vice-regal office, he did us the honour of inviting a correspondence on topics connected with the welfare of Ireland; and we must declare that the confidential letters which proceeded from his pen, manifest a largeness of thought, and liberality of sentiment, which qualify him for the highest positions that statesmen can occupy; and our belief is, that Ireland has no firmer or more enlightened public friend than the Earl of Clarendon. But in his quality of Lord Lieutenant he could do nothing for her worthy of note. In plans for the general weal, he was unable to carry out his wise intentions; and his patronage was so miserably small, that he had no means of eliciting patriotic worth and ability, and placing men of merit in positions where they could have seconded his sound and generous policy. But the knowledge Lord Clarendon has additionally acquired during his residence in Ireland, will fit him to be the chief counsellor of the Crown on Irish affairs; and he can render more service to the country he retires from, than if he were still to waste his energies in fruitless diplomatic devices to allay the animosities of contending factions.

Every element of public prosperity in Ireland will remain in full vitality, albeit there shall be no Lord Lieutenant to hold levees; dispense official hospitalities; and to act upon conflicting opinions of the same sapient Attorney General. The machinery of mock-majesty deceived while it dazzled the people; and it is far better that the truth of things should be openly revealed. The benefits of English connexion do not so much consist in political privileges, as in the interchange of industrial effort; Irish poverty providing labourers for England, and English capital calling forth the resources of Ireland. Steam communication to and from her shores; railways permeating her provinces; agricultural improvement; increased mercantile enterprise-these things will not languish in the sister isle because she loses a Lord Lieutenant, who was paid £5000 every quarter for opening letters from London-often snubbing his Excellency for daring to extend his patronage beyond parsons and policemen! Ireland will, we think, retain a grateful recollection of her last Viceroy; and Lord Clarendon will be an eligible successor to Lord Palmerston, when that Foreign Office potentate shall be tired of terrifying King Otho at Athens, and toadying Louis Napoleon at the Elysee.

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS-THE MANNINGS AND OTHER MURDERERS.

The press has of late teemed with such monstrous and mischievous errors on the above subject, that we consider it a solemn duty to present to our readers some Christian views which may tend to cast a truthful light on themes of vast importance to society. Philosophical speculation, or sentimental sophistry, cannot help us here. We must scatter to the winds all human opinions and vain cogitations, and resort to the fountains of eternal verity in order to acquire faithful apprehensions concerning this awful matter. Without extending our inquiries to the penal jurisprudence of other countries, we may venture confidently to affirm, that the basis of our criminal code is plainly derived from the Law of Moses; for where could the legislators of a people professing Christianity expect to find the principles of justice and judgment save in the law-holy, just, and good-which emanated from the everlasting God? Of the piles of profitless legislation under which Great Britain groans, we do not now speak. We simply allege, that the germ of our common law is traceable to the Law delivered on Sinai's Mount, and recorded in the lively oracles of the Most High. What portion of that righteous law, it may be asked, is specially applicable to Gentile communities? We reply, the penal part-with reference to crimes not connected with the peculiar ordinances emphatically imposed on the Jewish people. All punishment is for sin-and sin marked and denounced by law, becomes exceedingly sinful. Nor, as vainly propounded by ignorant and foolish men, does the dispensation of the glorious gospel, abate a jot of the severity with which the law visits transgressors. The blessings of Christianity are for believers in Christ--and among those unspeakable blessings is redemption from the curse of the law. Out of the pale of Faith, there is nothing but sinand sin is the transgression of the law. For believers themselves there is not a moment of safety but through the propitiatory death, and intercessory life of their glorious mediator-and for those not under the protection of the blessed gospel, what can be truly asserted of them but that they are manifestly under the curse? Hence for open, flagrant, unmistakeable transgressors, penal justice provides treasures of wrath, which are displayed in every form of legal

punishment from the handcuff and the prison, to the bar of arraignment-the conviction, the sentence, and the scaffold! And to this penal process at every step, we set our seal as warranted by the wisdom of Deity. Where thoughtles men involve themselves in inextricable error, is by dwelling on criminal law, as chiefly in relation to some supposed example to be afforded to society, by the mode of dealing with the guilty. But this is a rank delusion. The primary and pre-eminent purport of all legal punishment is to inflict upon the transgressor the penalty justly due to his crime. If, in the course of his calamities, other persons, pondering on his fatal destiny, are warned and deterred from the path of public sin and public death, we hold that this salutary check to other criminals forms no element for constituting a punished party to be set forth as an example to benefit society. The guilt of the alleged malefactor being conclusively proved, he is to undergo the sentence which the law assigns, without the remotest reference to the example, good or bad, which his punishment may produce on the minds of other men. The soul that sinneth it shall die-die as the dreadful, but righteous result of guiltiness against the Holy Lord God-not to avenge or improve society, which is for the most part as essentially guilty as the vilest culprit that forfeits his life on the scaffold.

