We

be a more effectual restraint upon crime. But we propose to examine the arguments which he has produced to see what weight they ought to have with other minds. shall confine our remarks chiefly to Mr. O'Sullivan's report, because it contains the substance of Mr. Rantoul's, and much more besides.

We do not propose to give a full exposition of the reasons for capital punishment, any farther than these shall be brought out in reply to the objections urged against it. We propose no new measure. We advocate no untried experi

ment. He who comes forward with a novel theory respecting the best mode of preserving human life, should come prepared with the amplest defence of its grounds and the clearest exposition of its tendencies. But in maintaining an institution which has received the assent of all civilized nations from the days of Noah until now, we do all that can be reasonably required of us, when we show the insufficiency of the reasons alleged in behalf of any proposed change.

Mr. O'Sullivan attempts, in the first instance, to invalidate the argument for capital punishment derived from the sacred scriptures. In this he shows his wisdom; for if, as he states, the opinion that the punishment of murder by death has not alone the sanction but the express injunction of divine wisdom, is the basis of nine-tenths of the opposition still to be encountered, in current society, to its abolition, he could not expect to accomplish any good end by his argument until he had first shown the erroneousness of this very general impression. He confesses for himself that if he considered the question under discussion as answered by a divine command, he would not attempt to go farther to consult the uncertain oracles of human reason; and rightly supposing that there is, through the great mass of the community a like reverence for what is esteemed a divine command, his first effort is to expose the popular error on this subject. This is the weakest, and in every way, the least respectable part of his essay.

He attempts, in the first place, to set aside the argument for a divine command enjoining capital punishment for murder, drawn from the Mosaic code. This code he contends was framed for the government of a people ungovernable beyond all others "a nation who at that time probably exceeded any of the present hordes of savages in the wilds of Africa or Tartary, in slavish ignorance, sordid vices,

loathsome diseases and brutal lusts"—and who could only be restrained therefore by institutions of the sternest and most sanguinarycharacter. If the provisions of this 'Draconian code' in relation to the punishment of murder are binding upon us, in the altered state of society as it now exists, then do they equally bind us to inflict capital punishment upon many other offences. Such is his argument. And though we have strong objections to the statements which he makes, copied chiefly from Mr. Rantoul, considered as an exposition of the true character and intent of the Mosaic code, yet we are perfectly willing to admit the force of his argument as au answer to those, if any such there be, who rest the defence of capital punishment upon the statutes of this code. Nor was it at all necessary, in order to give his argument upon this point its full force that he should stigmatize the laws of Moses as containing so many "crude, cruel and unchristian features," and then to cover this rabid violence, reduce these laws, with the exception of the ten commandmeuts, to a level, so far as the Divine agency was concerned in their enactment, with "any other system of laws which the Supreme Governor of the universe has at different times allowed to be framed and applied to practice among nations, by law givers whom we must also regard as the mere instruments in his hands." It is true that in relation to the distinction which is here drawn between the divine origin of the decalogue, and the other parts of the Jewish code, the effect of which is nothing less than to make Moses an unprincipled impostor, Mr. O'Sullivan states that the committee consider it incumbent on them to present it, though they refrain from expressing their opinion respecting it. If Mr. O'Sullivan believes in the justness of this distinction why did he not frankly and fearlessly say so? If he does not believe in it why seek to avail himself of its help? We would as soon confide in a man as our adviser and guide, who would burn down his house to warm his cold hands by, as in one who to gain a small fraction of aid in estab lishing a favourite conclusion would not scruple to make use of arguments, not sincerely believed, the effect of which is to destroy the credibility of no small portion of divine revelation.

We have never met with an argument which professed to derive the obligation to punish murder with death from the Hebrew statutes to that effect. We are perfectly willing to admit that these statutes are of no farther weight in the ar

gument than as a revelation of the will of God that at that time and among that people murder should be thus punished. They constitute a full and sufficient answer to those who deny the right of society to take away life in punishment of crime, but, taken by themselves, they do not prove that it is our duty now, as it was that of the Jews, to punish murder with death, nor even that it is expedient for us thus to punish it. Did the Bible shed no other light upon this question, we should take the fact that among the Jews murder was, by the divine command, punished with death, only as one element in the argument by which we should seek to prove that it was expedient for us to inflict upon it the same penalty.

But there is another statute upon this subject, given long anterior to the Mosaic law, which Mr. O'Sullivan finds it much more difficult to dispose of in accordance with his wishes, though he flatters himself that he has not only "destroyed all its seeming force as an argument in favour of capital punishment, but transferred its application to the other side." We allude, of course, to the directions given to Noah, recorded in the fifth and six verses of the ninth chapter of Genesis.

"And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man." Mr. O'Sullivan's comment upon this passage strikes us as an extrordinary specimen of reasoning.

