to health. While they were treated with a sufficient degree of severity to render their prison an undesirable place, they would still be regarded as men, with human sensibilities, emotions, and wants, and with strong claims upon the compassion of their fellow-men. Confinement without hope of release is indeed a terrible penalty; but the human mind is endowed with a wonderful elasticity, by which it can accommodate itself to every mode of existence. Long-continued

calamity ceases to be felt as such. To one who knows that a little cell is henceforth to be all the world to him, that cell becomes a world, -the very spiders and flies that people it become companions and objects of intense interest and sympathy. While no space is too large for man's ambition, none is too small to furnish him room for mental action, to gratify his affections, and to afford comfort and enjoyment. And thus the imprisonment which we would propose for the murderer, while it would be terrible in prospect, grievous in its commencement, would, through the power of habit, daily become less and less irksome; so that the prisoner would be at the same time kept from doing farther mischief, held up as a frightful example to those who would fain be his followers in iniquity, and placed where the intensity of his sufferings would be constantly decreasing, and his few sources of enjoyment increasing.

The last advantage of this mode of punishment that we shall mention is that it allows the criminal opportunity to reform and to prepare for death. And this with Christian legislators should be a most weighty consideration. Whether the murderer live a few days more or less, whether he suffer a little more or less anguish, is of small moment compared with the inquiry, whether he shall be hurried into eternity from the midst of his iniquity, or whether he shall be allowed, remote from temptation, to form and cherish, if he will, good resolutions and principles, to receive instruction concerning his highest interests, and to acquire Christian trust and hope. We have little confidence in the Christian character formed between the sentencing and the execution of a criminal. That brief interval, with so awful a catastrophe in near prospect, is no time for discharging a work which demands the concentrated energies of the soul, and for which the longest life is not too long. Now the punishment which we would have substituted for that of death, would allow

its subjects the usual period of human life as a season of preparation for eternity. It would remove them from the solicitations of sin. It would cut them off from the society of their former companions in guilt, and would restrict or prevent (as is done in several state-prisons in our country) their intercourse with each other. Their reformation would be one of its prime ends, an end, the accomplishment of which, in numerous instances, we doubt not that eternity would attest. And for this reason, if for no other, might the proposed change commend itself to every Christian philanthropist.

If the reasoning of the preceding pages have been in the main correct, we are prepared to acquiesce in the conclusion that it is inexpedient to punish murder capitally; and to pass to the consideration of our third question.

III. Are there any cases in which it is expedient to inflict capital punishment?

We answer that, in a time of peace and public tranquillity, and among the regular members of a community, there are no such cases. But there may be offences against military discipline and good faith, which no other punishment can effectually prevent. The ringleaders of a mutiny in an army self-defence would require the officers to punish in this way. Desertion for fear of death in a hazardous service could be prevented only by making death the penalty for it. And in fine, constant subordination being indispensable among troops on actual duty, it may be generally necessary to punish capitally great or long-continued insubordination. But the taking of life by martial law should not be regarded as equitable in the abstract, as a penalty in strict justice proportioned to the heinousness of the offence. Nor should the offending soldier be put to death under circumstances of disgrace or ignominy. But he should be regarded in the same light with the invading or invaded enemy, as one who has himself done nothing to merit the death which he is made to suffer, but whose destruction, in the unfortunate exigency of the case, the law of self-preservation requires. It must indeed be regarded as one of the most lamentable circumstances attending the unnatural state of war, that the governments engaged in it are obliged for a time to place a portion of their citizens out of the jurisdiction of equity and law, and under the arbitrary control of perhaps the least humane and honest of their

fellow-citizens. And this circumstance, if no other, should lead the philanthropist to wish ardently for the arrival of the day, when Christianity shall have accomplished its benevolent design of establishing peace upon earth.

