of insecurity in which men were placed by some of these fatal errours in the administration of justice in France, is strongly exemplified by the saying of a man of considerable eminence in that country; who declared, that if he were accused of stealing the towers of Notre Dame, he would consult his safety by flight rather than risque the event of a trial, though the crime imputed to him was manifestly impossible.

Dr. Paley goes on to observe," that courts of justice should not be deterred from the application of their own rules of adjudication, by every suspicion of danger, or by the mere possibility of confounding the innocent with the guilty.”—And in this observation every body must agree with him. If courts of justice were never to inflict punishment where there was a possibility of the accused being innocent, no punishment would in any case be inflicted. In those instances in which the proof of guilt seems to be most complete, the utmost that can be truly affirmed of it is, that it amounts to a very high probability :-no truth, that depends on human testimony, can ever be properly said to be demonstrated. Human witnesses may utter falsehood, or may be deceived. Even where there have been a number of concurrent and unconnected circumstances, which have appeared inexplicable upon any hypothesis but that of the accused being guilty, it has yet sometimes been made evident that he was innocent. Nay, in some instances where men have borne evidence against themselves, and have made a spontaneous confession of the crimes imputed to them; not only they were not, but they could not be guilty, the crimes confessed being impossible. With the wisest laws, and the most perfect administration of them, the innocent may sometimes be doomed to suffer the fate of the guilty; for it were vain to hope, that from any human institution, all errour can be excluded.-Yet these are considerations which are calculated very strongly to impress upon courts of justice, not indeed that they "should be deterred from the application of their own rules of adjudication;" but that they should use the utmost care and circumspection in the application of those rules; that in a state of things where they are so liable to errour, they cannot be too anxious to guard against it; and that if it be a gi publick evil, as it undoubtedly is, that the guilty should escape, it is a publick evil of much greater magnitude, that the innocent should suffer. It should be recollected too, that the object of penal

laws, is the protection and security of the innocent; that the punishment of the guilty is resorted to only as the means of attaining that object. When, therefore, the guilty escape, the law has merely failed of its intended effect; it has done no good, indeed, but it has done no harm. But when the innocent become the victims of the law, the law is not merely inefficient, it does not merely fail of accomplishing its intended object; it injures the persons it was meant to protect, it creates the very evil it was to cure, and destroys the security it was made to preserve.

"They ought rather," continues Paley, "to reflect, that he who falls by a mistaken sentence, may be considered as falling for his country, whilst he suffers under the operation of those rules, by the general effect and tendency of which the welfare of the community is maintained and upheld.”—Nothing is more easy than thus to philosophize and act the patriot for others; and to arm ourselves with topicks of consolation, and reasons for enduring with fortitude the evils to which, not ourselves, but others are exposed. I doubt, however, very much, whether this is attended with any salutary effects.-Instead of endeavouring thus to extenuate and to reconcile to the minds of those who sit in judgment upon their fellow-creatures so terrible a calamity, as a mistake in judicature to the injury of the innocent; it would surely be a wiser part to set before their eyes all the consequences of so fatal an errour in their strong but real colours. To represent to them, that of all the evils which can befal a virtuous man, the very greatest is to be condemned, and to suffer a publick punishment as if he were guilty. To see all his hopes and expectations frustrated; all the prospects in which he is indulging, and the pursuits which he is following, for the benefit, perhaps, of those who are dearer to him than himself, brought to a sudden close; to be torn from the midst of his family; to witness the affliction they suffer; and to anticipate the still deeper affliction that awaits them: not to have even the sad consolation of being pitied; to see himself branded with publick ignominy; to leave a name which will only excite horrour or disgust; to think that the children he leaves behind him, must, when they recal their father's memory, hang down their heads with shame; to know that even if at some distant time it should chance that the truth should be made. evident, and that justice should be done to his name, still that his blood will have been shed uselessly for mankind; that his

melancholy story will serve wherever it is told, only to excite alarm in the bosoms of the best members of society, and to encourage the speculations for evading the law, in which wicked men may indulge.

Let us represent to ourselves the judges who condemned Calas to die, apologizing for their conduct with the reasoning of Paley: Admitting that it was a great misfortune to the individual, but none to the publick; and that even to the individual the misfortune was greatly alleviated by the reflection, that his example would tend to deter parents in future from embruing their hands in the blood of their children, and that in his instance the sufferings of the innocent would prevent the crimes of those who had a propensity to guilt :-With what horrour and disgust would not every well formed mind shrink from such a defence!

