BRIEF OBSERVATIONS, &c. THE HE sentence recently pronounced on a distinguished naval officer, the public feeling with which it was followed, and the ultimate remission of its severest penalty, naturally lead to the discussion of the punishment itself, which so powerfully aroused the pity and the indignation of the public. It is by occurrences like this; by extreme cases which call into exercise the dormant feelings, that those investigations are excited which terminate in the reform of the most ancient and deep-rooted abuses. Evils which the barbarism of remote ages, or the pressure of immediate danger, has thrust into the system of government, and which have long in silence obstructed the progress of SOciety, are regarded as necessary and proper, or wholly overlooked, merely, because they form a part of that order of things, which we have always been accustomed to admire. We admit all that power to be legitimate which we have always seen administered with mildness. We have acquiesced in the propriety of those inflictions which never disturbed the circle in which we move. We overlook the causes which are secretly moulding the character of the state, while they do not interfere with our enjoyments, and while they affect those alone, whose fate excites but little of our sympathy. But when power perverts its energy, and when its enactments, which merely oppressed the lowlier ranks of men, press rudely on those in whose fate we cannot but feel deeply concerned; we suddenly perceive the mischief in its deepest foundations, and shake them by the awful voice of peaceful and enlightened discussion. Thus evil is finally subversive of itself; its most dreadful examples facilitate its overthrow; its excesses destroy the principle from which they arise. Thus the arbitrary extortions of Charles might have furnished a woeful precedent for our future kings, had not the levy of ship-money called into action the spirit of Hampden. The wanton cruelty of the tyrant of Switzerland awoke "the might that slumbered in a peasant's arm," to break the chains of its generous and noble mountaineers. By the illegal proceedings against Wilkes, general warrants have been abolished for ever. And the efforts of a late minister to atone for the reforming zeal of his youth, by dragging those men to a scaffold whom he had first seduced into remonstrance, made way for the immortal integrity and eloquence of Erskine, and gave a death blow to the sanguinary doctrine of constructive treason. Encouraged by such examples, with which history is abundantly prolific, we hope to make some practical improvement of the sentence pronounced on Lord Cochrane, by directing the attention of our countrymen to the species of infliction at the instance of which they so generously revolted. We shall, in pursuit of this object, lay before them a few simple observations, n the principle upon which exposure in the pillory is founded; the inequality of its operation; the uncertainty of its influence; the impropriety of its attendant circumstances, and their general tendency on the feelings and hearts of the spectators. I. The punishment under our discussion has received a most important alteration from the refinement of modern times. When first introduced into Britain, it was uniformly attended with some infliction of corporeal suffering. The ears were frequently nailed to the wood of which the pillory was composed, and severed from the head of the culprit, or the cheek branded with burning iron. Its publicity then formed merely a slight ingredient in its terrors. But, now, when these barbarities are happily become obsolete, the old sting of this once terrible sentence is taken away; bodily pain is no longer denounced by the judge, however it may be inflicted by the multitude; and the emotions it is intended to excite in the sufferer are simply those of shame and confusion. He is exposed to be covered with the execrations and the contempt of mankind; to be set apart for ever as something polluted and debased; and, as if his whole moral system were corrupted, is rendered unable to bear testimony as a witness. Now it cannot be disputed that shame, to a certain extent, is a feeling which should be excited by the penalty for every transgression; but it is very dubious whether it is politic so far to arouse it as to make it the sole object of fear. A sense of it is always connected with something that is virtuous; and as it is one of the last of our nobler feelings which forsakes us in the depths of iniquity, so it is that which all wise legislators are most anxious to pre When once this vestige of its original bloom is rubbed off the mind, it speedily assumes a hardened character of cool, deadly, unimaginative vice; whereas pain, serve. restraint and fear may be applied without danger of corrupting the heart, which they are intended to soften and mature. Hence the tendency of Mr. Lancaster's newinvented punishments, those boasted pillories in miniature, is open to considerable censure. The cradles, the baskets, the hen-coup cages, the pillows for drowsy scholars, the delectable imitations of Jewish sing-song, and the original labels of "suck finger baby," if not laughed at as silly, or enjoyed as sport, must lamentably tend to render their subjects callous to shame by its perpetual exercise. If they have any effect at all, it must be to disarm the sufferer of his most sacred defence against the pollutions of the world; to strike the ingenuous blush of modesty from his cheek for ever; and by inviting his companions to enjoy his anguish, excite in them the most unamiable and hardening emotions. So it is in the larger world with the infliction of the Pillory. To those who are already hardened, it threatens nothing which they are capable of feeling, while it degrades the man for ever in his own esteem, on whom wise discipline would have shed a salutary influence. He cannot look upon himself without shuddering. No matter how trivial his crime-how deep his anguishhow sincere his penitence-how elevated his capacities— he reads, or thinks he reads, contempt in the faces of all with whom he converses, and believing himself incapable of becoming respectable, he relaxes all his efforts, and crushes his impulses to virtue. He is defiled with a stain which even his innocence, if subsequently brought to light, could not wash away. And it must not be forgotten, that this influence, which strikes so deadly a palsy into the "heart of hearts," is exerted for the purpose of reforming. It is not a process for excluding those from the world, whom the lawgiver imagines he can restrain only by death; it is neither an expiation, nor a sacrifice; it sends back its |