Some cases of treason may also demand capital punishment. If a man, though deprived of liberty have such power and connexions as to endanger the public safety, if his mere existence is perilous to the community, it is right that he should be put to death. Thus the Bourbon family, after their second restoration to the throne of France, would have been justified (if the British government had permitted it) in procuring the death of Napoleon in his rocky prison at St. Helena. He had once emerged from a place of actual, if not nominal, confinement, and usurped their quietly reëstablished government. He had shown them that to conquer, disarm, and banish him, was not to deprive him of his power. He had connexions who were capable of making interest for him as long as he lived, and who in the hope of reinstating him in power, and themselves through him, would strive to the utmost to produce a revolution in his favor. He had numerous friends in all parts of the kingdom, and among all ranks of the citizens, to whom in any season of political excitement his very name would be a watch-word, and the mere idea that he was in the land of the living a rallying point. His death, then, could the Bourbons have procured it, would have been for the stability of their government, and the welfare of their subjects. This, we know, is an extreme case. But in every civil commotion, in every insurrection, there is commonly some leader, whose popularity has excited and cherished it, whose apprehension and confinement would only inflame the minds of his followers still more and produce an attempt at rescue, and whose very existence would prevent the return of that tranquillity which his death would at once restore. And in such a case, it would be expedient to sacrifice the leader to the safety of the followers, and to the public quiet. But let him not be put to an ignominious death; for he may not deserve it. He may have gained his influence by splendid talents and virtues. He may have wielded it in a cause which he thinks just, in favor of an innovation which he thinks that the public good demands, or against practices or laws which he thinks oppressive. At any rate his crime is not one which necessarily

implies moral turpitude. Let him then be sacrificed rather than punished.

We have thus completed the plan which we sketched at the commencement of this article; and now beg leave to offer in a summary form our opinion on the whole subject.

1. It is inexpedient to punish capitally aggressions upon property unattended by murder. These should be punished by imprisonment, in duration and severity in each instance apportioned to the heinousness of the offence.

2. It is inexpedient to punish murder capitally. But this should be punished by imprisonment for life to hard labor without the possibility of pardon. And it would be well, we think, to punish the murderer still farther by making him civilly dead, that is, by dissolving the matrimonial contract, and letting his goods pass through the hands of an administrator to his heirs, as if he were actually dead.

3. Capital punishment should be inflicted only upon soldiers guilty of heinous offences against military discipline, and upon popular and influential ring-leaders in civil commotions and rebellions, and in these cases not as an ignominious punishment, but as an act of social self-defence.

In preparing the foregoing remarks, we have of course made free use of the labors of others. We would particularly express our obligations to the Committee of the House of Representatives for the able Report placed at the head of this article, and to the gentleman whose name stands the second on this Committee for a series of papers in "The Salem Gazette," in which he contends, with characteristic simplicity and force, for the entire abolition of capital punishment. If this cause, of the excellence of which we are fully convinced, shall be in any measure advanced by our present labors, we shall feel that they are amply rewarded.

ART. IV. Poems, by Miss H. F. GOULD. Second Edition, with Additions. Boston. Hilliard, Gray, & Co. 1833. 18mo. pp. 224.

It is impossible to find fault with Miss Gould's poetry. It is so sweet and unpretending, so pure in purpose and so

gentle in expression, that criticism is disarmed of all severity, and engaged to say nothing of it but good. It is poetry for a sober, quiet, kindly-affectioned, Christian heart. It is poetry for a united family circle, in their hours of peace and leisure. For such companionship it was made, and into such it will find, and has found, its way.

The pieces contained in this volume, as is common in collections of the kind, are of various degrees of merit. They were brought together by near friends of the author, who could not part lightly with any production of her pen, nor select with the coolness of indifferent persons, from the whole number before them. We cannot blame them for this, but rather yield them our sympathy, because we feel that under similar circumstances we should do the same.

A great proportion of these pieces are remarkable for presenting a single impressive thought or incident in a succession of natural lights, and leaving an undivided moral effect on the mind of the reader. What a touching picture of a solitary midnight occupation, is presented in the following lines.

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"THE ROBE.

*"'T was not the robe of state,

Which the high and the haughty wear,
That my busy hand, as the lamp burnt late,
Was hastening to prepare.

"It had no clasp of gold,

No diamond's dazzling blaze

For the festive board; nor the graceful fold
To float in the dance's maze.

""T was not to wrap the breast,
With gladness light and warm,

For the bride's attire.

for the joyous guest;

Nor to clothe the sufferer's form.