executions to their commission, and wicked as "A witch is a person that hath conference with the have been the judges in their interpretation there-devill, to consult with him, or to do some act," but of, they still were merciful in comparison to the without using the name of God for that purpose. awful punishment prescribed for treason, to the "An inchanter," as the derivation of the word sigterror of which Carthagenian cruelty and savage ingenuity may be defied to produce a parallel. Sir William Blackstone thus describes the punishment of high treason. 1st. That the offender be drawn to the gallows, and not be carried, or walk. 2nd. That he be hanged by the neck, and cut down alive. 3d. That his entrails be taken out and burned while he is yet alive. 4th. That his head be cut off. 5th. That his body be divided into four parts. 6th. That his head and quarters be at the king's disposal.

This formerly was the regular execution, but in modern times the king has always remitted all but the beheading,

nifies, "is he, or she, who by songs adjures the devill" to do some act. A sorcerer was one who became conversant with futurity by means of demoniacal songs. That we may know how profoundly these offences were believed in, and with what abhorrence they were regarded, it is sufficient to remember that Lord Coke ranks them the fifth in point of atrocity; and considers murder, theft, robbery and piracy, as offences of an inferior grade. For the amusement of such as are curious about this branch of the law, a part of a statute passed in the first year of the reign of James I, is inserted, which serves as an historical description of the nature of the aforesaid crimes, and also to show the pious horror in which they were held.

A yet further punishment awaited the unfortunate malefactor. All his real and personal estate "If any person or persons shall use, practice, or was forfeited to the crown, his wife lost her dower, exercise any invocation, or conjuration of any evill his children became base and ignoble, and the blood and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, of his posterity stained and corrupted, through all entertaine, employ, feed, or reward, any evill or time to come. My Lord Coke assigns this as the wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose, or reason of the punishment, (for there is nothing in take up any dead man, woman, or childe, out of his, the law for which he would not either find or make her, or their grave, or any other place where the a reason,) namely-" That his body, lands, goods, dead bodie resteth, or the skin, bone, or any part posterity, &c. shall be torn, pulled asunder and of a dead person, to be employed, or used in any destroyed, that intended to tear and destroy the manner of witchcraft, sorcerey, charme, or inchantmajesty of government.' So much of the punishment, or shall use, practice, or exercise any witchment as inflicted a corruption of blood on the pos- craft, inchantment, charme, or sorcerey, whereby terity, and a forfeiture of lands and goods, was abolished in the wise reign of Queen Anne; and from that time the innocent have been protected from the punishment which was due to the guilty only. Forfeiture and attainder have been done away with likewise in most felonies, by recent acts of parliament-so that the punishments in those offences have been pruned of those luxuriant branches that were engrafted on it by cruelty and ava- Apostacy, or a renunciation of Christianity, was rice; and are now only used to remove, by the punished by a like death, until the reign of William easiest death, a culprit from a world which he III, when only those who publicly denied the dishowed himself unfit to live in, and to afford an ex-vinity of Christ were punished, for the first offence, ample to deter others from similar vices, which are by incapacity to hold any office of trust or honor; and the two legitimate objects of capital executions.

The judgment in high treason against a woman, was, that she be drawn to the stake and burnt alive; and this was the practice from the remotest antiquity, until a statute was passed in the thirtieth year of the reign of George III, which changed it to hanging.

any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his, or her bodie, or any part thereof," he shall, on conviction, be adjudged a felon and punished with death, which death was burning at the stake. In the ninth year of the reign of George II, the offence was abolished, and the statute book purged of a memorable record of folly and inhumanity.

for the second, by imprisonment for three years. This, it must be acknowledged, is a great improvement; but still the law is susceptible of further modification, until all restraints are thrown off the conscience of man, and he is allowed to feel no necessity for acknowledging the truth of Revelation, except the obligation to yield to the dictates of reason and the force of evidence.

The more elevated wisdom of modern times holds in contempt the superstition of our ignorant Heresy is a kindred sin, and punished in the ancestry, who devoutly believed in the existence of same way; its definition, and the expiation being witchcraft, conjuration, sorcery and enchantment, equally abhorrent to humanity and that religion four distinct offences, but generally confounded, which it professed to protect—which wants no proand understood to be synonymous. According to tection-which depends upon no arm for defence Coke, "a conjurer is he that by the holy and pow-save its own-which is alike invulnerable to the erfull names of Almighty God, invokes and conjures wit of the jester, the ridicule of the ignorant, and the devill to consult with him, or to do some act." the sophistry of the learned. It is defined to be

