? national testimony of England and the free states of Europe "Americans! plead for the rights of mankind, But your vassals, goaded to a fast coming crisis by the Fugitive Slave Law, and by your insatiate ambition of increased slave domination in attempting to add two other slave States* to the number of your Stripes and Stars, begin to plead their Let us hear them! own cause. "We owe allegiance to the State, To the sympathies that God hath set Our country owns our fealty; Great Nature made us men. "God works for all. Ye cannot hem The hope of being free With parallels of latitude, With mountain-range, or sea. If man before his duty With listless spirit stands, Ere long the Great Avenger Takes the work from out his hands."+ * Kansas and Nebraska. + Lowell. CHAPTER VII. LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES.-Improvement on those of England. Liberty of the press. Naval and military establishments. America deficient in the qualities of a military nation. Her advantage in cultivating the arts of peace. Consequences of an offensive, aggressive warspirit to ancient republics and to Russia. The laws of the United States are in general assimilated to those of England, and are mostly derived from them; but they are considerably modified, and in some cases improved. They have, however, no ecclesiastical law, or spiritual courts in America, but simply common and statute laws. The law of primogeniture and entail is also abolished. Mr. Jefferson, in introducing the bill for the purpose, avowed as his reason that he wished to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent. Landed property, therefore, at least in the New England States, is universally held in fee simple, and is shared equally by the families of deceased proprietors,—a regulation to which the inhabitants attribute much of their prosperity, and which they value as the safeguard of their liberty. In the courts of law in the United States, no one is obliged to take an oath; with the motives of religion, public opinion, and penalties of the law, affirmations are found to be sufficient; thus showing that oaths are unnecessary for the purposes of justice.* The criminal laws have undergone alterations which have rendered them in many instances more temperate and more rational than our own; consequently more consonant with the dictates of intelligent and discriminating justice. American legislators have at least partially achieved what the English parliament has much neglected,-the establishment of a grada * The abandoument of oaths is now advocated in England, it being maintained that the same penalties attached to the solemu affirmation as are now attached to the violation of the oaths, the affirmation in such case becomes invested with all the binding force of the oath.-Vide Blackstone's Com., systematically abridged, and adapted to the existing state of the law and the constitution, by Samuel Warren, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., &c. tion of punishments according to the degrees of guilt.* The Originally, as in England, from which they were derived, the Mr. Livingstone's Code of Louisiana, which has entirely departed from the ancient system, approaches nearer to excellence than any of the most approved editions of the original model, as it abolishes the punishment of death in all cases, even for murder, substituting imprisonment with hard labour; as has also been done in the State of Vermont; and sought for, if not accomplished, in Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. And public sentiment, in all the States, is daily growing in favour of the abolition of all capital punishment in their penal code, it having been proved that it may be done not only without disadvantage, but to the improvement of morals, and the better protection of property and life. It must be admitted that the state of morals in every country greatly depends on its system of criminal jurisprudence. Sanguinary and vindictive punish * As evidence of this, as also of the defects and oppressive character of English law still in many points, vide Warren's Blackstone, &c. + Comparative view of the punishments annexed to crime in the United States and in England, by J. Sidney Taylor, A.M., of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. LENIENCY OF THE CRIMINAL CODE. 67 ments are regarded by all judicious and philanthropic men as a violence to reason, a reproach to morals, and an impediment to civilization. More than that of any other country, the criminal laws of the United States are built upon the christian principle of the reformation of the offender. They are framed, indeed, with a greater disposition to allure to obedience than to punish for offences; they are not characterized by that excessive severity and rigour which mark the statutes of some countries, claiming even a higher status of civilization. There is in the laws generally of the United States, more of the forbearance, the tenderness, and the clemency of a christian nation. At the same time, the American statesmen, unlike those of England, have not retained on their statute book obsolete laws that have outlived the exigencies which had called them into being, or allowed them to remain mixed up with enactments of a benevolent and useful character. They likewise seem to act upon the opinion of Beccaria, that no Government has a right to punish its subjects unless it has previously taken care to instruct them in the knowledge of the laws and of the duties of public and private life; thus making the science of government a branch of popular education. What an example to England and her colonies! While the penal code of the United States is thus less sanguinary and cruel, there are few countries where justice can be obtained at so little trouble and expense. In relation to the protection of the person, it is believed that the law in the United States is more stringent than in England and her colonies. All persons guilty of aggravated assaults are punished with heavy fines; whilst the damages are recoverable, not by the Government, but by the parties on whom the injuries have been inflicted. The laws of security are comprised of statutes which repress crimes, misdemeanours, and contravention of the police. * The great Bacon, in the reign of James I, sagaciously observed, in relation to the anomalies of the English legal system, that the "living die in the arms of the dead.' A revision and reconstruction of the laws of England, ecclesiastical and civil, both of which are a disgrace to the nation, have been judged necessary through three centuries, but are yet comparatively unattempted. The necessity for reform, indeed, bas been admitted from generation to generation, and was attempted in the reigus of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, aud in those of other monarchs in succession; yet the reformation, in many particulars, remains unaccomplished to the present day. In no country in the world is the liberty of the press,-that great bulwark of rational as well as individual freedom, SO universally recognised and understood. It is considered an essential element in the American Constitution. Without it their representative government would be but a solemn show, unreal, empty, and delusive. The free discussion of all political measures, and of the character of public officers, is regarded of much more importance than the freedom of debate in legislative assemblies. Without such restraint, Government would almost necessarily become an instrument for enforcing oppressive measures. The framers of the American Constitution knew, by the history of Europe, and in particular by that of England during the dynasty of the Stuarts, whose tyranny brought the country to the lowest point of imbecility and degradation, that the expedients of despotism to maintain its power, however they may succeed for a time in breaking down the barriers of popular freedom, and in suppressing elements of social greatness and enjoyment, are the very means by which it is ultimately destroyed. They knew that if the sentiments of a nation could not pass current among themselves by the usual medium of communication, a free press, they would be known by a kind of freemasonry, the key of which would be withheld only from the despotic rulers whose overthrow it would soon accomplish; they knew that if ebullitions did not find expressions in open and public discourse, they would smoulder in secret till they burst forth with volcanic and irrepressible fury; they knew that if religion was interfered with by the civil authority, and the devout of every class but a dominant party were refused a sanctuary and a pulpit for the maintenance and diffusion of their principles, devotion would be sublimed by persecution into a fervid, fearless patriotism, that would not fail to demolish the Government and altars that were opposed to its course.* When four Puritan ministers stood abashed before the triumphant Bishops, the ribald Royalty of England, and a right merry and conceited Court, insulted, discomfitted, outraged-the representatives of the reform convictions of the age, treated with scorn dishonourable to their manhood common to all—there was playing about that kingly court, a sedate and princely boy, some three years old.-and in the then future, beyond the scene in which the palsy-stricken Whitgift, menaced with a liberal Parliament, desiring rather to give an account of his bishopric to God than exercise it among men, lay stretched in his palace on the bed of death, and on being visited by the king, uttered his last words, lifting up his eyes and head, Pro Ecclesia Dei ;-beyond the scorned grave of Bancroft, and after James had become |