UNTIL a very recent period, the soil of New England has rarely been wet with unhallowed blood; an atrocious murder furnished a tale of horror for half a century. The inhabitants of our busy cities as well as of our quiet villages slept in unbolted houses, nor were their slumbers disturbed by dreams of robbers or assassins. A capital trial attracted the attention of the whole community; and a public execution collected together the only mass meet ings then known. Now, scarcely a term of court passes without the impanneling of a grand jury in a case of life and death. The youngest judge on the bench in Connecticut has already tried three cases of murder. That feeling of security which constituted one great charm

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of a residence in the land of the Pilgrims is painfully diminished, and we begin to look for protection to watchfulness by day, and and bars by night. What has produced this melancholy change? We answer, the causes, direct and remote, are various and of a compli cated character.

Among them may be mentioned the constantly diminishing value that is set upon human life. Formerly the death of any individual was regarded as a loss. Any human be ing, in the arithmetic of social life, was estimated at something more than a cypher. But as population increases, individuality is lost. It is scarcely in the power of the warmest benevolence to shed a tear at the death of one of the myriads

who swarm on the plains of China or Hindostan. This natural feeling is strengthened by the maxims of modern warfare-the general in forming his plan for a battle, deter mines whether he shall maintain certain positions or not, by throwing into one scale the importance of the object, and into the other the number of lives which he can afford to spare. If he finds the sacrifice not too dear, he builds his ramparts of human bodies with as much indifference as he does those of wood and stone. This sanguinary arithmetic establishes his reputation as a war. rior even more than his courage; and nations vie with each other in conferring honor upon the wholesale homicide.

The mixture of individuals of different races and nations has a tendency to weaken the bonds of sympathy in a community. A feeling of brotherhood among those who look back to a common origin operates, even unconsciously, as a powerful restraint on acts of violence. On the contrary, the mere relationship of a common humanity proves but a feeble barrier against the impulses of avarice or revenge. Temptations to crime arising from the loss of property or disappointed ambition, since riches seem to have taken wings, and honor is but a fleeting breath, have become to many irresistible. The universal homage paid to wealth and power have rendered life without them an intolerable burthen, and a remedy is sought

in suicide or murder.

The absurd and barbarous custom of carrying deadly weapons in a peaceable community, a fashion which admits of no apology except the necessity which is created by itself, may be ranked among the causes of the alarming increase of homicide. The duration of pas sions is inversely as their intensity. That degree of sudden violence which is necessary to imbrue the hands in blood, lasts but a moment,

and if an opportunity for its gratification is not presented, the explosion passes off without injury. Many men, whose rashness has brought them to the prison or the gallows, might exclaim, in the language of King John

"How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds

Makes deeds ill done."*

Another principal cause of the increase of capital crimes seems to be the diminished dread of a trial. All experience establishes the fact, that fear is the most efficacious restraint upon vice. Formerly, to the dread of punishment was added the scarcely less powerful dread of a public investigation. The forms and ceremonies of courts were calculated to fill the mind with awe. The severity which marked the countenance of the judge, the solemnity which pervaded the whole assembly, the coldness with which every eye was turned upon the prisoner at the bar, inspired his soul with a terrible presage of what was to follow. Now the scene has entirely changed. The judge has become familiarized to cases of life and death, and his countenance in the progress of such a trial no longer wears that awed and awful expression which it wore in other times. The crowd who are drawn to the court-house by the excitement of the occasion, are listening with comparative indifference to the details of the transaction, or yawning with disappointed curiosity; the unemployed members of the bar are whiling away their time in reading newspapers, or watching the effect

* Happily the practice of carrying deadly weapons has not yet become common in this part of the country, being confined in a great measure to those few whose

ideas on such subjects are not indigenous to New England. But the few who, in imitation of barbarous customs elsewhere prevalent, do carry such weapons, are the very individuals in whose hands a ployed for a deadly purpose upon some deadly weapon is most likely to be emsudden impulse.

