253 



PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 

 PROCEEDINGS IN THE ATHENE 



March 12th. — Rev. J. Webb's Lecture on Capital 



Punishments. 



Concluded from page 240. 



The lecturer closed by adverting to those methods which, in his 

 opinion, were best calculated to restrain the commission of crime, 

 and which were not found, he thought, in frequency of pardon — 

 transportation — horrible punishments, such as torture, the brand, 

 &c. ; but in the extension of the principle of pecuniary fines — 

 in the introduction of a superior method of prison discipline — 

 in affording employment to all classes — multiplying the social 

 comforts of the poor — raising the tone of national morals — and in 

 a system of national education, moral and religious in its nature, 

 and founded on broad and liberal principles. To these means 

 he hoped the humane and the benevolent would devote their 

 attention, and finished his paper by reminding such, that by 

 promoting these objects, they were, in effect, revising our penal 

 code, and abolishing capital punishments. 



March 19th. — Mr. W. S. Harris' Lecture on the Laws of 

 Electrical Attraction. 



The principal object of this lecture was to examine whether or not 

 the law of electrical attraction was an elementary law of nature. 



Before proceeding directly to the investigation, the lecturer 

 gave a definition of what he considered an elementary law, namely, 

 that it was that in which cause and effect increasing' or decreasing 

 were always commensurate with each other; and he stated it as 

 his conviction that, where the effect increased in a higher ratio 

 than the cause, such for instance as in the proportion of the 

 square, the law may be generally resolved into the combined 

 action of two or more simpler laws. The lecturer then, for the 

 benefit of those who had not before witnessed them, repeated a 

 few experiments, in order to explain the manner in which elec- 

 trical attraction operated, and then went on to explain the reason 

 why the increase of electrical attraction is as the square of the 

 diminished distance at which it operates. 



On the theory which supposes electrical effects to result from 

 the power exerted by the electric fluid to regain its original state 

 of distribution after any temporary derangment of it, all those 



