capital punishments after sentence, says: After this example of clemency, the remainder of the reign was never disturbed by conspiracy or rebellion; feared by his nobles, beloved by his people, John was never reduced to the painful necessity of punishing, or even of pardoning, his personal enemies. During his government of twenty-five years, the penalty of death was abolished in the Roman empire.'

But let us descend to more recent times. In the reign of Alfred the Great over England, capital punishments were rarer than they have ever since been in Britain, even up to the moment in which we write and so free was the land at that period from crime, that the historian tells us, 'a child might walk with a bag of money in its hand through any part of the kingdom, without fear of being molested.' Contrast this with the state of things under Henry the Eighth, after capital punishment had been gradually annexed to almost every kind and degree of crime. In the reign of this infamous monarch, seventy-two thousand thieves fell by the hand of the executioner; two thousand per annum-forty in every week! and we have overwhelming contemporaneous evidence to the fact, that crime advanced, in spite of these inflictions, in the most frightfully rapid manner. Not to mention other witnesses, let us take Sir Thomas More. In his Dialogue between Himself and a Lawyer,' he laments that, while so many thieves were daily hanged, so many thieves still remained in the country, who were robbing in all places.' What stronger testimony can there be than this, to the utter inutility, to the absolute mischievousness, of the gibbet? But let us proceed.

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 her noble pledge. And so satisfactory was found its operation, that her successor, the great Catharine, adopted it in her celebrated code of laws, with the exception of very rare offences against the state. Experience demonstrates,' is the language of her Grand Instructions for framing a new code of laws for the Russian empire (article 210), that the frequent repetition of capital punishments has never yet made men better. If, therefore, I can show that, in the ordinary state of society, the death of a citizen is neither necessary nor useful, I shall have pleaded the cause of humanity with success.' In connexion with this statement, it is satisfactory to add, that the Count de Ségur, on his return from his embassy to St. Petersburg, in a letter published in the Moniteur,' in June, 1791, declared that Russia, under the operation of this law, was one of the countries in which the least number of murders was committed.'

Howard, in his work on Prisons, mentions the following facts. In Leenwarden, in 1783, there had been no execution for four teen years, and there were but a few persons confined, and those only for petty offences. At Utrecht, when he visited it, there had been no execution for twenty years; and there was in the prison but one criminal, and his offence not capital. In Brunswick, with no execution for fourteen years, the prison for capital offenders had scarcely been used during the whole time. In Denmark, he found that imprisonment for life, with annual whipping, which had been substituted for capital punishment, 'was dreaded more than death, and since it was adopted, had greatly diminished the frequency of murder.'

And now let us record the result of a more direct and lengthened experiment. In 1765, the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, by the advice of the enlightened and far-seeing Marquis Beccaria, recognising the great and solemn truth, that 'even delinquents are children of the state, whose amendment ought never to be abandoned in despair,' abolished altogether the punishment of death in his dominions. Here, then, the question was brought to a positive issue. Death was abolished, even for murder; and what was the result? Let the Grand Duke himself, after trying the experiment for twenty years, reply. 'With the utmost satisfaction to our paternal feelings, we have at length perceived, that the mitigation of punishment, joined to the most scrupulous attention to prevent crimes, and also a great despatch in the trials, together with a certainty of punishment to real delinquents, has, instead of increasing the number of crimes, diminished that of smaller ones, and rendered those of an atrocious nature VERY RARE.' The fact was, that, during the twenty years of the experiment, only five murders had been perpetrated in Tuscany; while in Rome, where death was inflicted with great pomp and solemnity, no fewer than sixty murders were perpetrated in a space of three months.

To the disgrace of the world it has to be stated, that Napoleon, feeling-to use his own words that he must not let Tuscany be happy and tranquil, because if he did, all travellers from France would envy it,' caused this humane and beneficial enactment to be repealed, and the old law of the gibbet to be restored. Crime soon increased with extraordinary rapidity; and only when judicial homicide began to be discontinued, did murders grow rare again. M. Berlinghieri, the late Tuscan minister at Paris, writes, in reply to M. Lucas, inspector of French prisons, 'I know that all crimes became less frequent when the pain of death was abolished; I know that many executions took place during the French occupation of Tuscany, and that then crime

increased; and I know, that since then, while executions have become rarer, crimes have diminished both in number and turpitude; though they are more frequent and more atrocious than when there was no pain of death at all.' *

Holland offers similar testimony. In the year 1802,' said Mr. Marryat, in the House of Commons, April 12th, 1812, ‘I was in Amsterdam, and I then had the happiness to learn, that during many preceding years, the punishment of death had been but twice inflicted. Imprisonment and hard labour are there substituted for capital punishment; and the most beneficial consequences have resulted from this alteration.'