of the testimony upon the looks of the accused. At a recent trial of a woman for murdering her own child, an aged gentleman, formerly a public prosecutor, who happened to come in, mistook the case for an action of assault and battery. The indictment of a grand jury no longer puts the prisoner at the bar out of the pale of society. The public, adopting and misapplying the charitable maxim of the law, that every one is presumed to be innocent until he is proved to be guilty, is too prone to regard every charge of guilt as an apparent wrong, and the higher the charge the greater of course the injustice. Hence, the prisoner's box, instead of being a place where he must "face a frowning world," is one to which many eyes are directed beaming with the most encouraging sympathy. If the transaction is one of peculiar enormity, the accused becomes the lion of the day, and perhaps finds himself elevated to a position to which he could in vain have aspired in a life of virtue. His looks, dress, and manners, become a matter of public interest, and the reporter and engraver vie with each other in their efforts to gratify public curiosity. The health and avocations of royalty itself can not boast of more anxious and authentic bulletins. Modern trials furnish an incentive to the perpetration of crime.

The constantly increasing difficulty of procuring convictions on indictment for murder, when there is no real doubt of the guilt of the accused, is another encouragement to the commission of capital offenses. A hardened and experienced offender learns to calculate the chances of escape, and finding that as the atrocity of crime increases the danger of it diminishes, he secures his safety by the blood of his victim. An inmate of the Connecticut state prison was sent there as a robber, on evidence that failed to onvict him as a murderer, although

the robbery was committed on the dead body of the man whom he had deliberately shot. A compassionate jury let the hardened wretch go free; but the outrage was too great even for modern sympathy to tolerate.*

The difficulty of procuring a conviction is frequently owing to an abuse of a just and merciful privilege, which is conceded to the accused by the common law, and which is called a peremptory challenge. By means of this, the ac cused has it in his power to exclude a certain number of the jurors who have been empanneled to try him, without assigning any reasons. This rule is founded on the supposition that the prisoner may have personal knowledge of some prejudice or other disqualification of the juror, which he is not able to prove by testimony. In this day of hostility to capital punishment and sympathy with crime, the prisoner, having as certained the principles and charac ter of those who have been sum moned to try him, can at once exclude all whose love of justice and firmness of purpose he has reason to fear. Having at length succeed. ed in finding twelve men timid and weak minded enough for his pur pose, he considers his acquittal already secured. If however his trial occurs in a section of the country yet uncontaminated with modern notions of justice, he may use the same privilege as a means of bring ing into the jury-box some consci

* It is difficult to doubt that the acquit tal here referred to, which took place in impression that a Middlesex jury, though Middlesex County,-and the consequent they might find a verdict against a robber, would find none against a murderer,

had an effect in a recent instance in that same county. The burglar, surprised in the act of plunder, judged instantly that his safest course was to murder the witness who had surprised him. It is difficult to think that his mind, in form. ing that instantaneous judgment, was not under a bias from what was then the last trial for murder in that county.

entious but obstinate dunce, whose mind he can imbue with the doc. trine of a reasonable doubt. This can usually be effected without difficulty when the evidence is solely circumstantial. It is easy for such a juror to mistake the confusion of ideas in his own mind, for uncer. tainty in the testimony; and having the full evidence of his own consciousness of the existence of doubt, he refuses to yield until the impatience of his fellow jurors discharges the offender.

Unfounded acquittals are sometimes obtained through the influence of public sentiment. The ears of jurors are guarded by the law against improper communications, but their eyes are left open; they can read without difficulty the feelings and opinions of the multitude. Few men are capable of being entirely uninfluenced by the judgment of others. Hence the question virtually tried in many instances is, not whether the accused ought to be hung, but whether the deceased ought to have been killed. If the public entertain the latter opinion, the jury will justify themselves perhaps in setting at liberty the volun

teer executioner.

In many cases, atrocious criminals are indebted for the preservation of their lives, to some sciolist of the medical profession, who can in this respect, at least, boast of his success in robbing the grave of its victims. He is able to prove to a wondering jury, that most cases of aggravated offenses, are merely the results of undiscovered maladies; and that the perpetrators are so far from deserving death at the hands of the executioner, as to need only the benefit of his care and skill, in order to their becoming safe and worthy members of society. He can prove to a demonstration, that an appetency for crime, is only a disproportionate development, or a morbid state, of a certain portion of the brain, for which the poor patient

is no more responsible than he would be for the small pox or the plague. The jury, glad to be relieved from a painful duty, charitably pronounce the prisoner insane, which judgment wiser men transfer from the accused to his preserver.

