fixing persons to the cross by nails; and that there is not even a single instance of it. It is the fiction of some painter, built upon an opinion completely erróneous.

SECTION III.

Ye sages who are scattered over the world (for some sages there are) join the philosophic Beccaria, and proclaim with all your strength that punishments ought to be proportioned to crimes:

That after shooting through the head a young man of the age of twenty, who has spent six months with his father and mother or his mistress, instead of rejoining his regiment, he can no longer be of any service to his country:

That if you hang on the public gallows* the servant girl who stole a dozen napkins from her mistress, she will be unable to add to the number of your citizens a dozen children, whom you may be considered as strangling in embryo with their parent; that there is no proportion between a dozen napkins and human life; and, finally, that you really encourage do mestic theft, because no master will be so cruel as to get his coachman hanged for stealing a few of his oats; but every master would prosecute to obtain the inflic tion of a punishment which should be simply proportioned to the offence+:

That all judges and legislators are guilty of the death of all the children which unfortunate seduced women desert, expose, or even strangle, from a similar weakness to that which gave them birth.

On this subject I shall without scruple relate what has just occurred in the capital of a wise and powerful republic, which however, with all its wisdom, has unhappily retained some barbarous laws from those old, unsocial, and inhuman ages, called by some the ages of purity of manners. Near this capital a new-born infant

A case which occurred at Lyons in 1772.

+ We here perceive how Voltaire anticipates much of the humane and reasonable arguments in and out of parliament against the too indiscriminate punishment of death.-T.

was found dead; a girl was apprehended on suspicion of being the mother; she was shut up in a dungeon; she was strictly interrogated; she replied that she could not have been the mother of that child, as she was at the present time pregnant. She was ordered to be visited by a certain number of what are called (perfectly mala-propos in the present instance) wise women-by a commission of matrons. These poor imbecile creatures declared her not to be with child, and that the appearance of pregnancy was occasioned by improper reThe unfortunate woman was threatened with the torture; her mind became alarmed and terrified; she confessed that she had killed her supposed child; she was capitally convicted; and during the actual passing of her sentence was seized with the pains of child-birth. Her judges were taught by this most impressive case not lightly to pass sentences of death.*

tention.

With respect to the numberless executions which weak fanatics have inflicted upon other fanatics equally weak, I will say nothing more about them; although it is impossible to say too much.

There are scarcely any highway robberies committed in Italy without assassinations, because the punishment of death is equally awarded to both crimes.

It cannot be doubted that M. de Beccaria, in his Treatise on Crimes and Punishments, has noticed this very important fact.

EXECUTIONER.

Ir may be thought that this word ought not to be permitted to degrade a dictionary of arts and sciences; it has a connection however with jurisprudence and history. Our great poets have not disdained frequently to avail themselves of this word in tragedy: Clytemnestra, in Iphigenia, calls Agamemnon the executioner of his daughter.

A very striking and extraordinary fact.-T.

In comedy it is used with great gaiety; Mercury in the Amphitrion (act i. scene 2), says,

Comment, bourreau! tu fais des cris!

How, hangman! thou bellowest!

And even the Romans permitted themselves to say,

Quorsum vadis, carnifex ?

Whither goest thou, hangman?

The Encyclopædia, under the word EXECUTIONER, details all the privileges of the Parisian executioner; but a recent author has gone farther. In a romance on education, not altogether equal to Xenophon's Cyropedia or Fenelon's Telemachus, he pretends that the monarch of a country ought, without hesitation, to bestow the daughter of an executioner in marriage on the heir apparent of the crown, if she has been well educated, and if she is of a sufficiently congruous disposition with the young prince. It is a pity that he has not mentioned the precise sum she should carry with her as a dower, and the honours that should be conferred upon her father on the day of marriage.

It is scarcely possible, with due congruity, to carry farther the profound morality, the novel rules of decorum, the exquisite paradoxes, and divine maxims with which the author I speak of has favoured and regaled the present age. He would undoubtedly feel the perfect congruity of officiating as bride-man at the wedding. He would compose the princess's epithalamium, and not fail to celebrate the grand exploits of her father. The bride may then possibly impart some acrid kisses; for be it known that this same writer, in another romance called Heloise, introduces a young Swiss, who had caught a particular disorder in Paris, saying to his mistress, "Keep your kisses to yourself; they are too acrid.”

A time will come when it will scarcely be conceived possible that such works should have obtained a sort of celebrity; had the celebrity continued, it would have done no honour to the age. Fathers of families soon made up their minds that it was not exactly decorous

to marry their eldest sons to the daughters of executioners whatever congruity might appear to exist between the lover and the lady. There is a rule in all things, and certain limits which cannot be rationally passed. Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines, Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.

EXPIATION.

"Dieu fit du repentir la vertu des mortels."

THE repentance of man is accepted by God as virtue, and perhaps the finest institution of antiquity was that solemn ceremony which repressed crimes by announcing that they would be punished, and at the same time soothed the despair of the guilty by permitting them to redeem their transgressions by appointed modes of penance. Remorse, it is to be remembered, must necessarily have preceded expiation, for diseases are older than medicine, and necessities than relief.

There was, then, previously to all public and legal forms of worship, a natural or instinctive religion which inflicted grief upon the heart of any one who, through ignorance or passion, had committed an inhuman action. A man in a quarrel has killed his friend, or his brother, or a jealous and frantic lover has taken the life of her without whom he felt as if it were impossible to live. The chief of a nation has condemned to death a virtuous man and useful citizen. Such men, if they retain their senses and sensibility, become overwhelmed by despair. Their consciences pursue and haunt them; two courses only are open to them, reparation or to become hardened in guilt. All who have the slightest feeling remaining chuse the former; monsters adopt the latter.

As soon as religion was established, expiations were admitted. The ceremonies attending them were, unquestionably, ridiculous; for what connection is there between the water of the Ganges and a murder? How could a man repair homicide by bathing? We have already commented on the excess of absurdity and insanity which can imagine that what washes the body,

VOL. III.

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washes the soul also, and expunges from it the stain of evil actions.

The water of the Nile had afterwards the same virtue as that of the Ganges; other ceremonies were added to these ablutions. The Egyptians took two he-goats and drew lots which of the two should be cast out loaded with the sins of the guilty. This goat was called Hazazel, the expiator. What connection is there, pray, between a goat and the crime of a human being?

It is certainly true that in after times this ceremony was sanctified among our fathers the Jews, who adopted many of the Egyptian rites; but the souls of the Jews were undoubtedly purified, not by the goat but by repentance.

Jason having killed Absyrtes, his brother-in-law went, we are told, with Medea, who was more guilty than himself, to be absolved by Circe, the queen and priestess of Ea, who passed in those days for a most powerful sorceress. Circe absolved them with a sucking pig and salt cakes. This might possibly be a very good dish, but it could neither compensate for the blood of Absyrtes, nor make Jason and Medea more worthy people, unless while eating their pig they also manifested the sincerity of their repentance.

The expiation of Orestes, who had avenged his father by the murder of his mother, consisted in going and stealing a statue from the Tartars of the Crimea. The statue was probably extremely ill executed, and there appeared nothing to be gained by such an enterprise. In later times these things were contrived better: mysteries were invented, and the offenders might obtain absolution at these mysteries by submitting to . certain painful trials, and swearing to lead a new life. It is from this oath that the persons taking it had attached to them, among all nations, a name corresponding to that of initiated, " qui ineunt vitam novam," —who begin a new career, who enter upon the path of virtue.

We have seen under the article BAPTISM that the christian catechumens were not called initiated till after they had been baptised.