a renunciation of certain tenets held by the church; | the charge laid in the indictment. To prevent this and was punishable not only when the essentials forfeiture, and a corruption of the blood of his poswere denied, but when the most unimportant doc- terity-to preserve his wife and children from being trines were questioned; and what those doctrines involved in ruin with himself, by a reduction to abwere, with which every man's faith was required solute beggary-to prevent his offspring from being to correspond, was left to the discretion of the ec- bastardized, the hardy sinner would refuse to plead clesiastical judge; who was thus constituted inter- to the accusation. The lord, thus thwarted in his preter-general for the kingdom, and invested with avaricious schemes, had recourse to the peine forte little less than authority enough to fabricate and et dure, which, to the enduring dishonor of the establish as the legal religion, any systems he English code, became the universal practice and chose, which his successor tomorrow might abo- acknowledged law of the realm. Whether it was lish and replace with others-his own peculiar off-introduced by statute, or is a part of the common spring. This would do very well if man could di- law, is uncertain: at any rate it was known in the vest himself of his responsibility to his Maker; and early part of the reign of Edward I. The judgif there could be concentrated in the ecclesiastical ment for standing mute was as follows, according judge, as the representative of all those for whom to Sir William Blackstone: "That the prisoner he interpreted the Scriptures, the flashes of Divine shall be remanded to the prison from whence he indignation brought down from Heaven by the crimes and infidelity of men. But as there is individual responsibility not transferable, it is but reasonable that each one should be allowed to meet that accountability, as his judgment and conscience shall declare best. The ecclesiastic having examined into the state of the accused's mind, certifies his judgment to the civil tribunals, whence a writ de heretico combruendo issues, and the man who had the honesty and the courage to avow opinions, formed by the best light which Heaven afforded him, was doomed to die an ignominious death, which equalled in cruelty the most savage tortures that the ingenuity of an American Indian ever devised to murder a captive foe. A statute, passed in the second year of the reign of Henry IV, denominates those persons heretics who are "teachers of erroneous opinions, contrary to the faith and blessed determinations of the holy church.”

came, and put into a low, dark chamber, and there be laid on his back, on the bare floor, naked, unless where decency forbids; that there be placed on his body as great a weight of iron as he can bear, and more; that he shall have no sustenance, save only on the first day, three morsels of the worst bread; and, on the second day, three draughts of standing water that shall be nearest to the prison-door; and in this situation this shall be alternately his daily diet, till he dies, as the judgment now runs, though formerly it was, till he answered."

The melancholy fact is recorded, that there have been instances where this horrible agony has been endured forty days before death came to relieve the wretched man, by removing him from his merciless tormentors. The subject, writhing under the peine forte et dure, might applaud the mercy of the Carthagenian senate, manifested in the butchery of Regulus, and envy his comparatively easy death. In the reign of George III, it was abolished.

The advancing civilization of England has exorcised the horrible punishment prescribed for heresy, and substituted for it the pains and penalties The rack or torture was a means resorted to, to affixed to apostacy. Various other modifications constrain a confession. This species of trial, the of the law restricting the freedom of religious eulogists and apologists of the English jurispruopinions, have more recently been made; and we dence have attempted to prove is unknown to the may believe others will be made, until the con- law, but an excrescence which attached itself to it, science of man shall be absolutely disenthralled generated under the unwholesome influence of the from the tyranny of an established religion, and he full brightness of despotic sway, when an unclouded be permitted to measure his faith by a standard of tyranny shone upon the island. The pernicious his own selection, and demonstrate the presence of mistletoe does not more surely suck up the healththat faith by whatever forms and ceremonies his ful humors of the oak and eat away its life, than imagination shall suggest, and his reason approve. would such a species of trial (if that may be called Having mentioned some of the offences known a trial, which is at once accusation, conviction, to the laws of England, and the punishments inci-judgment and execution,) utterly weaken, rot, and cent to them, we proceed to take a hasty view of finally destroy all justice in judicature, and liberty the trial.

in the people. It, however, certainly was pracWe have said that many crimes of a trivial charac- tised in many reigns, and the right to exercise it ter were made felonies, in order to secure to the was never questioned until in that of Charles I, barons the forfeiture of their subfeudatories' lands. when the twelve judges unanimously declared it to But a forfeiture could only ensue upon a trial and be illegal and unknown to the laws; since when its conviction, and there could be no trial until the ac- use has never been justified.

