ter would be one of the most striking collections of kind, considerate, and merciful legislation ever known; and can scarcely be believed of a lawgiver so sternly denouncing blood for every crime which struck at the social organization. The combination of the two things proves him not to have been a cruel, and to have been a wise legislator.

The trial of jealousy also is a singular institution among the Hebrews, if actually practised. But there is in it such ant appeal to the secret terror of a guilty conscience, as to have prevented any but the innocent from submitting to its apparently harmless portions. How different was this trial to an innocent person from the trials of Ordeal in the dark ages. What innocent wife could walk over burning plough-shares; steep her hands or feet in burning oil; or float, when fettered, in the horse-pond? The poor Jewess had an ordeal which could not hurt the innocent; while the middle ages had ordeals which left the innocent no chance of escape.

So likewise the reference of matters of so much nicety as not to be capable of solution by judges, to the priesthood as a body, and punishing with death a presumptuous contempt of the sentence, was well calculated to protect the ordinary magistrate from the animosity of a losing party, where the question of right was very difficult, and where the losing party would never be satisfied with a mere reason. In modern constitutions it is now necessary to rest the ultimate decision of difficult matters to large bodies, who cannot, from their very multitude, be objects of personal animosity.

After their civil or political laws is their code of Penal Statutes. Law punishes as well as protects; and punishes only to strengthen its protection. In a well governed state, crime is prevented more frequently than punished. To make punishment unnecessary is the great employment of legislative wisdom. There are, I know, some peculiarities in the penal code of the Hebrews which have been the subject of loud complaint. Not a few of these peculiarities are to be accounted for by the fact that they were designed to keep that people distinet from the rest of mankind, and thus prevent their being involved in the idolatry of the pagan world. Infidels have made

themselves merry also at the minuteness of this code. And it may be, that there are some honest but fastidious readers of the Old Testament whose delicacy has been wounded at the rehearsal of some of those very recitals, which have contributed to the formation of that high standard of susceptibility which shrinks from the conception of laws so necessary to this degraded people. When we consider that the Mosaic code was prescribed for a people ignorant of all law; a people who had just emerged from the most abject slavery; a people scarcely beyond the limits of the most loathsome and defiling paganism; we shall cease to wonder at the minuteness of its details, and admire the divine wisdom and condescension in stooping thus to their low condition.

There are several striking points of difference between the Mosaic penal code and that of most modern states. One of these is the requiring of two witnesses for every mortal crime, and that the witnesses should aid in the execution of the guilty. This is a very remarkable provision among such a people as the Hebrews; wonderfully calculated to prevent false testimony, and deserves imitation among the most enlightened judges and legislators. Another is that they had no law of imprisonment, either for debt or for crime. There are but two recorded exceptions to this remark within my knowledge. The one is the keeping of a criminal in custody for a single night, until the will of the Deity could be consulted concerning him, and the other is the appointment of the cities of refuge for the manslayer. Though of ancient usage and origin, imprisonment did not originate with the law of Moses. Instead of imprisoning for crime, the Mosaic code requires the immediate and prompt execution of the law. It was their doctrine that laws were made to be executed; and the divine lawgiver saw fit to decide that there should be no needless delay in the execution. Another striking difference related to the character of the crimes that were punishable with death. They were all either of high moral malignity, or crimes that tended to the subversion of their whole civil polity, and endangered the social existence of the nation. The propriety of the law against them rests upon the same grounds as the punishment of treason and

