The first who observed that every land is our country in which we do well, was, I believe, Euripides, in his Phaëton :Ως παντακως γε πατρις Βοσκουσα γη. The first man, however, who left the place of his birth to seek a greater share of welfare in another, said it before him.

SECTION III.

first ages of the world,-free, eq without masters, without subjects, out money, and almost without wi The flesh of their sheep feeds them; are clothed with their skins; hut wood and clay form their habitati They are the most dirty of all men, they feel it not, but live and die easily than we do. There remain e republics in Europe, without monar

Lucca, Ragusa, Geneva, and St. Ma Poland, Sweden, and England, ma regarded as republics under a king, Poland is the only one of them w takes the name.

A country is a composition of many-Venice, Holland, Switzerland, Ge families; and as a family is commonly supported on the principle of self-love, when, by an opposing interest, the same self-love extends to our town, our province, or our nation, it is called love of country.

But which of the two is to be prefe for a country, -a monarchy or a re lic? The question has been agitate four thousand years. Ask the rich, they will tell you an aristocracy the people, and they will reply a de He who is burning with ambition to cracy; kings alone prefer royalty. V be edile, tribune, prætor, consul, or dic-then, is almost all the earth governe tator, exclaims that he loves his country, while he loves only himself. Every man wishes to possess the power of sleeping quietly at home, and of preventing any other man from possessing the power of sending him to sleep elsewhere. Every one would be certain of his property and his life. Thus, all forming the same wishes, the particular becomes the general interest. The welfare of the republic is spoken of, while all that is signified is love of self.

The greater a country becomes, the less we love it; for love is weakened by diffusion. It is impossible to love a family so numerous that all the members can scarcely be known.

It is impossible that a state was ever formed on earth, which was not governed in the first instance as a republic: it is the natural march of human nature. On the discovery of America, all the people were found divided into republics; there were but two kingdoms in all that part of the world. Of a thousand nations, but two were found subjugated.

It was the same in the ancient world; all was republican in Europe, before the little kinglings of Etruria and of Rome. There are yet republics in Africa: the Hottentots, towards the south, still live as people are said to have lived in the

monarchs? Put that question to rats who proposed to hang a bell re the cat's neck. In truth, the gen reason is, because men are rarely we of governing themselves.

46

It is lamentable, that to be a good triot we must become the enemy of rest of mankind. That good citize ancient Cato always gave it as his opi that Carthage must be destroyed: lenda est Carthago." To be a good triot is to wish our own country enri by commerce, and powerful by a but such is the condition of man that to wish the greatness of our country, is often to wish evil to our n bours. He who could bring himse wish that his country should alway main as it is, would be a citizen o universe.

CRIMES OR OFFENCES.

Of Time and Place.

A ROMAN in Egypt very unfortun killed a consecrated cat, and the i ated people punished this sacrileg tearing him to pieces. If this R

ought to be concealed.

had been carried before the tribunal, and Of Crimes of Time and Place, which the judges had possessed common sense, he would have been condemned to ask pardon of the Egyptians and the cats, and to pay a heavy fine, either in money or mice. They would have told him that he ought to respect the follies of the people, since he was not strong enough to correct them.

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It is well known how much our Lady of Loretto ought to be respected in the March of Ancona. Three young people happened to be joking on the house of our Lady, which has travelled through the air to Dalmatia; which has two or The venerable chief justice should have three times changed its situation, and has spoken to him in this manner: Every only found itself comfortable at Loretto. country has its legal impertinences, and Our three scatterbrains sang a song at its offences of time and place. If in supper, formerly made by a Huguenot, your Rome, which has become the sove-in ridicule of the translation of the santa reign of Europe, Africa, and Asia-Minor, casa of Jerusalem to the end of the Adriyou were to kill a sacred fowl, at the pre-atic Gulf. A fanatic, having heard by cise time that you give it grain in order chance what passed at their supper, made to ascertain the just will of the gods, you strict enquiries, sought witnesses, and enwould be severely punished. We be-gaged a magistrate to issue a summons. lieve that you have only killed our cat This proceeding alarmed all consciences. accidentally. The court admonishes Every one trembled in speaking of it. you. Go in peace, and be more circum-Chambermaids, vergers, innkeepers, lacspect in future." queys, servants, all heard what was never said, and saw what was never done: there was an uproar, a horrible scandal throughout the whole March of Ancona. It was said, half a league from Loretto, that these youths had killed our lady; and a league farther, that they had thrown the santa casa into the sea. In short, they were condemned. The sentence was, that their hands should be cut off, and their tongues be torn out; after An Englishman, having nothing to do, which they were to be put to the torture, went to Rome, where he met Prince to learn (at least, by signs) how many Charles Edward at the house of a cardi-couplets there were in the song. Finally, nal. Pleased at the incident, on his re- they were to be burnt to death by a slow turn, he drank in a tavern to the health fire. of Prince Charles Edward, and was immediately accused of high treason. But whom did he highly betray, in wishing the prince well? If he had conspired to place him on the throne, then he would have been guilty towards the nation; but I do not see that the most rigid justice of parliament could require more from him than to drink four cups to the health of the house of Hanover, supposing he had drank two to that of the house of Stuart.

