sired than expected. Some of these arise out of provisions wisely made for the protection of innocence, and intended to establish and elucidate truth. Hence the procrastination, delay, and expense of judicial trials. Hence the impatience of the public mind, which always outruns the march of justice, and decides with the promptness of a tyrant, what the law is able to ascertain only in the tardiness of its republican movement. Justice weighs out each grain and scruple of evidence or argument, with the slowness and precision of an apothecary; while the impatient community seizes on the whole at a grasp, and treats it as an article of commerce, to be measured by the cargo. The caution, the delay, the exactness of a judicial tribunal weary people, who wonder that the law does not decide as rapidly and as peremptorily as themselves.

The length of our public trials is chiefly owing to the defence. The part of the prosecution is soon over. Minute examination of evidence and long discussions of the law and the fact are rights secured to the party accused, which, if he has ability to purchase, he is sure to command. That the privilege cannot be diminished is certain; that it may be abused is no argument for abolishing it. That it often is carried to a length which appears to the auditors and the public exceedingly unreasonable, is manifest. The simplest inquiries become thereby tedious to all the parties concerned, and they render the administration of the law unpopular, inasmuch as they make apparently a great waste of time and money. Whether an assault was made on a member of Congress for words spoken in debate, a question upon which the public mind settles an opinion in a day, may occupy two hundred members of Congress for a month. Whether a militia officer discharged the escort-duties of a parade, which, being an open exhibition, is determined by the spectators on the spot, may take a court-martial weeks to determine. If indeed the tribunal, at which the party is arraigned, were the only one he had to address, there would be a limit, within ordinary bounds, to the exertion and the arguments of counsel. But every thing with us is addressed to the people. They have an appellate power over every established tribunal known to the laws, and to this, though nominally to the court, are addressed the arguments and eloquence of the party on trial. What is the consequence ?

Small offenders are often not put on trial, because the expense of the process would bear an undue proportion to the offence. Great offenders escape, because the costs and the time cannot be commanded.

In some respects our system may be considered impracticable. Thus it can hardly be conceived, that the power of impeachment, vested by the constitution in the Congress of the United States, could be conducted under any circumstances to a conclusion within the period of the appointment of a President, if he should be the party to be tried; and that provision for the security of the public must be deemed impracticable and useless. What could be done with any extensive conspiracy or treason against the United States? The trial of Fries lasted fifteen days. The trial of Aaron Burr in Richmond continued from the twenty-second of May to the second of September. In England, the trials of Thistlewood and all the other Cato-street conspirators were finished in a week.

If we are asked for a remedy, we can suggest no other than a corrected state of public opinion. These long trials, long arguments, incessant motions, and protracted details of evidence are designed for public effect. They are encouraged by that condition of the public mind which receives them with favor, and they will be compressed into the reasonable and limited form that would better answer the proper objects of a judicial examination, when unnecessary and wasteful expense of time, and declamatory appeals to the public, under the guise of an argument to the court, are met with the stern reprobation their extravagance deserves and requires. The fault is laid upon lawyers, but belongs to the people. It would never be practised, if it were not received with favor. Through all the clouds of censure with which it is surrounded, there still gleams a light of approbation and applause, which encourages the repetition whenever an opportunity offers.

The vigor of public justice is impaired by the state of public feeling in regard to individual cases of crime. While every body admits that crime must be restrained by the punishment of the criminal, it is always a matter of doubt, whether, in any given case, the actual infliction of punishment would do much to secure this great object of society. Crime, wherever it occurs, is an evil, and so is punish

ment.

Now to add the evil of punishment to the evil of crime is doubling the causes of complaint. This new evil is not a substitute for the other, but an addition to it. Punishment cannot eradicate what has been done. The sufferings of the criminal cannot restore the life he has terminated, or the reputation he has assailed, or the property he has feloniously appropriated. Punishment comes in the form of vengeance. It partakes, at least in appearance, of the quality of revenge. revenge. The culprit has inflicted an injury on society, and now society has him in its power, and is about to inflict an injury on him. But in most cases it cannot confine the injury, which its power denounces, to the criminal himself. In almost every instance the innocent are involved with the guilty. If you impose a pecuniary penalty, helpless children lose their necessary food. Do you confine the party in prison? Their wants are to be supplied by his labor; and while the public feed him and clothe him in comfortable quarters, they are houseless and hungry and naked, and exposed to all the temptations of penury. In all cases, such is the intimate connexion between individuals in the relations of life, that disgrace, the severest part of public punishment, falls heaviest on the innocent connexions of the party who is guilty.

