apprehended becomes less matter of imagination on the Dissolution of the Monasteries at p. 379, and more matter of distinct perception and and on the execution of Laud and Charles I. knowledge. Poets, therefore, have perpetual at p. 403; but our limits are closing in upon occasion to remind themselves that

us, and not the least important part of our task

.... all things are less dreadful than they seem,' is yet to be performed. There is a short series and thereby to apply the consolations of the im- written two years ago, which we have been aginative reason as a corrective to the ex-favoured with a permission to present to the cesses of imaginative passion. 'Present fears,' says Shakspeare,

‘.... are less than horrible imaginings.'* And Milton may have been thinking less of the Devil than of what he had himself experienced when he gave expression, in the person of Satan, to a similar sentiment :

'If there be worse, the expectation more
Of worse torments me than the feeling can;
I would be at the worst; worst is my port,
My harbour, and my ultimate repose,
The end I would attain, my final good.'t

To our minds the most interesting portion of this series is that which relates to the offices of the Church. We select the two Sonnets upon Confirmation :—

'The young ones gathered in from hill and dale,
With holiday delight on every brow,
'Tis passed away far other thoughts prevail;
For they are taking the baptismal vow
Upon their conscious selves; their own lips speak
The solemn promise. Strongest sinews fail,
And many a blooming, many a lovely cheek,
Under the holy fear of God, turns pale;
While on each head His lawn-robed servant lays
An apostolic hand, and with prayer seals
The covenant. The Omnipotent will raise
Their feeble souls; and bear with his regrets,
Who, looking round the fair assemblage, feels
That ere the sun goes down their childhood sets.

'I saw a mother's eye intensely bent
Upon a maiden trembling as she knelt;
In and for whom the pious mother felt
Things that we judge of by a light too faint.
Tell, if ye may, some star-crowned muse or
saint!

public for the first time. It was suggested by the recent discussions in parliament and elsewhere on the subject of Punishment by Death. It will be proper to remind our readers of the state to which this question has been brought by the proceedings of the last few years.

In the session of 1836 an able and elaborate report by the Commissioners on Criminal Law, of which the second part was on this subject, was laid before Parliament.* In the ensuing session this was followed by papers presented to Parliament by her Majesty's command, and consisting of a correspondence between the Commissioners, Lord John Russell, and Lord Denman. Upon the foundation afforded by these documents, the bills (7th Gul. IV. and 1st Vict. cap. 84 to 89 and 91) of the 17th July, 1837, were brought in and passed. These Acts removed the punishment of death from about 200 offences, and left it applicable to high treason-murder and attempts at murder -rape-arson with danger to life-and to piracies, burglaries, and robberies, when aggravated by cruelty and violence.

The great majority of the offences which were exempted from capital punishment by these Acts had not been visited with it in practice for many years, and there could be no doubt that the dead letter of the law which remained could do nothing but harm. There were some others which had been visited with capital punishment occasionally, though rarely, and with regard to these the great and prevailing argument was, that the feeling of the public was against capital punishment in such cases, and that the law by awarding it did in effect promote the total impunity of the offences by

Tell what rushed in, from what she was re-deterring prosecutions, and by inducing wit

lieved

Then, when her child the hallowing touch received,

And such vibration through the mother went
That tears burst forth amain. Did gleams ap-
pear?

Opened a vision of that blissful place
Where dwells a sister-child? And was power
given

Part of her lost one's glory back to trace
Even to this rite? For thus she knelt, and, ere
The summer leaf had faded, passed to
heaven.'-pp. 422, 423.

We had purposed to quote the three Sonnets on Monastic Life at pp. 343, 4, and 5, and those

* Macbeth, Act i. Sc. iii.

+ Paradise Regained, book iii. 1. 209.

nesses, juries, and sometimes judges, to violate their duty and conspire in producing a false verdict of acquittal,-insomuch that in these tried on a capital charge as a sure means of cases practised offenders would prefer to be getting off.

