This was enough. I interrupted her.

'Darling Mary, it is I who am thy papa.' "You!' returned she.

I added, Wouldst thou like me for thy papa?'
The child turned away.

'No, sir, my papa was much prettier.'

I covered her with kisses and tears. She tried to escape from my arms, crying, 'Sir, you hurt me with your beard.' Then I replaced her on my knees, devouring her with my eyes, and continued

Mary, canst thou read?'

'Yes,' she answered, 'I can read very well. Mamma makes me read my letters.'

Well, then, read a little to me,' said I, pointing to a printed paper which she held crumpled in her dimpled hands.

She shook her pretty head, saying, 'Oh! dear me, I can only read fables.'

'But try, my darling; come, open your paper.'

She unfolded the paper and began to spell with her finger, 'S en -sen, ten c e-tence,-Sentence.' I snatched it from her hands. It was my own sentence of death she was reading to me! Her nurse had bought the paper for a penny. To me it had cost more. No words can convey what I felt. My violence had alarmed the child, who was ready to cry. Suddenly she said to me, 'Do give me back my paper; I want to play with it!' I restored her to her nurse. 'Take her hence!' and I fell back in my chair, gloomy, desolate, in despair. Now they may come; I care for nothing more. The last fibre of my heart is broken.

Some writer says, that when we see an execution, we should say, there goes my father, my brother, or my son. This is the true Christian spirit. How many executions would take place in our world if such a spirit pervaded society?

And when the scaffold has done its work, and the unfeeling ministers of justice have left the scene, to mingle once more in the busy crowd, as though a mere ordinary occurrence had happened, what must be the

feeling, the intense agony of grief of that wife or mother, when the cold, stiffened body is carried to the dissecting room, or brought to the family for burial? Who can describe the anguish of that hour? How many such scenes have transpired in our fair world! And who can tell whose lot it may be? How uncertain is human testimony! How often there may be perjury! How insinuating is temptation! How frail our resolutions! How liable is he that thinketh he standeth to fall! Does the reader,' says a writer, 'startle at the very suggestion, as among the most improbable of all things? I can tell him the painful fact, that it happened to myself, several years ago, to call, at a distant place, on a gentleman high in probity, and in personal and relative respectability, and to meet at his house, by accident, another gentleman equally so, who would have both started with horror, and kindled into indignation, had any one then predicted what, nevertheless, has since happened, that the very near relative of the one should actually die by the common hangman for forgery, and the equally near relative of the other should be obliged to fly from his country to avoid the same fate.' How many are in prison who felt as secure as the most virtuous! 'When I look around upon these men,' said the warden of the Massachusetts State Prison to the writer, 'I often think that I might have been one, had I been placed in their circumstances.'

And even innocence has suffered.* But the mind is overwhelmed at the thought. There the law stands

all ghastly and bloody! pronounce the sentence!

There is the judge ready to
There is the cold, unfeeling

* See Essay X., on the Irremediability of Capital Punishments.

sheriff ready to do its bidding. We have never seen the office of hangman and judge more graphically described than in the following:

INTERVIEW BETWEEN THE HANGMAN AND THE JUDGE.

Did your lordship ever attend, at killing time, at the old Bailey? If not, pray favor me with your company-not on the gallows, but staying in the street amid a crowd that always assemble when I am at work for you and the sheriff. Perhaps it will add to the zest, if you come when I have a young woman to stiffen, supplied by yourself. Will the fluttering of the petticoats, as she swings in the wind, produce a pleasant sound in your ears, my learned master? Fail not to watch the people—the men, women, and children-good, bad, and indifferent, who have gathered to behold the sacred majesty of the law. You will see such flashing of the eyes and grinding teeth-you will hear sighs and groans, and words of rage and hatred, with fierce curses on yourself and me; and then laughter, such as it is, of an unnatural kind, that they will make you sick! You will feel-no-why you feel more than your faithful journeyman? We shall go to our breakfasts with good appetites and a firm conviction that every hanging but changes many sneaking pilferers into savage robbers, fit for murder.

