punishment to produce suicide, compared with the force of the temptation which the five men, imprisoned for life, will lie under to the commission of the same crime-into the temptation, too, under which these prisoners will lie, doomed as they already are to the heaviest punishment which can be laid upon them, to murder their keepers, and escape from prison-into ten thousand other questions which no man can answer. The moment we attempt to reduce this problem of the calculation of general consequences, out of the vague form in which Mr. O'Sullivan states it, so as to get it in a condition for solution, we find that it is intricate and vast beyond the power of any human mind to comprehend. This is yet another illustration of the utter impotency of the utilitarian philosophy to discuss questions of guilt and innocence, death and life. What have these general consequences to do with our duty to prevent all the murders that we can? Out upon these calculations of profit and loss when the lives of innocent men are in question We have no patience with this Iscariot arithmetic, which knows how to calculate so precisely the price of innocent blood. If one course being pursued, which it is right for us to take, there would be only three murders committed during the coming year, while five would occur under an altered course, then the blood of the two men whom the change would slay, calls upon us for protection, and we are blood-guilty if we refuse it.

There are two or three considerations, referable to this part of the discussion, upon which it may be expedient, in conclusion, to bestow a passing remark. The irremediable nature of capital punishment is much insisted upon by the advocates of the other side of the question. If a mistake has been committed, by the condemnation of an innocent man, it is beyond recall. And under this head we generally have an affecting narrative of cases in which men have been condemned and executed, who were afterwards found to have been innocent. An exaggerated impression is commonly produced in relation to the number of such cases. Many are given, and in such a manner as to leave the reader to infer that they are but selections from a vastly greater number which might be cited; whereas they are all, or nearly all, that the most diligent ransacking of the annals of criminal jurisprudence has been able to furnish. The most of them are given in Phillips's Treatise on Evidence, and they constitute the stock in trade of the prisoner's counsel in all murder trials. Whoever will examine these cases will find that in almost every instance, except those in which the corpus delicti was not found, and it appeared afterwards that no murder had been committed, the real culprit has taken away the life of the innocent prisoner by perjury, or which amounts to the same thing, by arranging and directing a set of circumstances so as to implicate him. The amount of it is that the murderer, in addition to the murder already committed, has made use of an institution of justice, instead of the assassin's knife, to perpetrate another. There is in such cases an additional murder committed,

not by the law nor by its ministers, nor yet by the State which gave them their authority, but by the wretch who has brought upon himself the guilt of a double murder to prevent the detection of one. Capital punishment may in this way occasionally add to the number of murders. This is a consideration which we feel bound to weigh, as it involves not "the well-being of society" but the life of an innocent man. What then is its true value in its bearing upon the general question? If capital punishment be the doom of murder, there may occur now and then, with extreme rarity, an instance in which a murderer will seize upon this law to commit another murder, for the purpose of screening the one already committed. But if capital punishment be abolished, and a milder substitute introduced, the diminished severity of the penalty will tend at once to increase the number of murders. It will be observed that we do not undertake to weigh the consideration under discussion, by placing over against it the imprisonment which, under the proposed change, would in like circumstances be inflicted upon the innocent prisoner, nor do we institute any inquiry into the value of the restitution that would be made, when, after years of incarce ration, upon the discovery of his innocence, you release him broken it may be in health, and shattered in mind. We make no such comparisons. We weigh murder only with murder. And dreadful as is the thought, that guilty men may be able in rare cases to make use of the law, notwithstanding all the precautions which guard its exercise, to carry into effect a purpose of murder, we would still uphold the law, because we are certain that its abrogation would lead to tenfold more murders than can possibly be committed through this abuse of it.

Here too we may point out another mode in which the abrogation of capital punishment must certainly increase the number of murders. We have spoken already of the strong conviction which has always pervaded the hearts of the mass of mankind, that death is the fitting and the only fitting punishment for murder. This conviction is not the product of a passionate excitement of feeling: it has its seat in the sense of justice, and is deep and strong as the heart of man. Now just as surely as capital punishment is abolished, this conviction that the murderer ought to die will combine with the exasperated feelings of the near of kin to the murdered, and the avenger of blood will be abroad through the land. Men who would not under any other exigency trample upon the laws of the land, will take upon themselves the work of vengeance under the impulse of what they will consider a higher law written on their hearts; and murder will thus be added to murder.

"Passion then would plead

In angry spirits, for her old free range,

And the wild justice of Revenge prevail."

The only other objection to capital punishment that calls for notice, is that which is drawn from its cutting short the period of

