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CONTINUANCE OF HIS CAREER.

he was not sufficiently cunning. Or, are his circumstances improved, temptations removed, or encouragements to good conduct held out? No; he returns exactly to the same position, in which distress, the command of his parents,— enforced by the same means which society uses for the demonstration of what is called right, in a police office, or a court of law,—and the cheering example of his associates, will again urge him on to the commission of crimes, supposing even that his own inclinations would dictate a contrary course. The warning he has received has rendered him more cautious, and he may now go on for years, earning his livelihood by the same means, without being ever caught in flagranti. At last, however, he will be caught up again, and again brought under the influence of social institutions. Let us suppose, again, the happiest state of things which can be imagined for him, under existing circumstances. Let us suppose, that a feeling of the misery and degradation, which attaches to his mode of living, has occasionally got hold upon his heart; that, by some providential occurrence he has been brought into contact with influences, by which his attention has been directed to the possibility of a better condition, both as regards his moral nature, and his circumstances; let us suppose that confinement, previously to his final commitment by the magistrate, or afterwards, to his trial, has abated the buoyancy of his spirits; that he has become inclined for reflexion, and accessible to the kind exertions of some of those benevolent Christians who visit the prisons, to make the saving health known, where it is most wanted; -suppose all this to have worked together, to bring his soul to a sort of crisis, in which he is ready to throw off the bondage of iniquity, and to begin a new life. Suppose all this to be the case, does the law wait for the development of this crisis, by which a soul may be saved? No! it continues in its cold, heartless, formal, and rigorous course; he is brought up for re-examination, or committed, or brought up for trial,

HIS REPENTANCE UNAVAILING.

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not as his state of mind may render advisable, but as the course of the law dictates. Or does the law, and the power that executes the law, take his state of mind into account, when deciding upon his fate? No! Suppose he confess his guilt, melting in tears of repentance-suppose he express his willingness, his determination to amend his lifesuppose the magistrate to be moved, and to hesitate about the course which he is to adopt; one of the tools of that heartless system will step forward-" Don't trust his promises, your worship, he is a notorious thief; young as he is, we know him to be an old practitioner." This testimony, coming from such a quarter, is sufficient to destroy the last chance that remained for the youth, to turn from his evil ways. He is fully committed; and if his repentance should last till the time of his trial, it will be of no avail. His sorrow for the past, his anxious look out for the future, are not regarded by those who-blasphemously, as they do it in the name of all that is sacred-presume to decide what he deserves, and what is to become of him. The circumstantial evidence of the fact is all, that these judges of unrighteous judgment attend to; and, as if there was no such thing as atonement and mercy, as if they needed it not themselves, nor could imagine that any one else needed it, they pronounce the "sentence of the law" upon the unhappy youth. Such is the spirit of our institutions, that even men, who in private affairs show themselves to be pious, just, and followers after that which is good, nevertheless unhesitatingly join in those, I repeat it, blasphemous, unrighteous, anti-Christian performances. It will be said: mercy may still be extended to him; for there is a difference between pronouncing and executing a sentence. Be it so; this may alter the case for the social conscience, whom it furnishes with a sophistical excuse; but it does not alter it, at least not for the better, with regard to the individual, with whose feelings society thus plays, as the cat does with the mouse. The sentence is not pronounced with a view that it should have no effect;

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INFLUENCE OF PRISONS.

