is impossible to recall the sentence of the law. Not that this consideration alone is a sufficient argument against it, but it is one argument amongst the many. In a certain sense, indeed, all personal punishments are irrevocable. The man who by a mistaken verdict has been confined twelve months in a prison, cannot be repossessed of the time. But if irrevocable punishments cannot be dispensed with, they should not be made needlessly common, and especially those should be regarded with jealousy which admit of no removal or relaxation in the event of subsequently discovered innocence, or subsequent reformation. It is not sufficiently considered that a jury or a court of justice never know that a prisoner is guilty.-A witness may know it who saw him commit the act, but others cannot know it who depend upon testimony, for testimony may be mistaken or false. All verdicts are founded upon probabilities—probabilities which, though they sometimes approach to certainty, never attain to it. Surely it is a serious thing for one man to destroy another upon grounds short of absolute certainty of his guilt. There is a sort of indecency attached to it-an assumption of a degree of authority which ought to be exercised only by Him whose knowledge is infallibly true. It is unhappily certain that some have been put to death for actions which they never committed. At one assizes, we believe, not less than six persons were hanged, of whom it was afterwards discovered that they were entirely innocent. A deplorable instance is given by Dr. Smollett :-"Rape and murder were perpetrated upon an unfortunate woman in the neighborhood of London, and an innocent man suffered death for this complicated outrage, while the real criminals assisted at his execution, heard him appeal to Heaven for his innocence, and in the character of friends embraced him while he stood on the brink of eternity."* Others * Hist. of Eng. v. 3, p. 318.

equally innocent, but whose innocence has never been made known, have doubtless shared the same fate. These are tremendous considerations, and ought to make men solemnly pause before, upon grounds necessarily uncertain, they take away that life which God has given, and which they cannot restore.

Of the merely philosophical speculations respecting the rectitude of capital punishments, whether affirmative or negative, I would say little; for they in truth deserve little. One advantage indeed attends a brief review that the reader will perceive how little the speculations of philosophers will aid us in the investigation of a Christian question.

. The philosopher, however, would prove what the Christian cannot, and Mably accordingly says, “In the state of nature, I have a right to take the life of him who lifts his arm against mine. This right, upon entering into society, I surrender to the magistrate." If we conceded the truth of the first position, (which we do not,) the conclusion from it is an idle sophism; for it is obviously preposterous to say, that because I have a right to take the life of a man who will kill me if I do not kill him, the state, which is in no such danger, has a right to do the same. That danger which constitutes the alleged right in the individual, does not exist in the case of the state. The foundation of the right is gone, and where can be the right itself? Having, however, been thus told that the state has a right to kill, we are next informed, by Filangieri, that the criminal has no right to live. He says, "If I have a right to kill another man, he has lost his right to life."* Rousseau goes a little further. He tells us, that in consequence of the "social contract" which we make with the sovereign on entering into society, "Life is a conditional grant of the * Montagu on Punishment of Death.

state" so that we hold our lives, it seems, only as tenants at will," and must give them up whenever their owner, the state, requires them. The reader has probably hitherto thought that he retained his head by some other tenure.

The right of taking an offender's life being thus proved, Mably shows us how its exercise becomes expedient. "A murderer," says he, "in taking away his enemy's life, believes he does him the greatest possible evil. Death, then, in the murderer's estimation, is the greatest of evils. By the fear of death, therefore, the excesses of hatred and revenge must be restrained." If language wilder than this can be held, Rousseau, I think, holds it. He says, "The preservation of both sides (the criminal and the state) is incompatible; one of the two must perish." How it happens that a nation "must perish," if a convict is not hanged, the reader, I suppose, will not know. Even philosophy, however concedes as much: "Absolute necessity alone," says Pastoret, can justify the punishment of death ;" and Rousseau himself acknowledges that "we have no right to put to death, even for the sake of example, any but those who cannot be permitted to live without danger." Beccaria limits the right to one specific case—and in doing this he appears to sacrifice his own principle, (deduced from that splendid fiction, the "social contract,") which is, that "the punishment of death is not authorized by any right :-no such right exists."

For myself, I perceive little value in such speculations to whatever conclusions they lead, for there are shorter and surer roads to truth; but it is satisfactory to find that, even upon the principles of such philosophers, the right to put criminals to death is not easily made out.

The argument, then, respecting the punishment of death is both distinct and short.

* Contr. Soc. ii. 5, Montagu.

It rejects, by its very nature, a regard to the first and greatest object of punishment.

It does not attain either of the other objects so well as they may be attained by other means.

It is attended with numerous evils peculiarly its own.

CHAPTER VIII.

RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS.

The primitive church-The established church of Ireland— America-Advantages and disadvantages of established churches-Alliance of a church with the state-Persecution generally the growth of religious establishments-State religions injurious to the civil welfare of a people-Voluntary payment.

A LARGE number of persons embark from Europe, and colonize an uninhabited territory in the South Sea. They erect a government-suppose a republic-and make all persons, of whatever creed, eligible to the legislature. The community prospers and increases. In process of time a member of the legislature, who is a disciple of John Wesley, persuades himself that it will tend to the promotion of religion that the preachers of Methodism should be supported by a national tax; that their stipends should be sufficiently ample to prevent them from necessary attention to any business but that of religion; and that accordingly they shall be precluded from the usual pursuits of commerce and from the professions. He proposes the measure. It is contended against by the Episcopalian members, and the Independents, and the Catholics, and the Unitarians -by all but the adherents to his own creed. They insist upon the equality of civil and religious rights,

but in vain. The majority prove to be Methodists; they support the measure: the law is enacted; and Methodism becomes, thenceforth, the religion of the state. This is a religious establishment.

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But it is a religious establishment in its best form; and, perhaps, none ever existed of which the constitution was so simple and so pure. During one portion of the papal history, the Romish church was indeed not so much an establishment" of the state as a separate and independent constitution. For though some species of alliance subsisted, yet the Romanists did not acknowledge, as Protestants now do, that the power of establishing a religion resides in the state.

In the present day other immunities are possessed by ecclesiastical establishments than those which are necessary to constitute the institution—such, for example, as that of exclusive eligibility to the legislature : and other alliances with the civil power exist than that which necessarily results from any preference of a particular faith-such as that of placing ecclesiastical patronage in the hands of a government, or of those who are under its influence. From these circumstances it happens, that in enquiring into the propriety of religious establishments, we cannot confine ourselves to the enquiry whether they are proper as they usually exist. And this is so much the more needful, because there is little reason to expect that when once an ecclesiastical establishment has been erected-when once a particular church has been selected for the preference and patronage of the civil power-that preference and patronage will be confined to those circumstances which are necessary to the subsistence of an establishment at all.

It is sufficiently obvious that it matters nothing to the existence of an established church, what the faith of that church is, or what is the form of its government.