man's probation. This objection has but little weight with us, for believing as we do that God has revealed to us His will, both through the laws of reason and conscience, and in his written word, that the murderer should be put to death, we consider the arrest of the term of his probation, through the infliction of this sentence, as no less distinctly and properly the dispensation of Divine Providence, than if the criminal had been cut off by a sudden disease. But independent of this view, let us beg those who urge this objection to remember the compassion which is due to those who are to be murdered as well as to the murderer. By the abolition of capital punishment we should increase the number of murders, and thus cut short the probation of those that are murdered, and with this additional aggravation, that they are sent without notice, without a moment for thought, to their last account; while to the victim of the law we give time for repentance and preparation. This consideration meets the objection and disposes of it by presenting an evil of like kind but greater magnitude, which cannot but follow the repeal of the penalty of death. In addition to this, too, let it be borne in mind, that no man can tell whether imprisoning the culprit for life, in the manner proposed, would not as effectually interfere with the ends of his probation, as to put him to death after timely notice. Consider the case of a man condemned to death, with several weeks intervening between the sentence and its execution, perfectly certain that the hour is fixed in which he is to appear before his Judge, and placed under the strongest motives to induce him to repent and avail himself of the means of salvation, and then contrast with this the situation in which he would be placed, if immured within the penitentiary, with a life-time before him for the spirit of procrastination to range over, cut off from the influence of public opinion, and other manifold influences which are ordinarily at work upon men,-placed under circumstances so new, and strange, and trying, that many minds have given way entirely under them and become insane,-when all these things are taken into the account how shall we determine which of these dooms would most effectually, to all intents and purposes, interfere with the probation of the criminal. Happily it is not necessary for us to determine this question, in order to learn our duty. In executing the murderer we are but instruments in the hands of Providence to effect his purposes: and we are preventing, so far as we can, other murderers from cutting short the lives of those whom it is our sacred duty to protect. They have claims upon us which the murderer has wilfully forfeited-they have rights which we cannot put in jeopardy, by an ill-judged lenity to the guilty, without incurring a heavy responsibility. It can be no part of our duty, through the weakness of a blind compassion, to clip the demands of justice upon the criminal, and thus let loose the bloody hand of violence upon the innocent.

ESSAY XIII.

PHRENOLOGY.*

IN despite of all the ridicule and argument which have been levelled at phrenology, it has, of late years, made considerable advances; and it now excites more attention, and numbers more disciples than at any former period. Its advocates have abated nothing from the lofty pretensions of their favourite science; for science, they assure us it is, and the first of all the sciences in intrinsic dignity and importance. They claim that it is the greatest and most valuable discovery ever communicated to mankind; that it casts the only certain light upon the nature and operations of the human mind; and that it will contribute more important aid towards the education and the general improvement of the race, than can be obtained from any other source. "The discoveries of the revolution of the globe, and the circulation of the blood, were splendid displays of genius in their authors, and interesting and beneficial to mankind; but their results, compared with the consequences which must inevitably follow from Dr. Gall's discovery of the functions of the brain, sink into relative insignificance." So says Mr. George Combe, the ablest of the phrenologists.

A science which promises such wonderful results, which professes to subject the most abstruse problems in mental science to the ordeal of the sight and touch, which, from its lofty elevation, compassionates the wandering bewilderment of Locke, and wonders that Newton did not study skulls instead of stars, or that Harvey should have wasted his time in discovering the circulation of the blood, when he might have been so much more profitably employed in measuring the bumps of the cranium, deserves certainly the most respectful consideration from all who desire the increase of knowledge or the welfare of mankind. Such consideration, its friends seem disposed to think, it has not yet obtained. Mr. Combe commences the last edition of his System of Phrenology with an affecting account of the unfavourable reception which

Originally published in 1838, in review of "An Examination of Phrenology, in two Lectures, delivered to the Students of the Columbian College, District of Columbia, February, 1837. By Thomas Sewall, M. D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology."

most other great discoveries have met with upon their first announcement, and consoles himself and his collaborators by calling to mind the opposition, ridicule and persecution which were encountered by Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey and Newton. Mr. Combe is not very well read in the history of the hardships endured by the pioneers of philosophical discovery, or he might have increased his catalogue by many additional names, such as ; our readers may fill the blank with Anaxagoras, Socrates, Tycho, and Kepler, or by Symmes, Mesmer, and Perkins, according to their different estimates of the persecuted science of phrenology.

We do not feel disposed to throw ridicule upon any set of men who are labouring, with an honest purpose and a sincere love of truth, to extend the boundaries of human knowledge in any direction. We can look with something like complacency upon what would be swaggering and impudent pretension, were it not supposed to originate in the harmless enthusiasm of fancied discovery, and thankfully receive the truths that are offered us, even though we should rate them at a less value than is affixed by those who have, with great research and labour, produced them. To the untiring labours of the phrenologists, we have therefore looked with much interest, hoping that they would contribute something valuable to our knowledge of the mutual functions of the mind and body, and assured that if this hope should not be realized, we should at least have the benefit of what may be called a negative experiment, proving that there is no knowledge to be gained in the region which they have so assiduously cultivated. They have had among them some men of eminent abilities, united with keen ardour, in the pursuit of their favourite object; and sufficient time has been allowed, according to their own representations, to put their system in an available form, and complete it, except in some of its subordinate details. With the fearlessness of conscious strength, they challenge the rigorous investigations of all who are competent to form an opinion of its claims. We propose, therefore, to institute an inquiry into the validity of the grounds on which their science rests, and the value of the results it has produced.

Phrenology, as now set forth, is a modern science; but the opinion that separate portions of the brain are employed in different mental operations, is of very ancient date. Aristotle speaks of the brain, as consisting of a congeries of organs, and assigns to dif ferent parts, different mental functions. The anterior part of the cerebral mass, he apportions to common sense,-the middle, to imagination, judgment, and reflection-and the posterior, to memory. Galen seems to have been acquainted with the views of Aristotle, and to have adopted them. Nemesius, the first bishop of Emesa, in the reign of Theodosius, taught that the sensations had their origin in the anterior ventricle of the brain, memory in the middle, and understanding in the posterior ventricle. Albertus Magnus, Archbishop of Ratisbon, in the thirteenth century, drew