It seems a very indifferent thing to have a statue in our hall; but if, when Octavius, surnamed Augustus, was absolute master, a Roman had placed in his house the statue of Brutus, he would have been punished as seditious. If a citizen, under a reigning emperor, had the statue of the competitor to the empire, it is said that it was accounted a crime of high treason.

An advocate of Milan, who happened to be at Loretto at this time, asked the principal judge to what he would have condemned these boys, if they had violated their mother, and afterwards killed and eaten her? "Oh!" replied the judge, "there is a great deal of difference; to assassinate and devour their father and mother is only a crime against men.' "Have you an express law," said the Milanese," which obliges you to put young people scarcely out of their nurseries to such a horrible death, for having

--

Query, if two witnesses are enough to condemn a Man to be hanged?

It has been for a long time imagined, and the proverb assures us, that two witnesses are enough to hang a man, with a safe conscience. Another ambiguity! The world then is to be governed by equivoques. It is said in St. Matthew, that two or three witnesses will suffice to reconcile two divided friends; and after this text has criminal jurisprudence been regulated, so far as to decree that by divine law a citizen may be condemned to die on the uniform deposition of two

indiscreetly made game of the santa casa, the well-being of society. Above ali, which is contemptuously laughed at all the actual perpetration should be demonover the world, except in the March ofstrated beyond contradiction. Ancona?"-"No," said the judge, "the If against a hundred thousand probawisdom of our jurisprudence leaves all bilities that the accused be guilty, there to our discretion."" Very well, you is a single one that he is innocent, that ought to have discretion enough to re-alone should balance all the rest. member, that one of these children is the grandson to a general, who has shed his blood for his country, and the nephew of an amiable and respectable abbess; the youth and his companions are giddy boys, who deserve paternal correction. You tear citizens from the state, who might one day serve it; you imbrue yourself in innocent blood, and are more cruel than cannibals. You will render yourselves execrable to posterity. What motive has been powerful enough, thus to extinguish reason, justice, and humanity in your minds, and to change you into ferocious beasts?" The unhappy judge at last replied, "We have been quarrel-witnesses who may be villains. It has ling with the clergy of Ancona; they been already said, that a crowd of accordacuse us of being too zealous for the ing witnesses cannot prove an improbaliberties of the Lombard church, and ble thing, when denied by the accused. consequently of having no religion."—"I What then must be done in such a case? understand then," said the Milanese,-Put off the judgment for a hundred "that you have made yourselves assassins years, like the Athenians! to appear Christians." At these words the judge fell to the ground, as if struck by a thunderbolt; and his brother judges having been since deprived of office, they cry out that injustice is done them. They forget what they have done, and perceive not that the hand of God is upon

them.

We shall here relate a striking example of what passed under our eyes at Lyons. A woman suddenly missed her daughter; she ran everywhere in search of her in vain, and at length suspected a neighbour of having secreted the girl, and of having caused her violation. Some weeks after some fishermen found For seven persons legally to amuse a female drowned, and in a state of puthemselves by making an eighth perish on trefaction, in the Rhone at Condmeux. a public scaffold by blows from ironbars; The woman of whom we have spoken take a secret and malignant pleasure in immediately believed that it was her witnessing his torments; speak of it af- daughter. She was persuaded by the terwards at table with their wives and enemies of her neighbour, that the latter neighbours; for the executioners to per- had caused the deceased to be disform this office gaily, and joyously anti-honoured, strangled, and thrown into the cipate their reward; for the public to run Rhone. She made this accusation pubto this spectacle as to a fair-all this re- licly, and the populace repeated it; perquires that a crime merit this horrid sons were found who knew the minutest punishment in the opinion of all well-circumstances of the crime. The rumour governed nations, and, as we here treat of ran through all the town, and all mouths universal humanity, that it is necessary to cried out for vengeance. There is no

Formerly, perhaps, this innocent prisoner would have been broken on the wheel, or judicially burnt, for the pleasure of supplying an execution-the tragedy of the mob.

CRIMINAL.

Criminal Prosecution.

VERY innocent actions have been fre

thing more common than this in a popu- { court of judicature, after having yielded lace without judgment; but here follows to the public fury so far as to seek every the most prodigious part of the affair. possible testimony for and against the This neighbour's own son, a child of five accused, fully and unanimously acquitted years and a half old, accused his mother them. of having caused the unhappy girl who was found in the Rhone, to be violated before his eyes, and to be held by five nen, while the sixth committed the crime. He had heard the words which pronounced her violated; he painted her attitudes; he saw his mother and these villains strangle this unfortunate girl after the consummation of the act. He also saw his mother and the assassins throwquently punished with death. Thus in her into a well, draw her out of it, wrap { England, Richard III. and Edward IV. ber up in a cloth, carry her about in tri-effected by the judges the condemnation umph, dance round the corpse, and, at of those whom they suspected of disaflast, throw it into the Rhone. The judges fection. Such are not criminal processes; were obliged to put all the pretended ac- they are assassinations committed by pricomplices deposed against in chains. vileged murderers. It is the last degree The child is again heard, and still main-of abuse to make the laws the instruments tains, with the simplicity of his age, all of injustice. that he had said of them and of his mother. How could it be imagined that this child had not spoken the pure truth? The crime was not probable, but it was still less so, that a child of the age of five years and a half should thus calumniate { his mother, and repeat with exactness all the circumstances of an abominable and unheard-of crime :-if he had not been the eye-witness of it, and been overcome with the force of the truth, such things would not have been wrung from him.