Now it is often in vain to point out the true theory of penal law, to discourse on the security it is intended to give to quiet and peaceful citizens, and the danger they would be exposed to by the impunity of the guilty. The question of utility is asked in each particular case, and a feeling of compassion, a sentiment of humanity, and not seldom a conviction that there is in each special instance no absolute hazard to the community, favor, in a thousand ways, the escape of the criminal.

These chances are duly considered by the depredators of society. They calculate the risks of detection and the hazards of a trial and the probability of escape, with as much precision as the accustomed incidents of honest pursuits.

One other cause, and it is the last we shall mention, is the misplaced benevolence of pious, charitable, and kindhearted citizens. Whenever, by their aid, that, which the law intends as a punishment, is made less severe or inconvenient than the former condition of the culprit; whenever

more solicitude is expressed for the comfort and the condition of the criminal than the guiltless; whenever the abode of the offenders, whom society denounces for their crimes, is made more cheering and grateful, more pleasant and peaceful, than the residence of honest, faithful, and laboring industry, a premium is held out for the commission of crime, and all the objects of the penal law are absolutely frustrated. The kindness thus shown to the guilty, is cruelty and mockery and insult to the humble and virtuous.

If society means, by its administration of criminal law, to enforce the great principle, that sin shall beget suffering, with a view of deterring men from the perpetration of iniquity, its design is defeated by any who convert this suffering into a relaxation, an amusement, a pastime; and it is enfeebled by every attempt toward such an end, in just that degree in which the attempt is successful. Punishment must be suffering, or there is a confusion in words, and we speak without meaning. It need not be, and it ought not to be, cruelty. There is a limit, marked by humanity and by a Christian temper, to its extent; but if any thing is intended by it, it must be, that the condition of the convicted culprit is to be made worse by the consequences of his crime, that he is to feel this degradation, that others are to see and feel it, and take warning by his unfortunate example. A deliberate scheme to change this course of things deserves not so much the name of humanity as fanaticism. The just severity of the law is quite as necessary as any of its rewards, as the means by which it gives education and cultivates the moral powers, or bestows its honors on the worthy.

It is no paradox to maintain, that the proper energy and rigor of the criminal law prevents the necessity of its frequent and disagreeable exercise. It has long been a maxim, that punishments will be rare in proportion as they are certain; and the surest way to prevent their recurrence is, not to arrest the arm of the law when occasion calls for its exertion.

The time may come, when a universal understanding of the true theory of happiness shall make every man just, honest, and honorable; when the force of moral principle shall control the solicitation of the passions and the misdirected calculations of interest; when it shall be considered, not as an abstract proposition of recondite philosophy, but a

truth clear, plain, and demonstrated to the commonest capacity, that happiness is inseparable from virtue; when that purity of heart, which it is the distinguishing character of Christianity to cultivate and produce, shall have eradicated all temptation to sin and all necessity for punishment. Such as have advanced thus far in the science of moral improvement, have passed beyond the jurisdiction of mere human laws; they are directed by higher motives than the fear of their censure or the hope of their rewards. But, till the full light of that day beams upon us, the salutary influence of the laws, the force they can exercise, the power they can exert, is a necessary part of the constitution of all civil society.

ART. II. A Discourse, delivered before the Boston Mercantile Association, and Others, assembled on their Invitation, on Tuesday Evening, February 7, 1832. By WILLIAM SULLIVAN. Boston. Carter & Hendee. 1832. 8vo. pp. 36.

THE Association, before which this Discourse was delivered, have it in their power, if they are faithful to their objects, to do as much good as perhaps any society in this society-forming age. Their objects, as we gather them from the Discourse, appear to be, first, to institute lectures for the purpose of instructing young men, and inciting them to instruct themselves yet more completely, in those branches of knowledge which are calculated to make them accomplished merchants; secondly, to assist and sustain those of their number, who, with a perfectly fair character, may become involved in their circumstances and be bereft of their property; and, thirdly, to adopt means for the moral and religious improvement of the youth who are within the sphere of their immediate influence, and induce them to feel the value and the blessing of a good reputation. These objects are stated and enforced by Mr. Sullivan in a clear and practical manner, with much variety of knowledge, sound reasoning, and, above all, an evident and earnest desire to be useful and to do good.