cused had pleaded; that is, had either acknowledged The admirers of the philosopher Bacon, (I say his guilt, or asserted his innocence by a denial of the philosopher Bacon, for the politician Bacon,

and the lawyer Bacon had and has none) must for- | passion by the rebellion of his subjects; but the soever mourn that so wise, and indeed I may add lemn charge of a nation's infamy made by the nation. so humane a man, could ever consent under any It was a filing of a bill of indictment against itself: temptation to authorize by his high name this infa-felon-like, holding up its right hand; and to the acmous mode of extorting evidence. History tells cusation that came from its own lips pleading guilty. us that " an aged clergyman of the name of Pea- Mr. Hume in his commentary on this passage says: cham was accused of treason on account of some "It must, indeed, be confessed, that such a state passages of a sermon which was found in his of the country required great discretionary power study. The sermon, whether written by him or not, in the sovereign; nor will the same maxims of had never been preached." This aged man was government suit such a rude people, that may be seized by the counsel of Bacon, and put to the tor-proper in a more advanced stage of society. The ture, while he stood by, a witness of the horrible establishment of the star-chamber, or the advancetragedy, assisting the rack to extort answers from the wretched sufferer. Such was the conduct, on a memorable occasion, of that great, and in some respects, and at some times, good man; he whose genius and erudition and patient investigation illuminated a benighted world, and who, though he has long since sunk beneath the horizon of this life, has left a splendor behind him, which still fills the world with his glory, and which those bright luminaries that have arisen since his departure have been unable to dim. Who, then, will say that the unaided reason of man can digest a good and humane code of laws, when the renowned and immortal Bacon justified the use of the rack?

ment of its powers in the reign of Henry VII, might have been as wise as the abolition of it in that of Charles I." If then we would not make it necessary for an arbitrary, irresponsible discretion to be reposed in the conscience of a monarch, we should inspire the people with virtue to administer their own laws :-and how can this be done so effectually as by the inculcation of a religion whose least eulogium is, that it is a perfect system of morality?

We shall mention but one other particular wherein the Criminal Law has undergone a favorable change, and then cease to accumulate instances with which the history of the last two centuries is crowded. It is in vain that good laws are made, unless We attribute to the fierce avarice of the king and there be virtue in the people and virtue in the ru-barons that rule of practice which denied to one lers. These are the frame, the bone, the nerve, accused of treason or felony the privilege of being the muscle and the sinew,-this is that subtle spirit heard and defended by counsel, while the crown and essence that gives life, and action-the vivify- was allowed its prosecuting attorney. He, no mating principle, without which the former is a lifeless ter how ignorant and unlearned-no matter how trunk, incapable of exercising its functions. Even unskilled in extorting truth from reluctant witnesses; those good and wholesome laws which are the in-no matter how incapable of sifting evidence and heritance of Englishmen, transmitted to them by unriddling sophistry, was—in a state of trepidation, their ancestry through centuries, were inoperative, naturally felt when life and death were the stakes and barren of all good; for those who were to ad- played for, and such odds to oppose-compelled, in minister them, and those on whom they were to be a crowded court-room, before the legalized murderadministered, were equally ignorant of the mutual ers of the law, decorated in all the blood-dripping benefit and protection which virtue could recipro- paraphernalia of office, to rely upon the weak voice cally afford them. Lord Bacon and Mr. Hume, of innocence to protect his life and honor. But as both, extol the star-chamber, unrestrained in its pow-if this was not sufficient to fill up the measure of ers and unrestricted in its jurisdiction as that insti- injustice, the poor privilege of proving his innotution was, until it was finally abolished in the cence was denied him; for it was the olden law reign of Charles I. This formidable instrument of that no one charged with treason or felony should power was coeval with the Norman conquest, but be permitted to examine witnesses in his behalf. its authority in some respects was confirmed in the reign of Henry VII, by a statute whose preamble instructs us in the state of the nation at the time, and which is as follows:

In the course of time he was allowed them; but they were not sworn, so that their testimony unsupported by oath was to be placed in opposition to the sworn statements of the witnesses for the "The King our soverein lord, remembereth how, crown. How naked assertions would be received by our unlawful maintenances, giving of liveries, in contradiction to solemn asseverations, we all signs and tokens, retainders by indentures, promis-know. But this was not odds enough against the es, oaths, writings, and other embraceries of his accused. He was not even allowed a copy of the subjects, untrue demeanings of sheriffs in making indictment, by which he might ascertain the nature pannels and untrue returns by taking money by ju- of the offence with which he was charged, and ries," &c. against which he had to defend himself. To the How deep must have been the degradation of a honor of the last century, by sundry parliamentary people who thus accused themselves! It was not an provisions, the prisoner is allowed counsel, reguaccusation made by a haughty prince stung into 'larly sworn witnesses, and a copy of the indictment.

