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Whatever may be the result of the present public movement for the abolition of capital punishment, and however far future experiments may go towards establishing the expediency and safety of such a change in criminal jurisprudence, the history of every nation and people will show, we believe, the remarkable fact, that ever since Cain stood before his Maker with his hands reeking with the blood of his murdered brother, and his heart so deeply smitten with the consciousness of having justly forfeited his own life by taking the life of another, that he could not divest himself of the belief that all men would seek to slay him, no one principle has been found to be more deeply implanted in the human breast than the desire to see the wilful shedding of blood atoned for by the blood of the perpetrator.
History records many such dominations, ancient and modern, civilised or barbaric; and though education and culture may modify, they cannot change their predominant characteristics a continual subordination of justice to expediency, an indifference to suffering, a disdain of ethical principles, a laxity of morals, and a complete ignorance of economics.
Nobody envisaged the needs and interests of the Empire as aspects of a single problem. Nobody had any clear-cut plan for the working out of the destinies of the British people. The interests of party, the expediency of local reforms, the squabbles between this faction and that, constituted the burning topics of the hour, and there were none other.
But if we want to know what their practical results are, the moral gangrene they are to the national life when once they have firmly taken hold of a nation, we have only to look across the channel at France France with her immense wealth, but rapidly declining population, which in less than a century will reduce her from a first-rate to a second-or third-rate power, so that her statesmen have actually debated the expediency of offering a premium on illegitimacy in the shape of free nurture to all illegitimate children, illegitimate citizens being better in their estimation than no citizens at all.
Such speculations and opinions, I am sensible, would meet with no favor among us now. The espousal of the slave-man's cause among our Northern people is so humane and hearty that they can stop nowhere, for any consideration of expediency, in doing him justice, after all his wrongs; and I honor their feeling, go to what lengths it will.
Association with the masters, missionary effort and motives of expediency gave these rites an early veneer of Christianity, and after the lapse of many generations the Negro church became Christian. Two characteristic things must be noticed in regard to the church.
The whole system of taxation is wrong, it seems to me, and though, as a matter of expediency, sometimes from conviction, many people advocate the opposite course, I have long felt that taxation should not be imposed according to the ability to pay so much as according to benefits received from the State.
This pamphlet, which was entitled, Brief Considerations on Slavery, and the Expediency of its Abolition; with some Hints on the Means whereby it may be gradually effected, proved that in lieu of the usual security required, certain sums paid at the several periods of manumission would amply secure the public, as well as the owners of the slaves, from any future burthens.
Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that there were individuals in the town who could have shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have induced certain local discussions as to the expediency of erecting a memorial.
The person who justifies himself by saying that he holds certain beliefs, or acts in a certain manner "on principle", and yet refuses to examine the basis and expediency of his principle, introduces into his thinking and conduct an irrational, mystical element similar to that which characterized savage prohibitions.
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