon of his sins through faith in the blood of his Saviour, and a preparation to meet God and be blessed in his presence. This the sparing of his life in imprisonment might utterly prevent, when the sentence of death might have been the means of a hardened criminal's conversion.

CHAPTER IX.

Fearfulness and efficacy of the punishment by death.— Causes of the dread of death.-Prospect of the guilty in Eternity.-Objection considered, of cutting off the criminal in his sins.-The answer of Grotius.—Answer from fact and experience.-Also from the Divine providence and from expediency.-Objection considered, of the unwillingness of juries to convict in cases of murder.

SOME men argue that punishment by death is not, after all, so severe and terrible, as to make it of all modes of punishment the most efficacious to deter men from crime. It is asserted that hardened villains, for example, fear death very little, and that to some the idea of imprisonment for life is far more terrific. Now we do not believe there is an individual in existence, who, if the alternative were presented of choice between an ignominious death and imprisonment for life, would not choose the latter. There are degrees

in the fear of death, and some men are more afraid to die than others, whose preparation for death is no better than their own; but in proportion as the laws are well administered, the tone of moral sentiment healthful, a good common school education prevalent, and the Sabbath well observed in any community, death will be regarded by all as the last and most terrible of punishments to a criminal. Skin for skin, all that a man hath, will he give for his life; a true proverb, and not the less correct, because uttered by the father of lies, himself a murderer from the beginning. There is no passion so strong as the love of life. The aphorism of Lord Bacon is not true, that "there is no passion so weak but mates and masters it." There is no grasp so tenacious as that with which men hold on to life; no delusion more powerful, than that which makes them count upon long years of life in store, though living quite unfurnished for the world to come.

All men think all men mortal but

themselves.

Hand in hand with this love of life goes the delusion that life will be preserved, even when, for the indulgence of passion, it is hazarded. When a man is under the influence of any passion that is said to "mate and master" the love of life, it is not the loss of life, the issue of death, that the passion contemplates, but the accomplishment of some scheme, the gratification of some desire, that will render life itself more agreeable.

The man

expects to have his life continued.

Be

cause a passion leads a man to incur danger, to put himself in a situation where life may be lost, it proves by no means that the love of life is overcome by the passion; the passion itself grows out of the love of life, life in a particular desired way. The possibility of dying is not the hazard on which a man stakes the indulgence of his will in this sort of gambling, but the probability of living; life itself, in greater enjoyment, is his inducement for the stake.

We remember to have been very much struck with the death-scene of a celebrat