nothing further that it can obtain iu taking away this, it will save this which may be saved, for it affects not any blood, and when it destroys, it is out of necessity, to take away a destructive person, and to give example; which in the case stated falls not out. Again, justice is the justice of goodness, and so cannot delight to punish: it aims at nothing more than the maintaining and promoting the laws of goodness, and hath always some good end before it, and therefore would never punish except some further good were in view."

I would that the good Dr. Arnold were on this side also; but from an illustrative passage in one of his works,* he seems clearly opposed to any further progress on the behalf of the abolition of Capital Punishments. When telling us of the necessity of paying attention to "altered circumstances," and not to be Guelfs in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, because the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or twelfth, he says, "Consider the popular feeling at this moment against Capital

* Introductory Lectures on Modern History. By Thomas Arnold, D.D., Regius Professor, &c. Second edition, Lect. v. p. 197.

Punishments. What is it but continually to burn the woods, when the country actually wants shade and moisture! (He had just been using the illustration of a settler in a new country overdoing the matter of clearing and draining.) Year after year men talked of the severity of the penal code, and struggled against it in vain. The feeling became stronger and stronger, and at last effected all and more than all which it had at first vainly demanded: yet still, from mere habit, it pursues its course, no longer to the restraining of legal cruelty, but to the injury of innocence and the encouragement of crime, and encouraging that worst evil, a sympathy with wickedness justly punished, rather than with the law, whether of God or man, unjustly violated. So men have continued to cry out against the power of the crown after the crown had been shackled hand and foot," &c. &c. It is but fair, since Arnold has been referred to before, to quote this passage here; but, at the same time, I would venture to hope that some portions of this essay may be received as a satisfactory answer to its expressions: and mainly on the ground that Capital Punishments rather tend to engender crime, and foster sympathy. "There is much reason," observed

Beccaria, "to believe that our public executions have a direct and positive tendency to promote both murder and suicide."*

Be assured, there is room yet for progress in the improvement of our country's laws. Much has been done, and let us prize it : more remains to do, and let us endeavour to attain it. But we must go to work steadily and solemnly, like Christian men. We must not call names, and style an opponent "a champion of the gallows," "one who loves the gallows," or speak of "strangling according to law:" "Law slaughtered man and woman :" "suffocated carcases :" "ignorant practice of judicial mankilling:" and quote Theodore Hook, Baillie Nicol Jarvie, Marryat, Punch, &c.; no, we must not show weakness but strength, eschewing the impotency of abuse, and standing forth in the might of sound speech that cannot be gainsayed. When the Rev. Mr. Burnett at an anti-militia meeting in Birmingham,t in speaking against war, descended to mere blackguardism, and talked of the noble soldier as "a stiffened statue, with an iron barrel in its arms, till a martinet of an officer might be pleased to * See Appendix.

↑ Birmingham Journal, Jan. 24, 1846.

say "stand at ease:" and as

66 'a red-coated

pauper, placed in a military workhouse, which they called a barrack," he at once ruined the cause which he desired to advocate.

We must resort to none of this mere carnal caricature, but rather act as those who would seek to attain to the mind that was in Christ Jesus. We must give an adversary every credit for right feeling and humane judgment, believing that he pursues, in his own mind, the best course for the preservation of human life: and in this spirit, we shall be the more likely to convince him of any mistake, or to assure ourselves that we are in the line of truth.

REMARKS

ON THE

EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE.

"Former simplicity, and softness of spirit, is not now to be found, because zeal hath drowned charity, and skill meekness."-Hooker.

LETTER I.

My dear Sir John,

You wish me to write to you on the subject of charity, both as to its scope and characteristic in general, and in regard to things political and ecclesiastical of the present day. I ought to sit down to do so with alacrity; but, somehow or other, one feels this to be a matter upon which so much is written, and so little of it is practised, that the apprehension of saying, and not doing a thing, flits awfully before one's