Thus we have in part accomplished our design. | ful, and yet so admirable a protection to the interWe have shown how Christianity influenced the ests for which it is framed, as in France, England Criminal Law; and we have shown a gradual im- and America, the three most truly christianized provement in it, commencing with the first dawn of nations of the earth? Do they not see, too, that in genuine piety in Britain, and advancing as the dawn England they are better than they are in France; broke into full daylight. The advance is still and does not genuine Christianity more universally going on and will go on until Christianity shall have prevail in the former than the latter kingdom! Is reached its full meridian splendor, when, judging not the criminal polity of America wiser and more by the past and the present, we may believe, there humane than that of England, who has in this, will be no point in the code so obscure as to be in- as in many other respects, reversed the order of accessible to its penetrating rays, or so dark, but nature and wisely followed the example of her the flood of light that is ever gushing forth from wiser offspring? And where is the favorite home this inexhaustible fountain may irradiate it. Un- of Religion but here? Here where all creeds are der its cleansing influence, we may hope that ere tolerated, and all sects protected! This land, in which long this code of England, which yet has its bloody as in a great temple, the pious pilgrim as well as spots, and which was as crimson, may become the good sojourner, of whatever denomination, of white as snow, and which, though it hath been red like scarlet, will be like wool. In the Christian Religion, we may see the bow stretched across the jurisprudential horizon, which is the covenant, that the laws of England, now that the flood is over, shall no more again be deluged with blood.

whatever faith,-Jew or Gentile, Papist or Protestant, Greek or Hindoo-may find an altar where each may sacrifice to the God of his choice, secure from state persecution or private outrage; and where, interfering with the creed of no one, he is allowed to exercise the rites of his own. In this We would invite the attention of those who yet grand Temple, erected for all-this immense Pandoubt that the improvements mentioned have been theon, though before others than the true God wrought by the influence of Christianity, (but attri- the pious but ignorant zealot should, prostrate himbute them to other causes exclusive of this,) to other self-the inviting voice of Christianity eventually times and other lands, in which its merciful in- draws him to its own shrine, while the altars erectfluence was not and is not felt. Where in anti-ed to other Gods, gradually neglected, with their quity do they find the rights of the people protect- divinities, tumble to the dust.

ed and made sacred by good laws? Will they find them in Sparta, where her youth were taught to revel in the luxury of blood, by early staining their hands in Helota gore! Will they find them in Rome in her most refined days, when the masters and the fathers were uncontrolled lords over the lives of his slaves and his daughters-when a senseless throng revelled in the savage sport of gladiators, butchering one another for a holiday spectacle? To those who espouse this dogma we would say, Will they find them in Venice, where serfs and the history of France in the latter part of the lords, nobles and peasants, were accused, tried, eighteenth century confutes its fallacy. When convicted, sentenced and executed, without being that kingdom was upon a pinnacle of intellectual allowed the privilege of asserting their innocence, excellence from which she could look down upon and without any intimation of their offence until the other nations of the earth far beneath her, the executioner's hand had commenced its bloody slowly clambering the rugged heights which she, as office-where lords offered as an incense to the if soaring upon an eagle's wing, had spurned in her arts the plebeian blood of those whom a cruel des- heavenward course; when she was all over glittertiny had made their slaves ?*-Will they find them ing with the concentrated rays of intellect; when in the unmercifully-administered, unmerciful juris- her rival neighbors were positively dazzled with prudence of Russia and Turkey of this day? Or the unprecedented splendor of her genius :--when rather, do not cruelty to the person and injustice to all the arts of war and peace were crowning her his property emulate each other, and each by turns surpass the other? Where on the face of the globe will they find the Criminal Code so merci

But, it may be argued that Religion has walked hand in hand with science and the arts; and that to these latter, good laws are exclusively to be attributed; while the former occupied the place of an attendant, who was only admitted to swell the pomp and magnificence of their retinue, but whose counsels were never heard, and whose precepts were never heeded.

*The anecdote is here alluded to, which is told of one of the Medicis. Having employed an artist to paint a piece, in which was to be represented a dying man, the royal patron ordered a slave to be brought before the painter, and a dagger to be plunged into his hosom. It was done; and the death-struggle was transferred from the countenance of the expiring victim, to the canvass.

with their laurels, she suddenly, and by a demoniac whim, wiped out from her statute book all those good old laws, which had been accumulating during the reigns of sixty-six monarchs, and which are the proud and everlasting memorials of the wisdom of their framers. By that venerable offspring of patriotism and experience, improved by a lofty reason, the rights of property, the enjoyment of liberty, and the security of life were preserved.