A further very striking proof of the advantages attending the discontinuance of capital punishment, is to be found in the result of the experiment made by Sir James Mackintosh, at Bombay. During that enlightened man's recordership, the punishment of death was never once inflicted by the court over which he presided; and the following extract from his parting charge to the grand jury (July 20, 1811), shows the remarkable success which attended this humane administration ::

'Since my arrival here, in May, 1804, the punishment of death has not been inflicted by this court. Now the population subject to our jurisdiction, either locally or personally, cannot be less than 200,000 persons. Whether any evil consequence has yet arisen from so unusual (and in the British dominions, unexampled) a circumstance, as the disuse of capital punishment, for so long a period as seven years, or among a population so considerable, is a question which you are entitled to ask, and to which I have the means of affording you a satisfactory answer.

From May, 1756, to May, 1763, (seven years) the capital convictions amounted to 141, and the executions were 47. The annual average of persons who suffered death was about 7, and the annual average of capital crimes ascertained to have been perpetrated, was nearly 20.

From May, 1804, to May, 1811, there have been 109 capital convictions. The annual average, therefore, of capital crimes legally proved to have been perpetrated during that period, is between 15 and 16. During this period there has been no capital execution.

But as the population of this island has more than doubled, during the last 50 years, the annual average ought to have been 40, in order to show the same proportion of criminality with that of the first seven years. *If this circumstance be considered, it will appear that the capital crimes committed during the last 7 years, with no capital executions, have, in proportion to the population, been not much more than a third of those committed in the first 7 years, notwithstanding the infliction of death on 47 persons.

The intermediate periods lead to the same results. The number of capital crimes in any of these periods does not appear to be diminished,

• M. Lucas, De la Peine de Mort, p. 359.

either by the capital executions of the same period, or of that imme. diately preceding.

'This small experiment has, therefore, been made without any diminution of the security of the lives and property of men. Two hundred thousand men have been governed for seven years without a capital punishment, and without any increase of crimes. If any experience has been acquired, it has been safely and innocently gained."

In addition to this strong evidence, we have other testimony from the East. Sir Charles Metcalfe, when resident at Delhi, wrote, that in that district they never punished with death,' and that 'it was in no degree necessary.'

Even in the South-Sea Islands, the inefficacy of death punishment has been discovered. In Messrs. Bennett and Tyerman's Journal of their residence in that locality, we find that the natives reject the penalty of death, as unreasonable and wicked; and that murder is a crime almost unknown there. Captain Ross, in his 'Voyages to the North Pole,' tells a similar tale.

In

To return, however, to Europe. We derive most conclusive proof that capital punishments are unnecessary for the repression of crime, from the example of Belgium. Belgium, during the nineteen years ending with 1814, there were 533 executions; and the number of murders in that period was 399, or twenty-one per annum. During the fifteen years ending 1829, the executions were only 71, and the murders were diminished to 114, or not quite eight per annum. And in the five years ending 1834, there were no executions whatever, and the murders had decreased to twenty, or only four per annum! The following table will perhaps exhibit the result more satisfactorily:

Nothing can well speak plainer than these facts, one would say; yet, strange to tell, there were persons in Belgium, calling themselves statesmen, who asserted in 1835, that great crimes

were on the increase, and needed the example of the gallows to restrain them.' By the influence of these sagacious legislators, the pain of death, which had been discontinued with such positive advantage, was restored! In 1835, executions took place again; and the result is, the everlasting condemnation of gibbet-homicide. The convictions for murder, which, as we have seen, had in the five years ending 1834, been twenty, or four per annum, rose in the next five years, when four persons were killed by the executioner, to thirty-one, or, in other words, increased fifty-five per cent. Were we not literally right, when we said that capital punishments invariably increase crime, and that their abolition represses it?

France confirms our conclusions. In the five years ending 1829, the number of persons committed for murder was 1182, and 352 persons were executed for the crime. In the next five years, there were but 131 executions, and the number of murders was reduced to 1172. It is notorious, that the power of saving the lives of murderers in France, by finding them 'GUILTY -but with extenuating circumstances,' has worked extremely well, and has been attended by a great diminution of crime; while, on the other hand, we all know full well that Fieschis, and Alibauds, and Lécomtes have sprung up as fast as the guillotine has mowed their predecessors down. It is a singular fact, that Barrere, who instigated so many executions during the Revolution of 1790, should in 1831 find himself forced to confess, that the world would never be civilized till capital punishment was totally abolished!'

Austrian statistics yield a similar result. A writer in the 'Magazine of Capital Punishment' says:- I visited lately the great prison at Prague, in which about 800 criminals are confined. The director informed me, that since the accession of the reigning emperor, no one had been executed for murder. I asked, Have murderers increased?' He said, 'No, they have diminished."

Prussia gives similar testimony, as will be seen by a glance at the following table:

In the 5 years ending 1824 .... 54 executions . . . . 69 murders.

Prussia thus shows, that by diminishing the number of executions by two-thirds, the result was not only the saving of the criminals, but a decrease of one-third in the crime, and consequently a much greater security to society.

A word or two concerning America, before we close our extracts from the statistics of foreign countries. In Pennsylvania,