When we are weighing the evil of the punishment of one innocent man against that of the impunity of ten who are guilty; we ought to reflect, that the suffering of the innocent is generally attended in the particular instance with the escape of the guilty. Instances have, indeed, occurred like that which I have already mentioned of Calas; where a man has been offered up as a sacrifice to the laws, though the laws had never been violated: where the tribunals have committed the double mistake of supposing a crime where none had been committed, and of finding a criminal where none could exist. These, however, are very gross, and therefore very rare examples of judicial errour. In most cases the crime is ascertained; and to discover the author of it is all that remains for investigation; and in every such case, if there follow an erroneous conviction, a two-fold evil must be incurred, the escape of the guilty, as well as the suffering of the innocent.-Perhaps amidst the crowd of those who are gazing upon the supposed criminal, when he is led out to execution, may be lurking the real murderer; who, while he contemplates the fate of the wretch before him, reflects with seorn upon the imbecility of the law; and becomes more hardened, and derives more confidence in the dangerous career upon which he has entered.

** Propulsaque robore denso

Sustinuit se Silva cadens. LUCAN 111. 445.

IMPARTIALITY.

A WRITER destitute of prejudices is seldom met with. On this account we never know what degree of credit to attach to the writings of historians and biographers; so prone are they to be drawn into extremes by undue partiality or aversion. Several recent histories of courts and cabinets, drawn up from political motives, present us with such enormous and incre dible details of guilt and folly, as cannot fail to provoke the incredulity of any unbiassed or discriminating mind. Had one half of the vices and faults enumerated been intermixed with an equal number of probable circumstances, the object of such works would be much more extensively answered, and we should not be induced to confound truth and errour in indiscriminate neglect. After Pierre Matthieu had been employ ed by Henry IV. of France to write his memoirs, he was one day reading to that monarch a portion of the work, in which he had descanted rather liberally on his well known attachment to the fair sex. The king at first interrupted him with some anger, but afterwards rocollecting himself, he said "It is right; if you are silent on our faults, nobody will believe the rest."

MOTTOS.

THERE is something peculiarly appropriate in the double application of these mottos.

On a Coal and a Poet.

Sepelitur, ut vivat.

On a Peacock and a Noisy Woman.
Ut placeat, taceat.

MIRACULOUS CURES

HAVE been, in modern times, boasted of as tending to lessen the belief in the Gospel history. An imposture of a laughable kind is recorded by Jortin. "An old woman, who had sore eyes, purchased an amulet, or charm, written upon a bit of parchment, and wore it about her neck, and was cured. A female neighbour, labouring under the same disorder, came to beg the charm of her.

She would by no

means part with it, but permitted her to get it copied out. A poor school-boy was hired to do it for a few pence. He looked it over very attentively, and found it to consist of characters which he could not make out; but not being willing to lose his pay, he wrote thus: The Devil pick out this old woman's eyes, and stuff up the holes. The patient wore it

about her neck, and was cured.

ERROURS OF THE PRESS

SOMETIMES Combine ideas as incongruous as the visions of a lover, they will be found thick enough in almost any English book printed in the seventeenth century; and not unfrequently in our newspapers a blunder gives more pleasure than a bon mot. In an early edition of Dryden's Virgil, v. 308. of Georg. I. is thus printed:

And Argos and the Dog forsake the northern sphere.

The poet had probably placed a comma after Argo, which comma the printer mistook for an s, and thus placed among the constellations a city instead of a ship. The printers' boy once brought me a proof sheet, one sentence of which ended with proper names, as of Aquinas and Duns Scotus. But this latter, was given Tom Bogus, and he had carefully annexed a quere in the margin. In line fifth of page 341 of the last volume of the Anthology, the sonorous quotation from Milton was most perversely burlesqued by changing "fatal guly dragons" into "fatal July dragons," which equals any metamorphosis of Ovid, or a modern pantomime.

PHILOLOGY.

BAYLE, enumerating the new taxes invented by Louis XIV. and the uncouth names by which they went, says, "Here are words admirably suited to impoverish subjects, and to enrich dictionaries." I wish our legislators would foresee their danger.

BAN.

CONRAD II. commonly called the Salique, son of Herman, duke of Franconia, was elected king of Germany in 1024. He had to contend against the united force of his barons, who revolted from him. Ernestus, of Suabia, was placed under the ban of the Empire. He is one of the first examples of this species of proscription, and the formular, by which it was executed, is one of the most singular reliques of the barbarous