Every one expected to feast their eyes on the torment of the accused; but what was the end of this strange criminal process? There was not a word of truth in the accusation. There was no girl violated, no young men assembled at the house of the accused, no murder, not the least transaction of the sort, or the least noise. The child had been suborned, and by whom?-strange, but true! by two other children, who were the sons of the accused. He had been on the point of burning his mother, to get some sweet

meats.

The heads of the accusation were clearly incompatible. The sage and enlightened

It is said that the Athenians punished with death every stranger who entered their areopagus or sovereign_tribunal. But if this stranger was actuated by mere curiosity, nothing was more cruel than to take away his life. It is observed, in "The Spirit of Laws," that this vigour was exercised," because he usurped the rights of a citizen."

But a Frenchman in London who goes to the House of Commons to hear the debates, does not aspire to the rights of a citizen. He is received with politeness. If any splenetic member calls for the clearing of the house, the traveller clears it by withdrawing; he is not hanged. It is probable that, if the Athenians passed this temporary law, it was at a time when it was suspected that every stranger might be a spy, and not from the fear that he would arrogate to himself the rights of citizenship. Every Athenian voted in his tribe; all the individuals in the tribe knew each other: no stranger could have put in his bean.

We speak here only of real criminal prosecutions, and among the Romans every criminal prosecution was public.

ought to be the prerogative of the sovereign.

The citizen accused of the most enormous crimes had an advocate who pleaded in his presence; who even interrogated the It deserves particular remark that, in adverse party; who investigated every- the same country, where the laws are as thing before his judges. All the wit-favourable to the accused as they are nesses, for and against, were produced terrible for the guilty, not only is false in open court; nothing was secret. Ci-imprisonment in ordinary cases punished cero pleaded for Milo, who had assassi- by heavy damages and severe penalties, nated Clodius, in public, in presence of but if an illegal imprisonment has been a thousand citizens. The same Cicero ordered by a minister of state, under coundertook the defence of Roscius Ame-lour of royal authority, that minister may rinus, accused of parricide. A single be condemned to pay damages corresjudge did not in secret examine wit-pondent to the imprisonment. nesses, generally consisting of the dregs of the people, who may be influenced at pleasure.

A Roman citizen was not put to the torture at the arbitrary order of another Roman citizen, invested with this cruel authority by purchase. That horrible outrage against humanity was not perpetrated on the persons of those who were regarded as the first of men, but only on those of their slaves, scarcely regarded as men. It would have been better not to have employed torture, even against

slaves.

The method of conducting a criminal prosecution at Rome accorded with the magnanimity and liberality of the

nation.

Proceedings in Criminal Cases among particular Nations.

There are countries in which criminal jurisprudence has been founded on the canon law, and even on the practice of the Inquisition, although that tribunal has long since been held in detestation there. The people in such countries still remain in a species of slavery. A citizen prosecuted by the king's officer is at once immured in a dungeon, which is in itself a real punishment of perhaps an innocent

man.

A single judge, with his clerk, hears secretly, and in succession, every witness summoned.

Let us here merely compare, in a few It is nearly the same at London. The points, the criminal procedure of the Roassistance of an advocate is never in any mans with that of a country of the west, case refused. Every one is judged by which was once a Roman province. his peers. Every citizen has the power, Among the Romans, witnesses were out of thirty-six jurymen sworn, to chal- heard publicly in the presence of the aclenge twelve without reasons, twelve with cused, who might reply to them, and reasons, and consequently, of choosing examine them himself, or through an his judges in the remaining twelve. advocate. This practice was noble and The judges cannot deviate from or gofrank; it breathed of Roman magnanibeyond the law. No punishment is ar-mity. bitrary. No judgment can be executed before it has been reported to the king, who may and who ought to bestow pardon on those who are deserving of it, and to whom the law cannot extend it. This case frequently occurs. A man outrageously wronged kills the offender under the impulse of venial passion: he is condemned by the rigour of the law, and saved by that mercy which

In France, in many parts of Germany, everything is done in secret. This practice, established under Francis I., was authorised by the commissioners, who, in 1670, drew up the ordinance of Louis XIV. A mere mistake was the cause of it.

It was imagined, on reading the code De Testibus, that the words, Testes intrare judicii secretum, signified that wit