These arguments were founded upon a large body of statistical and other evidence taken by the Commissioners, and we are of opinion that the bills of 1837 were proper to be enacted as an experiment. The experience of their operation in 1839 and 1840 has been supposed to be in their favour, though we cannot make out by what treatment of the criminal statistics of those years that result is obtained. The valua

* Papers of 1836, 343.

ble tables constructed by Mr. Redgrave of the Home Office, and annually presented to Parliament, show a considerable increase of the offences from which death has been removed,an increase of no less than 38 per cent. Mr. Redgrave, indeed, states that offences generally have increased 25 per cent., and seems to infer that 25 of the 38 per cent. is therefore chargeable to general causes. So far as direct causation is concerned the inference is just. But it may be a question whether the general sense of restraint be not affected by important relaxations of the law as regards particular crimes, and whether some portion of the 25 per cent., as well as the greater part of the 38 per cent., be not chargeable on the Acts of 1837. The whole question of the operation of these Acts is a matter for watchful attention during the next two or three years, though, we will admit, not a matter for immediate conclusions. The experience and evidence which preceded the enactment of the bills of 1837 were so strong against the law as it then stood, that it would require a longer experience and still stronger evidence than any which can be now adduced, to bring us to the conviction that the operation of these Acts is not beneficial, even though removing the punishment of death from some great crimes.

away from all offences except treason and murder; which bill obtained no inconsiderable support in the House, and at one time even a majority, but was ultimately defeated by Sir Robert Peel. The only measure which took effect was a bill (brought in by the government with a view to avert the enactment of Mr. Kelly's) by which, besides the correction of some oversights in the Acts of 1837, the crime of rape was taken out of the list of those which had continued to be punishable with death.

Thus the broad question which is left for the country to look at, in respect to the punishment by death, is in effect its abolition. It is to this question that Mr. Wordsworth's Sonnets refer; and the general drift of the sentiments which they express is that there is a deeper charity and a more enlarged view of religious obligations than that which would dictate such a measure in this country in the present state of society. Our belief is that the great body of opinion in the country on this subject is sound, and that the argument of inefficacy from unpopularity, which was justly employed to effect. the mitigation of the penal code in 1837, would be altogether unfounded as an argument for the removal of capital punishments from the crimes of violence and blood, to which alone it is awarded by the law as it now stands. But But there were some gentlemen in the House even if this plea of unpopularity were to be of Commons who thought that the punishment regarded as still extant, it is beside the purpose should be removed from greater crimes still, of one who, like Mr. Wordsworth, addresses and they appealed to the bills of 1837, the himself to the public mind, and aims at the motives which had dictated thern, and the sup- amendment of that very state of public sentiment posed benefits which had flowed from them, in which is the ground of the argument, and who favour of going further, as if the whole ques-regards legislative concessions to such a state tion in such matters were not-where to stop? This was indeed no question with Mr. Fitzroy Kelly, who, in common with Mr. Ewart and some others, openly avowed that he had conscientious objections to the infliction of death at all. The truth, as it appears to us, is, that the more the success up to a certain point in a career of this kind, the greater is the danger of a popular assembly being hurried into errors and extremes. But, as we have said, we find no proof of any particular success hitherto. There is a remarkable return moved for by Mr. Ewart (No. 48, dated 28th Sept., 1841), which shows that a considerable reduction in the number of executions for murder may take place, and be attended with a decrease in the number of commitments for murder. We have sought in vain for any link in reason to connect these two concomitant phenomena as cause and effect; but, even if they were to be so connected, they would be an argument, not for altering the law, but for relaxing its execution.

However, Mr. Kelly, though aiming at the abolition of punishment by death, brought in a bill upon the instalment principle, taking it

of sentiment as affording an apparent sanction and an actual accession of strength to these errors, whether generally or (as we believe) only partially prevalent, which he desires to correct.

This part of the controversy it was not within the scope of Mr. Wordsworth's purposes to deal with, and there are of course other parts which are insusceptible of poetical treatment. But the main subject, being a subject for deep feelings, large views, and high argumentation, is essentially a subject for poetry, and especially so in the hands of one who has been accustomed, during a life which has now reached to threescore years and ten, to consider the senti ments and judgments which he utters in poetry with as deep a solicitude as to their justness as if they were delivered from the bench or the pulpit.

