robber of life. The murderer steals more than the mere thief, but the mere thief invades the moral law as much, and commits as real a crime, as the murderer. But we may carry this matter still further. There is as much real crime in an unkind thought as in the act of killing; nay, the act of killing is nothing more than the consequence -the carrying out-of the unkind thought, and has in itself no criminality at all. The crime is in the motive, not in the act. There is as great an infraction of the moral law in slandering a person as in killing him; the thought that conceives the slander is as really unkind as the thought which is the parent of the act of murder. So we see, then, that the man who steals a penny-the man who steals a pound-the man who slanders his neighbour-and the man who kills a fellow creature, stand precisely on the same footing of moral guilt. It is perfectly true that more evil results in some of the cases than in others, but this in no way affects our present consideration. It is not by consequences that an action must be judged, but by its animus-its motive. A man who kills another by accident commits no crime, though he causes a great deal of evil; and a man may cause very little evil, and yet perpetrate a very great amount of guilt. The four criminals I have noticed, then, are in a moral point of view really equally guilty. Now, then, let me ask this question: Ought the man who steals a penny to suffer the infliction of death? You smile, and say the question is an absurd one. Well then, ought the man who steals a pound? No! you reply-Certainly not. What say you to the slanderer then? should he be put to death? Still you answer in the negative. Why, then, when we come to the murderer, and put the same question concerning him, do you alter your reply, and say that he should be destroyed? He is not in reality more guilty than the thief of a penny, and therefore deserves no higher punishment. The fact is this: the crime of the murderer affects us more powerfully than the crime of the thief, because of the greater amount of immediate, striking, and palpable evil which it producesand losing sight of the motive in the act, we are led to consider the crime as great as the consequences are shocking.

It may possibly be said by some that consequences should be taken as the criteria of guilt, and that punishments should be administered in proportion to the amount of evil produced; in which case, murder, which produces so much evil, may be held to deserve death. But this plan we shall soon see would not do. According to this rule, Manslaughter would meet with the same sentence as Murder, for the evil consequences are the same in the one case as in the other: and who will say that this would be just? By this principle too, slander would meet with a heavier punishment than murder; for, God knows! it produces consequences far more evil. All that murder does is to kill the body-destroy the outward frame, and free the spirit from its clay companion; but how many sorrows, and sufferings, and miseries it prevents! How many cares, and anxieties, and troubles it precludes! From the torments, and terrors, and adversities of earth the soul is freed, and it exchanges the cold and chilling frowns of an unsympathizing crowd for, it may be, the holy smiles of the One Kind Father. But Slander is the assassin of the soul-the poisoner of peace-the Great Destroyer by whose hand fall Hope, and Happiness, and Honour-the

enemy compared with whom Death is as an angel of light. Oh! if we could but trace the miseries caused by slander-the hopes it blightsthe affections it crushes-the prospects it clouds-the pleasures it thwarts-the pains and sorrows it creates-we should look upon the murder of the body as mercy and goodness in comparison.

Murder, then, is not productive of consequences so much worse than other crimes as to deserve a severer punishment than they do; nor, if it were, would the award of death to its perpetrator be just, seeing that the motive which is the source of the crime is not in reality worse than the motives which cause other crimes, which it would be absurd to say deserve so severe a retribution.

But there may be some persons who, with Draco, contend that all crimes deserve death, and therefore that murder does. With such people it is somewhat difficult to argue: because their notions on this subject are derived from no known or recognised principles of justice, morality or reason, and are by no means reducible to the rules of logic or common sense. It is, however, a most satisfactory consolation to know, that this misfortune is completely overcome by the fact, that although to argue with such persons be difficult, it is quite unnecessary. From some cause or other the number of such persons is so extremely inconsiderable, and the estimation in which their notions are held so remarkably slight, that to stop and gravely discuss the point with them, would look something very much like a deliberate insult to the rest of the community. Besides, it is frequently the case, that persons of this order are very much given to talkativeness, and further, that they have an invariable habit of disproving their own opinions, and exhibiting their own folly: so therefore, under these. circumstances, I hold it advisable to leave them to themselves; firstly, because they are not worth arguing with, and secondly, because they will prove themselves to be wrong in a much less time than even the most ready-witted could do it for them.

There is another and a most important aspect in which I wish to view this question, and to that I will now address myself.