"The true understanding of this important passage is to be sought in the original Hebrew text, and in a comparison of its terms with the adjacent context. Such an examination will be found to reverse directly the sense in which it is usually received, and to show that our common English version is a clear mistranslation, founded on an ambiguity in the original, which ambiguity has been decided by the first translators, and so left ever since, by the light, or rather by the darkness, of their own preconceived views on this subject-views derived from the established barbarian practice of their time. The word in the Hebrew, (sho-phaich) which is here rendered whoso sheddeth,' is simply the present participle shedding,' in which, in the Hebrew as in the English, there is no distinction of gender. And the word which is rendered his,' (damo,) there being no neuter in that language, may with equal right be rendered its.' The whole passage is therefore fully as well susceptible of the translation, whatsoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall (or may) its blood be shed,'as of that which has been given to it, from no other reason than the prejudice of a foregone conclusion.' Several of the most able commentators on the scriptures give the words virtually the same intepretation; and that profound and learned critic, Michaelis, of Göttingen, in his Commentaries on the laws of Mo

ses, (ch. iv. § 3, art. 274.) says expressly: the sixth verse must be rendered, not whosoever, but, whatsoever sheddeth human blood.'

"The propriety of this correction of our common English version of the pas sage in question will appear very clear, when we collate it with both the preceding and the following words. In the preceding verse, after having alluded to that mystic sanctity of blood, as containing the essential principle of animal life, which we afterwards find so strikingly to pervade the Mosaic sys. tem, the covenant proceeds:

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And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.

"Whoso (whatsoever) sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his (its) blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man?

"The very reason here given for the prohibition of the shedding of the blood of man, is the defacement of the image of its Creator, in the ‘human form divine.' Does this high and sacred principle lose its force or its application, because the criminal may himself have been guilty of a previous outrage upon its sanctity? Can that afford any justification for a repetition of the same outrage upon the same image of God'? Where is the authority for any such as sumption? The distinction here drawn is plain. The beast that sheddeth man's blood, by man' may its blood be shed; but when man's blood is shed by man's brother, 'I' will require it at his hands-by penalties, into the nature of which it is not for us to attempt to penetrate. The object of the whole passage is, clearly, to establish, on the most solemn basis, the great idea of the holiness of the principle of life, and especially human life. The destruction of animal life is permitted for meat,' being prohibited by implication for any other wanton purpose; while its being thus declared forfeited in atonement for the destruction of the life of man, can have no other reason-the brute being incapable of moral guilt-than to strengthen and deepen the idea of the sanctity of that life, in the minds of the human race itself. What can be more absurd than an interpretation which, by authorizing the practice of public judicial murder, in the most deliberate coldness of blood, is directly and fatally subversive of the very essential idea which constitutes the basis of the whole passage! Surely, then, instead of any sanction being afforded by this passage to the infliction of the punishment of death for any human crime-to this defacement and outrage of the image of God,' in the person of man-it passes against that very practice a far more awful sentence of condemnation than any which human reason could have framed, or human lips uttered."

The Hebrew scholar may form from the remark upon "damo" a judgment of Mr. O'Sullivan's fitness to dogmatize so confidently respecting the mistake made by our English translators of the Bible. These translators, however prejudiced they may have been in favour of any barbarian practices of their time, were at least men who knew the difference between a Hebrew noun, and its pronominal suffix. Mr. O'Sullivan quotes the authority of Michaelis for substituting "its" in place of "his" in this passage. It is true that Michaelis advocates this change, but not in the sense for which Mr. O'Sullivan contends. Mr. O'Sullivan's argument requires that the pronoun should be neuter, to the exclusion of the masculine. Michaelis was too profound

and learned a critic to propose any such absurdity as this. He contends that as the original pronoun may be either masculine or neuter, it should be translated by our neuter, that it may include both. His idea of the true meaning of this passage would be accurately expressed, using the plural number instead of the singular, by the translation, "the shedders of blood, by man shall their blood be shed." The use which Michaelis makes of this translation is to extend, instead of lowering and limiting the application of this command, and both he and the readers of this report are unfairly treated when his authority is so disingenuously perverted. This profound critic was learned in the laws of nature, and of nations, as well as in Hebrew etymologies, and he expresses the earnest hope that "none of his readers entertain those new fangled notions of compassion which by way of avoiding capital punishments, condemn delinquents to be cast into prisons and there fed."

But we are told that the "very reason here given for the prohibition of the shedding of the blood of man is the defacement of the image of his Creator," and are asked "whether this high and sacred principle loses its force or its application because the criminal may have himself been guilty of a previous outrage upon its sanctity." It is really difficult to answer such argument as this with the respect that is due to the reasoner, if not to his reasoning. If it should be proposed to punish the man who has injured the property of another by a fine, that is by taking away from him against his will, a certain portion of his own property, would it not be thought a piece of effrontery rather than an argument in the opposer who should contend that this would be an outrage upon the same sacred right of property which the criminal had himself violated? Or would it be deemed a valid argument against punishing the crime of false imprisonment by the imprisonment of the offender, that the punishment would infringe the same inherent right to liberty, the violation of which constitutes the offence? If in favour of such punishment, there should be urged the great importance of the right of personal liberty and the heinousness of any outrage upon it, would all this be turned not aside but upon the other side of the question, by simply asking, "whether this high and sacred principle loses any of its force because the criminal may himself have been guilty of a previous outrage upon its sanctity." The understandings of our legislators must be rated at a low standard by any