The first of the series is suggested by a view of Lancaster Castle, seen from an eminence called 'Weeping Hill,' being the spot from which criminals on their way to the Castle first have it in sight :

This spot-at once unfolding sight so fair
Of sea and land, with yon grey towers that still

Who had betrayed their country. The stern imaginations:

6

The religious view of the subject is thus introduced :

Before the world had pass'd her time of youth,
While polity and discipline were weak,
The precept, Eye for eye and tooth for tooth,
Strong as could then be borne. A Master meek
Came forth-a light, tho' but as of day-break,
Proscribed the spirit fostered by that rule,
Patience his law, long-suffering his school,
And Love the end, which all thro' peace must

seek.

But lamentably do they err who strain
And keep vindictive thirstings from the soul,
His mandates, given rash impulse to control,
So far that, if consistent in their scheme,
They must forbid the State to inflict a pain,
Making of social order a mere dream.'

gious view, though commonly advanced under the name of religion, which objects to what is called 'cutting a man off in his sins,' on the ground that it is taking into the hands of man issues which ought to be left in the hands of God, and which it belongs to God alone to dispose; as if man and man's hands, and all the issues that come out of man's hands, were not equally in the disposal of God's providence, and as if man were not ordained by that providence to be the minister of God's justice upon earth. The only really religious view of the subject in our minds, is that which recognizes the responsibilities of man in respect of all the agencies and issues which human judgment can reach, and teaches that man must, as he would answer before God, do all that in him lies to In the eighth sonnet Mr. Wordsworth disprevent crime, and exercise the best of his avows the doctrine-sometimes fallaciously human judgment to discover wherein that all employed on his own side of the question— consists, being assured that, in doing his best which would strive to measure out the punto prevent crime upon earth, he is doing the ishments awarded by the law in proportion part which belongs to him in regard to issues to the degrees of moral turpitude. Legislabeyond the grave. It is manifest that the tive enactments can be but rough and genesudden death of sinners enters into the dis- ral, either in their admeasurements or in pensations of Providence; and whenever it their definitions, and the jurisdiction which appears to be good for mankind, according to they create must be limited to subject-matter the arrangements of Providence, that such for which it is in their power to provide death should be inflicted by human ministra means of adequate inquiry and adjudication tion, it is as false a humility, as it is a false-that is, for crime, as distinguished both from humanity and a false piety, for man to refuse guilt and from sin. This limitation is admitto be the instrument. ted by Mr. Wordsworth; but at the same But when this argument is extended to the time he does not allow that prevention of abolition of the punishment by death even crime is the sole end of punishment. On for Murder, it appears to us to be still more the contrary, he considers the State as repreimperfect. Those by whom it is used con-senting, guiding, and supporting the moral sider it as overriding all other questions, and sense of the community, and only abstaining the inquiry whether the punishment is or is from giving effect to that sense by penal law, not efficacious for the prevention of the in so far as it may labour under an incapacicrime, is one which they will not entertain, ty for doing so :-because that, they say, is a question of mere human expediency, whereas the other is a point of religious obligation. Yet they admit that the religious obligation turns upon a sinner being cut off in his sins. Now, assuming that we are all sinners, and assuming also the efficiency of the punishment for prevention-say to the extent of preventing one half of the murders which would be committed without it-it follows that the State, by sparing to cut off A who murdered B, would be the occasion of C murdering D, and E murdering F; that is, of two persons being F;—that cut off in their sins by the hand of the murderer, instead of one by the hand of the executioner. This is an issue which human judgment can distinctly reach and take account of, and in respect of which, therefore, God has devolved upon man a responsible

agency.

Fit retribution by the moral code
Determined, lies beyond the State's embrace :
Yet, as she may for each peculiar case,
She plants well-measured terrors in the road
of wrongful acts. Downward it is and broad,
Far oftener then, bad ushering worse event,
And the main fear once doomed to banishment,
Blood would be spilt, that in his dark abode
Crime might lie better hid. And should the
change

Take from the horror due to a foul deed,
Pursuit and evidence so far must fail,
And Guilt escaping, Passion then might plead
In angry spirits for her old free range,
And the "wild justice of Revenge" prevail.'