murder, and is fully justified. In ordinary cases, constituted as that nation was, under a Theocracy, they strike at the root of social existence; and the severity of the punishment against them was in self-defence for the very existence of society. Besides, with a people of extreme simplicity as to property, almost the only punishment must be personal; and as they were emerging from a slavery where the taking of life was probably very common, capricious, and despotic, without severe punishments they were without any. One thing also is quite remarkable in a code where the ignorance of the people and the simplicity of property and social state left the lawgiver few punishments of which to choose and threw him upon stripes or death. I mean the tenderness of blood, and the almost superstitious reverence for human life. The ox that killed a man or woman was stoned, nor should his flesh be eaten; and if he were an unruly ox, and this to be known to his owner, not only was the ox stoned, but his owner was put to death. This is the origin of all those forfeitures in law which arise from the misfortune rather than the crime of the owner, and are called deodand.1 It is not long since this principle was carried into extensive operation in the laws of England. Whatever personal chattel was the immediate occasion of the death of any reasonable creature was forfeited to the king and applied to benevolent purposes. Bracton states the law to have been, that "all things which, while in motion, caused death, are to be offered to God." But the English law was even more extensive than this. If a man were killed by a fall from a cart or a horse, the cart or horse was forfeited. A well in which a person was drowned was ordered to be filled up under the inspection of the coroner. And among the Athenians, "whatever was the cause of man's death by falling upon him was exterminated, or cast out of the dominions of the republic.' There seems to us to be superstition in such a law, but it is a humane superstition. The mind was taught by it to contemplate with horror the privation of human life; and it might not be familiar even with an insensible object which had been the occasion of death, lest that sentiment should be diminished.

1 Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. I, chapter 8th.

"

The most corrupt and melancholy state of human society is that in which the mind becomes familiarized to blood; and it is a question of grave import, whether any thing is gained by abrogating even the sacred, and if you please, superstitious, regard to human life which was inspired by this great principle of the Mosaic code.

When you take up the special examples of penal law under this code, you cannot but admire their wisdom. You have in the first place idolatry, and the penalty was death. It was treason against the state to acknowledge any other as king than God. This crime also was always connected with the inhuman and bloody practice of offering human sacrifices. It was of most aggravated enormity, and struck at the very existence of the nation. The next crime is blasphemy, and was punished with death for the same sufficient reason. The next is deliberate and wilful murder. "He that smiteth a man so that he die shall surely be put to death." This was a republication of the law given to Noah, and in my humble judg ment is obligatory upon the world in all subsequent ages. The nice distinctions laid down in the Mosaic code between murder and manslaughter are to the present day the just and recognized principles of the law of homicide, and are carried out into every ramification without any new principle. Another mortal crime is smiting a parent. This is a very unnatural, uncommon, and improbable crime. Like several others, it struck at the basis of society, framed as it was on a patriarchal model and organization, which could not continue long on the land given to it unless the simple principles of its organization were severely defended. So of cursing a parent, which was also punished with the same severity. And so of inveterate disobedience to parents for the same reason. So also of incestsodomy-bestiality-forcible violation-and adultery, and all for the same reason. So also of false pretensions to prophecy for the same reasons with idolatry and blasphemy. So also of witchcraft. Whether witchcraft be imaginary or not, no cruelty is known equal to that committed by pretenders to this mystery. Witness the medicine men of our own western Indians. In an ignorant body of slaves, without intelligence

and subject to superstitions, pretensions to witchcraft were likely to be most disastrous to the happiness of the people, and very dangerous to the government: and I would at this day, legislating for our Indians, or for negroes subject to Obi superstition, punish conjuring with death, quite as readily as for any crime short of actual murder, or treason. The only other crimes punishable with death by the Mosaic code were manstealing, Sabbath-breaking, and contumacious resistance against the supreme authority of the State. The time was, and that less than two hundred years ago, when by the laws of England, one hundred and forty-eight crimes were punishable with death. By the Mosaic code there are seventeen. Let the profane cease from their rebukes of the penal statutes of Moses!

There is one fact in relation to the Mosaic code which is a severe rebuke to modern governments. No injury simply affecting property, no invasion of personal rights whatever, could draw down upon an Israelite an ignominious death. Mammon was not the god of the Mosaic law. That code respected moral depravity more than gold. Moral turpitude and the most atrocious expressions of moral turpitude, these were the objects of its unsleeping severity.

"Mammon leads us on,

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell

From heaven; for e'en in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more

The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,

Than ought divine or holy."

Nor is it a slight commendation of that code, that its laws were equal. Ye "shall have one manner of law as well for the stranger as for one of your own country." Every man in the community had the same protection from the penal laws.

Not a little has been said against the law of retaliation, or the lex talionis, as it is enjoined in this code. But has it not been hastily said? No man doubts that, as the law of individual and private revenge, it is wrong. It is in this view, and only in this view, that it is condemned by the Saviour, and superseded by the injunction, "Resist not evil." No man