lerius Publicola, and again by Valerius Corvus; and that after its revival under the tribuneship of M. Porcius Lecca it became obsolete again, and was subsequently renewed for the fourth time by Sempronius Gracchus, after which it fell again into disuse,-and that of course the administration of criminal justice at Rome was never for any considerable period restrained by the limitation of this law? Does he know too that those who are most competent to form a correct opinion upon the subject, suppose that the law, while in force, only forbade the execution of a Roman citizen who had been condemned by a magistrate, and that it was not intended to apply to such as had been cast in an appeal from his sentence? If he did not know these things, we hope he will look beyond Adams' Roman Antiquities, to which he refers us for information, before he again undertakes to shed light upon our path from the history of Rome.

But we have more history still. "The Empress Elizabeth of Russia, on ascending the throne, pledged herself never to inflict the punishment of death; and throughout her reign, twenty years, she kept the noble pledge." We know that Elizabeth made this pledge, but where did Mr. O'Sullivan learn that she kept it? We have never met with any authority for it but Voltaire, who says, 'she kept her word;' but a man who never kept his own word when it suited his purpose to break it, is not an unexceptionable witness on behalf of others. It is well known now, that many executions occurred under the reign of this Empress-we do not know how many, for despotic governinents publish no registers of the deaths they inflict. Mr. O'Sullivan adds, that so satisfactory was found the operation of the immunity from death by judicial sentence, that Elizabeth's successor, "the great Catharine, adopted it into her celebrated Code of Laws, with the exception of very rare cases of offence against the state." From that day to this, he informs us, there have been but two occasions on which the punishment of death has been inflicted in Russia. The code of Catharine does indeed breathe a spirit of clemency, but a clemency that extends only to the expiation of wrongs committed by one of her subjects against another. To hold such wrongs in light esteem, and make them easy of atonement, may well consist with the policy of a despotic government. Her royal clemency indicates an indifference to human life instead of a high regard for it. Whoever will take the pains to compare the sixteenth chapter of Beccaria's work on Punishment,

with sect. 4, art. 10, of the Instructions of Catharine, will be at no loss to discover the probable motives which led to the institution of her Criminal Code. She has borrowed the ideas, and sometimes the very words of Beccaria, taking good care, however, to leave out every thing touching the social compact, the surrender of the "minime porzioni" of personal rights, and the limitations of the sovereign authority.

The work of Beccaria had been recently published, and was attracting much attention. Its doctrines had been espoused by the French school of infidels, who were at that time the savans of Europe. Catharine, who was in close correspondence with them, was ambitious of establishing a reputation in philosophy, as well as war; and, to this end, she issued her "Instructions pour dresser la Code de Russie," in which she is philosophically clement, so far as the punishment of wrongs between man and man is concerned, but sufficiently rigid in stationing the ministers of death around the throne. If this explanation is more uncharitable than Mr. O'Sullivan's, it has the merit of being more consistent with the known character of this Empress,-one of the most abandoned sovereigns that ever disgraced the seat of empire. She commenced her reign with the murder of her husband and his nephew, and filled it up with acts too abominable to be recited. But whatever may have been the motives which dictated her code, who, besides Mr. O'Sullivan, will vouch for its observance? The edicts of despotic sovereigns are one thing, and their practice another. The same caprice which enacted the law can at any time dispense with its execution; and there is nothing in the character of Catharine to lead us to suppose that she would esteem herself bound by the philosophical flourish of her "Instructions;" nor are there any sources of information from which we can learn whether justice was actually administered in accordance with the criminal code which she established. And how did Mr. O'Sullivan arrive at the knowledge of the fact that "from that day to the present there have been but two occasions on which the punishment of death has been inflicted in Russia." It is now eighty years since Catharine ascended the throne. It would not be an easy matter to ascertain, in our own free country, or in England, how many executions have taken place in the last eighty years. And who has kept statistical tables and brought in reports, of the sentences pronounced and executed throughout the fifty provinces of the vast empire of Russia during this period? Travellers tell us that

the code of Catharine fell, long since, into disuse. And while in force it only nominally exempted the criminal from death; since death, in an aggravated form, was the frequent result of the punishments it prescribed. We have before us now, an account, from an eye-witness, of the punishment of a murderer by the knout, which is too horrible to be quoted in full. The criminal received three hundred and thirtythree blows, each one tearing away the skin to the breadth of the thong, and sinking into the flesh. At the conclusion of this terrible operation his nostrils were torn with pincers, and his face branded with a red hot iron. He was then re-conducted to his prison, to be transported to the mines in Siberia; but upon the most diligent inquiry, it could not be ascertained that any one had seen him afterwards brought out of his prison. But let all this pass. Be it so, that no capital punishments have been inflicted in Russia for the last eighty years. How are we to learn the effects of this remission? Who can tell us whether the lives of men have been safe under this system of indulgence to crime? Where is the record of the number of murders committed during this period? And where is the proof that they would not have been fewer, if even-handed justice had dealt to the murderer his merited doom? The argument from this case breaks down at every point. That cause must be sadly in want of substantial support, which is compelled thus to clutch at shadows.