and unfortunately, the effect does not fail to be produced. The repenting sinner has found his fellow-creatures turning a deaf ear upon his repentance, upon his better determinations, and his promises: an unforgiving spirit has been shown, and the effeet of this can be no other than to harden him. His better feelings are inevitably chilled, and he returns to his prison with feelings very different from those, with which he came to take his trial. The consequence is, that he now prefers the society of his wicked companions, to the conversation with those, in whom he had confidence, when he felt a favourable change operated in his disposition, but whom he now shuns the more, the more they had succeeded in exercising influence over him. The exertions of Christian benevolence are interrupted; the edge of love and truth is blunted; and when a mitigation of punishment is announced to him, he will be more induced to murmur against what remains of his sentence, and to consider the alleviation of it as a happy escape, that has turned up for him by chance, than, in resigned submission to his fate, to persevere in his good determination, and to turn the time of trial and probation, which is imposed upon him, to account for the improvement of his life. But whilst society, by this unfeeling conduct, positively obstructs in him the rise of those feelings, which could bias him to a reformation of his character, it surrounds him with every influence, that is calculated to foster in him the growth of sin. Prisons, houses of correction, and other similar institutions, are so many collections of moral monstrosities; and the contamination and infection among such a number of bad characters, brought into such close contact, must necessarily be more extensive and more dangerous, than that which takes place amongst them when at large; for the restraint by which they are prevented from the outward performance of their evil thoughts, so far from being a check upon evil communication, operates rather as a stimulus to it. So that the youth who enters the place, with a heart disposed for

MURDER IN LEGAL FORMS.

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evil, and, to a certain degree, familiar with the practice of it, leaves it, at the expiration of the time of his confinement, ten times more corrupted, and eager to put into practice the additional knowledge which he has gained. His situation is, at the same time, as devoid of all honest resources as ever; it is not only hopeless, but desperate.

His inevitable fate is a renewed course of immorality, in which he will be interrupted again and again by the arm of human justice; and to what end?-to save him from destruction? No, but to avenge more and more cruelly upon him the consequences of that state of destitution and degradation, of which, culpable as he may be, by far the greater guilt rests on society itself. Thus he is driven on in the career of delinquency from step to step, till he is at length ripe for that last act of barbarity, which the community perpetrates upon its abandoned members, to whom it has never stretched out a hand of love. Is this the education, which a Christian society owes to its destitute children? Is this the discharge of that sacred trust, which renders the community responsible for the temporal and eternal welfare of every one of its members? Whence does society derive the right of taking bloody vengeance upon those unfortunate beings, whose chief crime is, to have too well answered, by their conduct, the means adopted, either with the silent consent, or by direct interposition of society, for the formation of their character? If it is a bloody deed for an individual, to take away the life of his fellow-creature, is the deed less bloody, because society perpetrates it, because it is not an act of rashness, but of premeditation—an act systematically resolved upon, systematically executed, systematically repeated? Or is it less bloody because society has, by its neglect on one hand, and by its oppression on the other, previously murdered the souls of those, whom it thus prematurely hurries into eternity, to stand before the judgment seat of God? Does not society apprehend, that whilst its victims will have to account for their own transgressions, the very history of their sins

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UNLAWFULNESS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

1

will be a loud accusation against those, who had the power, but not the will, to become instrumental in their rescue, and who used the authority, given them from on high, not to save, but to ruin souls? Do they consider, that the subtle forms of the law will leave no subterfuge in the eye of Him, whose holiness will lay bare the iniquity of human justice that "murder" will be written in flaming characters upon every such deed, which is now sealed with the seal of lawful authority? Does society think it a sufficient compensation for the neglect of that education, to which every individual has a claim, that the victims of its selfish indifference are, by the convulsive fears of death, harassed into a feeling of repentance, the sincerity of which it must be impossible, for an entire novice in religious knowledge, under such circumstances, to ascertain? Or is it deemed a satisfactory atonement for the most criminal violation of God's law, and for the blasphemous abuse, made of his name, for the purposes of iniquity, that a chaplain is appointed to read the burial service on those mournful occasions?

It would be foreign to my present purpose to enter more deeply into the question of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of capital punishment, and the general consistency or inconsistency of the existing criminal laws with the Christian covenant. But as the subject has inevitably been introduced, I may, before concluding, be allowed to add a few remarks, respecting the chief sources of that alarming want of faith and love, which society displays in its present conduct towards transgressing brethren. The advocates of the present system appeal to the authority of the Old Testament, in which capital punishment is enacted. I will not now ask, whether we are in the same position, in which the Jews were, as an elect people, separated unto the Lord, and destined to preserve the purity of his worship in the midst of idolatrous nations;-or why it is, that, whilst we reject for our own practice all the rest of the Mosaic legislation, which had that strict separation for its