A few years ago I was called out of town to hang a little boy who had been convicted of killing with malice aforethought. If guilty, he must have been in the habit of going to executions. Ten thousand came to dabble in the poor creature's blood. This was the youngest fellow-creature I ever handled in the way of business, and a beautiful child he was too, as you have seen by the papers, with a straight nose, large blue eyes, and golden hair. I have no heart, no feelings;-who has in our calling? But those who came to see me strangle that tender youngster, have hearts and feelings as we once had. Have-no, had; for this, they saw, was fit to make them as hard as your servant or his master.

They saw that stripling lifted, fainting, on to the gallows, his smooth cheeks of the color of wood ashes, his little limbs trembling, and his bosom heaving sigh after sigh, as if the body and soul were parting without my help.

This was downright murder, for there was scarcely any life to

take out of him. When I began to pull the cap over his baby face, he pressed his small hands together, (his arms, you know, were corded fast to his body,) and he gave a beseeching look, just as a calf will lick the butcher's hand. But cattle do not speak; the creature muttered, 'Pray, sir, don't hurt me.' 'My dear,' answered I, 'you should have spoken to my master. I'm only the journeyman, and must do as I'm bid.' This made him cry, which seemed to relieve him, and I do think I should have cried myself, if I had not heard shouts from the crowd, 'Poor lamb !—shame,— murder!" Quick,' said the sheriff. Ready,' said I. The reverend gentleman gave me the wink; the drop fell—one kick-and he swayed to and fro, dead as the feelings of the Christian people of England.

The crowd dispersed, some swearing, some weeping, as if hell had broke loose, and some laughing, while they cracked blackguard jokes on you and me, the parson, and the dangling corpse. They had come for the sight; they would have come to see an angel murdered. They came to get drunk with strong excitement; they went back reeling and filthy with the hot debauch. They had come to riot in the passions of fear and pity; they went back, some in a fever of rage, some burning with heat, some hardened in the heart like me, or you; all sunk down in their own respect, ready to make light of pain and blood, corrupted by the indecent show; and more fit than ever to make work for us, the judge and the hangman.

O, wise law-makers! who think to soften the hearts of the people; to make them gentle and good; to give them a feeling of respect for themselves and others, by showing them a sight like this!-English paper.

INCIDENT OF ROBINSON AND HIS CHILD.

When the little boy was removed from his cell, he remembered, when too late, that he had not bidden him farewell. He cried out,

I didn't wish him good-by! I shall never see him again in this world.' He burst into tears, sat on the floor of his cell, and wept bitterly over two hours!

ESSAY VII.

EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT.

Rome-Russia-Bombay-Belgium-Tuscany-Objection of Cheever-Singular confession of Buonaparte.

'Away with the executioner and the execution, and the very name of its engine! not merely from the limbs, but from the very thoughts, the eyes, the ears, of Roman citizens!--for not alone the occurrence and the endurance of all these things, but also the liability, the apprehension, even the mere mention of them, are unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man!' CICERO.

In various parts of our labor, we have endeavored to show that the punishment of death tended strongly to weaken the doctrine of the sacredness of human life, and to destroy the morals of society. We intend now to take still higher ground, and show that community is actually more prosperous and happy where the law has been abolished. A few examples from history must suffice.

ROME. We are told that, for two centuries and a half, throughout the better age of the Roman republic, that the infliction of the punishment of death was expressly forbidden by the famous Porcian law, passed in the four hundred and fifty-fourth year of Rome, by the tribune Porcius Lecca.* It is true there were exceptions. The exile of Cicero turned upon the violation of this law, in his infliction of this punishment upon the Catilinarian conspirators. And in the case of Manlius, whose courage had delivered Rome, but who was precipitated from the Tarpeian rock when his ambi

*Livy, x. 9. Cicero pro Rabirio, iii. 4: In Verrem, v. 63; Sallust, Cat. 51. See Adam's Roman Antiquities.