Probably, however, the increasing uncertainty whether, in case of conviction the penalty of the law will be rigidly enforced, has done more than any thing else, to multiply capital offenses. The antipathy which so many feel to capital punishment, and the sympathy which few can avoid, for human suffering, however well merited, enable the friends of the convict, to make powerful appeals to executive or legislative clemency. Unhappily the temptation to indulge the natural feelings of compassion, strengthened by a desire to gratify a numerous and respectable body of petitioners, too often proves irresistible; consequently the legis lature virtually annuls the law which itself has enacted; for the chief magistrate whose duty it is to see that the law is executed, is the first to destroy its efficiency.

In tracing to its sources the increase of crimes against life, we must not overlook the influence of the unprincipled portion of the press. The art of printing, which has prov ed to so many a "savor of life unto life," has also been to thousands" savor of death unto death." winged messengers, that now fly through the land, come as often like demons from the bottomless pit, as like angels from the regions of light.

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Principles of the most destructive tendency are disseminated in every form, calculated to attract the attention and poison the minds of the ig. norant and unwary. Books, pamphlets, newspapers, tracts and every other species of publication, are prostituted for the sake of gain, to strip crime of its enormity and punishment of its terrors. By such means the bold and aspiring are sometimes educated to seek the

honor of being chief of a band of pirates, and the glory of a conquest over the weak and defenseless.

We do not propose to enumerate all the causes that have had a tendency to increase capital crimes. Enough has been mentioned to fill us with alarm and to induce us to seek a remedy. How then can this alarming tendency be arrested and New England become more than ever a land unstained with blood? We answer, it can not be done by eradicating the causes to which we have referred the increase of crimes against life. Our population will continue to increase, until we become like the sand of the sea-shore for multitude. Our land will long be the asylum for the oppressed of every nation, and thousands of aliens will throng our villages and cities, with the hope of improving their condition. The forms and ceremonies, that formerly gave dignity

and solemnity to our courts of justice, can no more be restored, than we could reassume the costume of our Pilgrim forefathers. Privileges granted to criminals, however much abused, are like other gifts; they can never be recalled. No censorship over the manners of the people or over the press, will ever be tolerated, until we cease to be free.

What then can be done? We answer, we have the same remedy that we possess for all other evils, moral, civil, political or religious. We shall never expel tyranny by the sword nor heresy by the flames. We shall never eradicate vice by law, nor protect life or property by an armed force. Such remedies partake not of the spirit of our insti tutions. We must aim our efforts at the minds and hearts of freemen. Our safety depends on constant and persevering efforts to enlighten the one and to purify the other.

THAT a new era in English phi lology has opened, must be evident to all who have given any attention to the bibliography of the times. That this era is characterized by the adoption of the historical principle of investigation, is equally evident. The present, indeed, is the historical age of science. The world seems, at length, to have advanced beyond the period of its boyhood; and now in its incipient manhood, begins to believe and feel

* A Classical Spelling Book; containing Rules and Reasons for English orthography and pronunciation; derived from a complete analysis of the language. By Rev. A. B. Chapin, M. A., Mem. Conn. Acad. Science and Arts; Mem. Conn. Hist. Soc.; Hon. Mem. R. I. Hist. Soc.; etc. etc. New York: Alexander V. Blake, 54 Gold Street; also, Saxton & Miles, 205 Broadway. 1842. 12mo. pp. 180.

that there is something worth re garding in the past as well as in the future. At all events, in those sciences which are most intimately connected in their development with the advancement of the human mind, and which participate in its growth, it is the historical point of view which is now more generally sought. Even history itself now seeks to establish itself on this basis alonethe idea of the progressive in the human race. Especially do these observations hold true of the science of philology. No one can doubt, for a moment, that this is the only true stand-point for the study of language. We have the promise, therefore, of richer harvests being garnered, in this interesting depart ment of learning, than have yet been known. But it is obvious that the historical investigation will pro