This precious legacy of their fathers, derived by

them through an ancestral line which mocks ad- Truth. Shame would sometimes compel the commeasurement, should have been held as an old mittee of safety to acquit the accused; but so litfamily estate, valuable for its priceless richness: tle was its authority respected, except when it was valuable for the curious but important improve- exercised to swell the torrent of blood that was ments which successive generations had made upon flooding that unhappy land, that he was murdered it; valuable as a token of the considerate affection before the eyes of his judges, and the insult to the of their parentage; valuable as a monument of court and the death of the victim both left unatheir fathers' wisdom; and, above all, valuable as venged. their next best possession. Instead of thus con- The committee of security established at Paris, sidering it, they treated it as an unfeeling heir with its affiliated societies branching out from the does his patrimonial estates, who commences his parent stem in every direction, spread its boughs ill-starred career by disregarding the religious pre- over the whole country, and covered with one cepts which were enjoined upon him as the rule of thick shadow all France-dark, connected, and his life, and then ridicules them, and at length re- fearful, unbroken by a ray of justice. At the head nounces them; disclaims their authority, and in- of the parent society sat that enigma, Robespierresults their dignity; terminates his wild and infa- the grand demon in the Pandemonium. By conmous schemes by squandering the lands which his trivances which evinced an ingenuity that he disancestors bequeathed to him with the condition played in no cause but one which was to be baththat they should be transmitted not only unimpair-ed in blood, he held a most intimate communion ed, but improved, to his posterity. This valuable with the remotest parts of the kingdom―rapid as and venerable property then-the laws-were, by the wind, and dreadful as the hurricane. The whole one sweeping edict, aliened-the Laws of Property, kingdom seemed to be one great whispering gallery, the Constitutional, and the Criminal Law. With into any part of which the lowest breathings of the latter only have we to do. This code was ut- Robespierre were heard with distinctness. A murterly abolished, and substituted by none other. mur against the government, though it were in the Under such a state of things, all the consequences silence of midnight, and in the sanctuary of home, that ensued were the legitimate results to be ex- was borne through an hundred channels, borrowing pected. By one sweeping forfeiture the property sound as it reverberated from mouth to mouth, unof the church was confiscated, without trial, and til at length it pealed in horrible loudness upon the without an apology for the ruthless injury to that apprehensive ears of him who occupied the cenaugust institution. Confiscated! And for what? tre. With that potent wand-as potent as magiBecause it existed as the laws established it. And cian ever held—the sword, which his right hand to whom was it forfeited? To a merciless, uncon- ever grasped, he hushed the tumult into peace. scionable, greedy banditti of robbers. Their king The cause that had disturbed the elements was rewas impeached, arraigned and convicted. Of moved; and Æolus sent back to their caverns the what? Of tyranny? or usurpation? No; but of angry winds. being a king-a king who had yielded, time and Akin to the committee of security, was the comagain, the privileges of his crown to the de-mittee of suspicion, invested with plenary powers mands of his people; who had torn the stoutest to imprison all suspected persons sine die. The parts of his armor and its richest ornaments from suspected person was pursued to his very hearth, his own person with his own hands and presented which afforded him no shelter from the myrmithem to his subjects, as their defence, and their dons of tyranny. They who respected not the wealth, and their glory. Notwithstanding this con- God of Gods, were not to be deterred from their cession to popular demands, this populace inhu- wicked purposes, by the frowns of the household manly murdered Louis XVI, his queen Marie An- deities. Such was the state of France in her toinette, his sister, and the Dauphin, while his hands pride of intellectual greatness-when she attemptwere still extended towards it, holding out precious ed to hurl the Almighty from his throne, as she gifts for its acceptance. They who had contemned hurled him from the hearts of her citizens. The the rights of princes were not to be expected to durable and antique edifices erected to the glory of respect those of the people. The assassinations the Highest were desecrated, and then consecrated committed under the authority of the then existing to Reason; and a painted, meretricious opera dancer, government during the reign of terror, are compu- worshipped as the impersonation of the object of ted to have been one hundred and fifty thousand. their pretended devotion. Their lofty spires, that The confiscations embraced all the property held lost themselves in the clouds, seemed silently to by the church, and by far the greater portion of point to Heaven as the outraged and justly indigwhat was owned by the gentry who opposed Dan- nant author of those terrible calamities that filled ton, Marat, and Robespierre. The forms of trials this once gay and happy land with tears, and made were sometimes observed; but Justice never sat in it as one charnel-house, where her magistrates and the forum to be insulted by the solemn mockery people were mere worms rioting and revelling in that was going on in those halls consecrated to the destruction which they were creating, them