I will grant for a while that the motive which incites to and ends in murder by murder meaning of course homicide with malice aforethought-is so much worse than other crimes as to deserve severer punishment; and I will also for the present admit, for the sake of argument, that society has the right-that is the abstract rightto inflict any punishment it pleases-death therefore, if thought expedient as the penalty: but I intend, even upon this ground, to argue, that for society to proceed to the infliction of death upon a man charged with murder is unjustifiable. Why? For these reasons:

I. That it is for the wickedness of the motive only that the punishment is deserved and awarded.

II. That you cannot prove this wickedness of motive. III.—And therefore, that as it is the motive which deserves the punishment, and as you cannot discover the motive, it is unjust to assume its existence, and punish it as though it were proved. First. That it is for the wickedness of the motive only that the punishment is deserved and awarded.

I have, I trust, clearly shown that there is no real crime in the mere act of killing a man; it is in the thought that prompts to the

VOL. I.

G

deed that the guilt lies. A soldier kills a man in battle-Jack Ketch kills a man on the scaffold-a person walking along the street may knock another down and kill him by accident-but there is no moral crime in their doing so. The absence of evil motive is the reason. Evil motive is consequently real crime. I need not stop to prove therefore that it is for evil motive only that punishment is properly deserved. That is a truth which will be readily admitted. It is admitted indeed by the law of the land, in the distinction which it draws between murder and manslaughter, holding that the first deserves a higher punishment than the last, because of the greater extent of evil motive which it displays. I need not dwell therefore upon the proposition before us, but will pass on at once to the second, viz. That it is impossible to prove this wickedness of motive.

What mortal man can see into the heart of a fellow-creature? Not one ever could-not one ever will. How dare we then judge of motive? We say, because the circumstances attending the act prove it. Thus the circumstances attending death inflicted in battle are such as to preclude the charge of evil motive on the part of the slayer towards the individuals slain. So, too, the circumstances attending a death caused by mere accident show no presence of evil motive. But where we discover that a man has meditated the deed before he perpetrates it, and performs it in cool blood, without being enabled to plead the irresistible impulses of sudden anger, we can have no doubt, and therefore cannot be wrong in punishing. But I mean to argue that there is doubt-yes, in every such case; and the more wilful the offence, the greater the doubt should be. Wilful murder is so awful a thing-so extravagant a conception, so unnatural a deed, that it seems next to impossible for a man in his right mind to commit it. It bears the stamp of madness; and it is our bounden duty to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a murderer is sane, before we hold him morally responsible, and punish him accordingly. Were this done, it is my firm belief that ninety-nine murderers out of every hundred would be sent to the madhouse rather than to the scaffold; indeed I can conceive of no possible case-and certainly I never yet met with one-where there is not either insanity, or some other palliation to plead.

I design to select a few of the most atrocious and commonly known cases of murder, and endeavour to prove the correctness of the above opinion. We will inquire into the circumstances under which they were perpetrated, see what caused them, and endeavour to ascertain where they had their origin.

We will take first the case of Cooper, who was recently executed for shooting a policeman.

This man, Cooper, was an artisan, reduced, in consequence of want of work, to such a state of poverty as drove him to desperation. He had always been a somewhat peculiar character, but now he became, in the fullest sense of the word, reckless. He arms himself with pistols, and way-lays a public pathway. He commits robbery after robbery, accompanied with violence. The police being on the watch, discover him in the very fact of threatening a man with death unless he gives him his money. One of them endeavours to apprehend him. He resists, and says to the officer-" I will not be taken the pistol