We had intended to make a similar exposure of all the other historical cases, referred to in this Report. But our limits forbid, and we have already devoted to this part of the argument more space than it intrinsically deserves. The cases given may be taken as a sample of the whole,— erroneous frequently in their facts, and wrong always in the conclusions drawn from them, supposing the facts themselves to be correct. And such must be the end of every attempt to establish, by historical induction, the truth of that which is not, and cannot be true. This part of the discussion is a waste of words. If a man should offer to prove to us from history that the best interests of every state would be promoted by committing its sovereign authority to the hands of a cruel and unprincipled despot, we might very properly decline to follow such an argument, on a question that is already decided, upon principles that are plainer and more certain than any process of reasoning from historical facts can possibly be. And yet we will engage to

make a collection of facts which shall go farther in support of this theory, than any that can be marshalled in favour of the abolition of capital punishment. The considerations. which determine that death is a more effectual preventive of murder than any less punishment, are superior, in their simplicity and certainty, to all historical teaching. They lie in every man's bosom, and close around him. He need not go back to ancient Egypt, nor search abroad among the scarce civilized serfs of Russia, to find them. Let any man ask himself which he would most dread, death or imprisonment, taking his answer not from any casual mood of mind which may now and then rule him, but from his most habitual and prompt fears: let him ask any criminal upon. trial, which he would prefer, a verdict which would send him to the gallows, or one that would permit him to take refuge in the penitentiary. Can there be any doubt that death is the master evil of our lot,--that it is the sorest punishment that human law has the right to inflict, -and that it must be, upon the known and certain principles of human nature, a more efficacious preventive of murder than imprisonment. Whatever efficacy the law exerts in restraining from the perpetration of this crime would be lessened by the proposed diminution of its penalty, as certainly as that theft would increase, if the punishment of the thief were lowered to the restitution of a portion only of the amount stolen. This conclusion cannot be wrong, it is an inference so immediate, from facts and principles that are themselves so elementary and self-evident, that it cannot be involved in the error that is incident to remote deductions from doubtful premises. And if it be a just rule of reasoning, that that which is simple and certain, should be used to illustrate whatever is more complex and obscure, then this truth may lend its aid to the interpretation of historical sequences, but cannot receive its proof or its refutation from them. At least, it never can be refuted by any thing less than an experiment, conducted upon a large scale, protracted through a period long enough to test aud reject every other cause, and leading to results so clear and definite that they can be explained on no other hypothesis. No such experiment has yet been made. Admitting all the facts alleged on the other side, they do not constitute even the beginning of what could be considered an adequate experiment. In the mean time, instead of going back into the dim obscure of a traditional antiquity, or abroad to India, Russia, or Tuscany,

to gather up loose and vague statements of facts, and reason from them upon principles which would equally well warrant us in concluding, that it is the croaking of the frog that brings back the spring, or the singing of the lark that makes the sun to rise; we shall prefer to stand fast by such principles of truth as are given to us immediately by our own nature, and by the sentiments and conduct of all around us. And if we wish the sanction of authority for our opinions, we shall seek it in some higher quarter than among the disciples of an infidel philosophy, that insults God and degrades man, -a philosophy that laying aside all its higher attributes, and wandering from its palace, has gone forth to eat grass as oxen, a philosophy which may chew its cud, and tell us what kind of grass is good, but which can do nothing better, until it regains its reason, as did the degraded monarch of old, by lifting up its eyes unto heaven." And if we are to be influenced by imitation, if "patterns of noble clemency" are to be sought, we shall go somewhere else than to an Empress, who was twice, at least, a murderer of the foulest degree, and always a loathsome adulteress.

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Our ground now is, that society has the right to take away life upon sufficient cause-that death is not an excessive penalty for murder, but, on the contrary, is pointed out by the nature of the crime, and the general judgment of mankind respecting it, as its most fitting punishment-and that this penalty is demanded as the most effectual preventive of the crime. If these several positions are established, as we think they are, then our case is fully made out. Nothing more is necessary to prove the duty of the sovereign authority in every state, to establish and maintain this penalty. Mr. O'Sullivan does indeed demand that besides all this, we should prove, that though capital punishment "does operate to produce that effect, (the prevention of murder), it is not accompanied with other evil consequences, upon the general well-being of society, sufficient to neutralize the amount of advantage which it may be supposed to possess in this respect over all other modes of preventive punishment." That is, if we understand this aright, we must strike the balance upon some such calculation as this. We must find how many murders would be committed within a given territory, say the state of New York, during a definite period, under the reign of capital punishment-we must then find to what number this would be increased within the same territory and period, if capital punishment were supplanted by im