Having thus attempted to clear away the enormous errors which lie at the threshold of all philosophical as well as popular enquiries concerning the nature and intent of capital punishments, we now advance to the great theme implicated in the question-Whether any Christian community can possibly be justified in abrogating the punishment of death in cases of murder? In immediate answer to this important interrogative we boldly maintain, that the nation which shall agree to leave life to convicted murderers, must be a nation thereby fearfully repudiating Christianity; for through the dispensation of Christianity we obtain a knowledge of God's law, and that law proclaims, with unerring certainty, that no murderer shall be suffered to live. So clear and explicit is the divine declaration upon this head, that when a murderer fled to one of the cities of refuge appointed for those who had killed their neighbour ignorantly, he was plucked from improper protection, and delivered into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he might die. In the event of this commandment being broken so that a murderer was suffered to live, the blood of the murdered person rested

avengingly upon Israel-upon the whole community. That in the case of the first murderer Cain, his blood was not judicially shed, it suffices to remark that the law of crime and punishment had no institutional existence until after the close of the patriarchal dispensation, and sin is not imputed when there is no law. But in the righteous rigour of the only wise God, a punishment was inflicted upon Cain, of which that wretched slayer said, it is greater than I can bear, and which no doubt made up a sum of suffering suitable to the delinquency of the first shedder of blood. But the law having once denounced the crime, and defined the punishment of murderers, the case of Cain's exemption furnishes no analogy applicable to murderers where the law is known. Therefore, the divine declaration to Noah-whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, having been incorporated into, and ratified by divine law, no believer in Christianity can yield to the infidel assumption that murder should be unavenged by withholding the proper punishment, viz., death by the hand of the public executioner.

And this leads us necessarily to the consideration of another question, now much mooted by disputers of this world, namely, whether executions should be public? To this we instantly reply, public by all means—and for this sound, scriptural reason, that publicity is a part, and a most righteous part, of the criminal's deserved punishment. We cast out of view all notions as to the results on the multitudes assembled to witness the dreadful spectacle-we adhere simply and sternly to the undoubted fact, that public exposure on the scaffold is an aggravation due to the offences of the punished evil-doer. That the eternal equity of God shines forth awfully in the public shame of those judicially doomed to die, may be seen in the vicarious death of the Saviour of the world. As he, the holy Son of God, was loaded with our imputed iniquities, and condemned to die as being numbered with transgressors of the law-so it became needful that shame, as well as suffering, should be his portion. The fore-shewn sufferings of Christ in the Psalms, verified by the inspired narratives of the evangelists, include in the consummation of the curse, on the cross, the full shame attendant upon public executions. All they that see me laugh me to scorn. I am a reproach of men, and despised of the people. They gaped upon me with their mouths. The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me. The sinless Saviour

the dying Deliverer of sinners—while hanging on the accursed tree, was thus environed with crowds of the wicked, and tortured with their ungodly reproaches. It is true that the punishment of crucifixion comprised, among other horrors, a penal protraction of life, which rendered the taunts of merciless men continuously agonizing—whereas the modern punishment by the halter summarily abridges physical consciousness; but this only serves to show us the mind of God on this appalling subject. He that spared not his own son-filling up the cup of calamity with every ingredient of bitterness-thereby discloses to us the tremendous truth, that he will in no wise acquit the guilty, nor permit a particle of punishment to fail. Christ was possessed of all the innocency and purity of Godhead, and yet when charged with our sins, he could not free himself from the imputed infiniteness of evil but through Death-That death, as adjudged by the law, was one of public shame in addition to unutterable suffering, and if the righteous and holy Saviour endured all these things, shall it be a doubtful question in a Christian land, whether murderers who have despised Christ's commandments, are to be treated more leniently than the Lord of glory?

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The recent case of the Mannings-their prompt detection, and clearly established guilt-have occasioned a sort of jubilation on the excellency of our jurisprudence, police, &c., which we are not disposed to contest; but our contemplations are more earnestly employed upon the mad sense of security with which the adversary of souls contrived to beguile the murderers into the perpetration of their crime. Residing in a populous region, the nefarious pair plot and execute their prodigious crime upon the person of man holding a public position, and who, from even that circumstance, was sure to be immediately inquired after. They shuffle the body into a domestic grave, and there reckon confidently upon realizing the fruits of slaughter-a handful of railway shares! Now the whole of these diabolical proceedings leads us to notice the penal blindness of these daring delinquents. Their folly is as conspicuous as their guilt. They could not escape, and they have not escaped, for the avenging eye of Omniscience rested upon their every movement. To Him be the glory of visiting transgressors with the punishment which is meet, and to make even the darkest deeds redound to the praise of His penal justice.-