in my hand is loaded-if you attempt to touch me, I will shoot you." The policeman advances-Cooper fires and kills him. Now, is the motive of Cooper so really and intrinsically evil as to demand that his life should be taken away to expiate it? I say, unhesitatingly, "No." In the first place, he is in a state of mind which is anything but sane; he is worked upon by want-by opposition-by desperation-until what he does results from frenzy, not from thought. Reflection has forsaken him; what he does, he does from instinct, not from motive. His shooting the policeman is mere self-defence; he has no animosity-no ill-feelings towards the man; but he fires at him in the mad hope of ridding himself of one who will be the means of harm to him. Let us suppose that Cooper had endeavoured to run away from the policeman, under the idea that he could escape-and that in his attempt to do so he had struck the policeman to the ground. Would he, under such circumstances, deserve to die for what he had done? It would be ridiculous to say "Yes." Now, suppose the policeman had fallen against a large stone, and thereby had met his death. Is Cooper's crime so much aggravated in consequence, that he now deserves death when he did not before? We hesitate to reply-but why? For this reason-that the fearful consequences which have resulted from the deed, affect us. But in reality Cooper is no worse because there happened to be a stone in the policeman's way when he fell, which caused his death, than if there had been no such stone there, and he had met with no injury. Now, is it worse to fire a pistol at the policeman than to knock him down? Yes, you say— because Cooper must have known that the pistol was an instrument of death, and would cause death if he discharged it. But that is not putting the case justly. Were an unassailed man, in cold blood, to level a pistol which he knew to be loaded at another man's head, and discharge it, we should have no doubt that his intention was to kill; but when a man in desperate circumstances-surrounded by dangerthreatened with the terrors of punishment-incited by a mad hope of escape, and seeing that in the act lies his only chance, commits the same deed-it is a far different thing, a crime of quite another sort. The man is frenzied, and we must not judge him as we would a sane being. He fires, not because he wants to kill the man, but because he wishes to free himself.

Now, let us take the case of Pegsworth. This man killed another because he conceived that he had been injured, in fact, ruined by him. The deed was deliberately conceived, and deliberately executed. Now, then, is the motive here sufficiently evil to demand the death of the criminal? The motive is neither more nor less than revenge; and what is revenge? Lord Bacon calls it "a wild sort of justice." It is the infliction of evil for evil. Now this undoubtedly is morally wrong, as I have previously shown; but if it be wrong for an individual, it is also wrong for a Government, and therefore a Government has no more moral right to retaliate upon a murderer than an injured man has to retaliate upon the person who has injured him. The murderer destroys a member of the community, and for this he is answerable to the community, and to the Government which represents it; but this has nothing to do with moral, but only with social, evil. That a Government has a right to do whatever may repair or

prevent evil, I have already admitted; but to retaliate, for the sake of punishing moral crime, is not within its province; that belongs to a higher, a juster, and a more certain tribunal.

And here I cannot refrain from pointing out, that for a Government to retaliate upon an offender the evil he has caused, is to hold out an example to the people under its charge to do the same. It is to sanction retaliation. It says to the injured-it is right to return evil for evil. It proclaims that there are occasions which justify the shedding of blood; and if this be asserted, and acted upon, by a Government, upon what principle is it that an individual may not assert, and act the same? A man will say-a nation is allowed to rid itself of an enemy-John Smith is my enemy-may not I rid myself of him upon the same principle? A Government is justified in putting a man to death who has done wrong to society; am not I justified in putting a man to death who has done wrong to me, upon the same principle?

It is an evil to have it said by the mouth of the Law, that there are occasions when a man may be put to death; for it leads men to carry this doctrine further, and it destroys the idea which it is bound to maintain, the sacredness of life. The law should say-nothing can justify the shedding of blood; now it holds out an example of bloodshedding.

But to return to the case under consideration. I have introduced it for the sake of arguing that there are many murders committed under provocation, and that such cases are to be palliated so far as their moral guilt is concerned. It avails nothing to say that the provocation was not sufficient to warrant the deed. It may not seem so to us; but it did to the murderer. We know that our thoughts and feelings grow within us. We conceive an idea of hatred or of affection, and at the first it is minute, inconsiderable, and vague; but it increases and developes itself as we harbour it, until at last it becomes an infatuation, and urges us on into paths from which originally we should have shrunk to tread in.

There is another and a more recent case, which I will refer to, because it will introduce an argument of much importance. The case I mean is that of Job Ward, who was executed for taking the life of his child. The circumstances under which the crime was perpetrated were these:-Ward came home late at night, very drunk; and there seems to be no doubt, although he denied the fact, that some time during the night he reached down a weighty implementI believe a hammer-struck the child, to whom he had frequently been very crucl, and killed it. Now, what I wish to argue is this: that the man was not in a rational state, and therefore was not morally accountable for what he did. A man in a state of intoxication is no other than insane. He has not his faculties about him; he is subject to wild and unnatural impulses which he cannot control; his perceptions of good and evil are clouded; he is insensible to consequences; the wholesome fears and restraints to which we are wisely made subject have no influence over him: surely we should not judge the actions of such a man as we would the deeds of a sane and sober man. No! we might as justly hold an idiot or a brute responsible!