Though to give timely warning and deter
Is one great aim of penalty, extend
Thy mental vision farther, and ascend
Far higher, else full surely shalt thou err.

What is a State? The wise behold in her

A creature born of Time, that keeps one eye
Fixed on the statutes of Eternity,
To which her judgments reverently defer:
Speaking through Law's dispassionate voice,

the State

Indues her conscience with external life
And being-to preclude or quell the strife
Of individual will, to elevate
The grovelling mind, the erring to recall,
And fortify the moral sense of all.'

In the tenth, the religious view is resum ed:

Our bodily life, some plead, that life the shrine
Of an immortal spirit, is a gift

So sacred, so informed with light divine,
That no tribunal, though most wise to sift
Deed and intent, should turn the being adrift
Into that world where penitential tear
May not avail, nor prayer have for God's ear
A voice-that world whose veil no hand can lift
For earthly sight. "Eternity and time,"
They urge,
"have interwoven claims and rights,
Not to be jeopardized through foulest crime:
The sentence rule by mercy's heaven-born
lights."

Even so; but measuring not by finite sense
Infinite Power, perfect Intelligence."

the attempt to permit society, yet forbid communication, results in perpetual endeavours which their minds are kept in a fraudulent at evasion on the part of the prisoners, by state, and which can be met only by such incessant severities on the part of the prison officers as must keep their minds in a state almost equally to be avoided. The "Separation System" will be tried more fully than it has yet been, by the model prison now in course of construction. It will produce, we conceive, as many different results as there are differences in men. Our impression is, that in the majority of cases violent passions will be tamed by it, some vicious propensities subdued, and the mind reduced to a weak, blank, and negative condition. But this, though good as far as it goes, is in truth merely a work of destruction; the work of reformation is yet to be begun; and towards this, though books, tracts, and chaplains may do much for the moment (and we are far from undervaluing even a transitory moral impression,) yet the dispositions of the mind. which are thus nurtured must not be accounted for virtues. It is only by the exerand virtue can have no exercise in solitude cise of virtue that virtue can be cultivated;

in the absence of all social relations, of all transactions, of all temptations, and even of the power and opportunity of doing evil. That which purifies us is trial,' says Milton,* and trial is by what is contrary. This is ends; and when that term arrives, the priyet to come when the solitary imprisonment wicked portion only will receive him, in the soner is sent forth into a world of which the infancy of his virtue-a moral weakling.

tation, the Archbishop of Dublin's pamphlet, With regard to the alternative of transporin 1832, seems to have been fatal to the system as it was then conducted, and at the

In the eleventh and twelfth the alternatives of secondary punishment are adverted to-solitary imprisonment and transportation. One-half of the question respecting punishment by death turns, no doubt, upon a comparison of it with other punishments; but these must be punishments of which we have experience in this country, or in some country in a similar social state. For as to American experience, which was often referred rican experience, which was often referred to a few years ago, we believe it is now acknowledged to be inapplicable; and as to mere visions of a preventive and reformatory efficacy in untried methods of punishing crime, they may lead to inventions or experiments, and the result may possibly be the discovery of a preferable substitute for pun- doubts whether it could ever be conducted same time to have raised the most serious ishment by death: but, until the discovery in a manner to give it preventive efficacy. shall have been made, and shall have been Lord John Russell appears by his instructried and proved by an adequate experience, tions to the Commissioners on Criminal Law to say that methods ought to be discovered which no man has yet succeeded in discoverto have been persuaded that these doubts ing, is no argument for the precedent aboli- might be set aside; but even admitting that tion of the method which exists: yet this was the whole drift of the argumentation of Mr. Kelly and his friends on this part of the subject.

With regard to imprisonment, the "Silent System" may be considered as justly renounced by all competent authorities on the subject.* Nature is too strong for it, and

See the Reports of the Home Inspectors of Prisons for 1837-8.

it may be or has been made a formidable force derived from the consequences brought punishment, there remain objections of great upon the countries to which convicts are transported.

Independently, however, of these consideference in respect of the criminal, Mr. rations, and on the ground of a moral preWordsworth would inflict death rather than transportation or imprisonment for life: