REMARKS ON MR. COMBE's " CONSTITUTION OF MAN." 209 



TOenta] powers. He evinces, with complete success, the truth of 

 these propositions : — that the periods for labour, by the operative 

 population, ought to be abridged, so as to afford sufficient time for 

 their cultivating their moral and rational faculties : that many of 

 the miseries endured by the middle and upper classes, are consequen- 

 ces of departures from the moral lav\r, iu the present customs of 

 society: that nations, in order to attain the highest prosperity^ 

 should act towards each other on the principle of the supremacy of 

 the moral sentiments ; and that the civilization of savages will be 

 more easily accomplished by pacific than by forcible measures. 



The object of punishment for disobedience to the divine law, is to 

 arrest the offender iu his career of transgression ; and in this way to 

 save him from greater suffering. God's punishments of evil-doers, 

 in this world, are beneficently designed for their own welfare, and 

 to terminate their misery by death when the error is irreparable. 

 Criminal laws are two often framed on the principal of animal 

 resentment : hence, the inefficacy of these, from over-sight of the 

 causes of crime and their being left to operate with unabated energy 

 after the infliction. Every crime proceeds from the abuse of some 

 faculty, and the tendency to abuse arises from three sources ; — from 

 particular faculties being too powerful and spontaneously over active ; 

 from great excitement of these faculties by external causes ; and 

 from ignorance of what are uses, and what are abuses, of the mental 

 faculties. Crime, then, can only be extinguished by the absolute 

 removal of its causes; and, so long as punishment continues to be 

 necessary, a moral chastisement is greatly to be preferred to animal 

 retribution. These are the doctrines of Mr. Combe, and he de- 

 monstrates their truth and fitness with great perspicuity and elo- 

 quence. 



Having unfolded several of the natural laws and their effects, and 

 having shown that each of them is inflexible and independent in 

 itself, and requires absolute obedience to its injunctions, Mr. C. 

 next explains the mutual relationship among these laws, and ad- 

 duces instances of their joint operation. These instances are won- 

 derfully instructive and most apposite : they consist of a reference 

 to the defects of the arrangements for jury-trial in Scotland — the 

 great fires in Edinburgh, in 1824 — shipwrecks, from ignorance or 

 irrational conduct in commanders — Captain Lyon's unsuccessful 

 attempt to reach Repulse-bay — the foundering of decayed and ill- 

 equipped vessels at sea — and the mercantile distress that overspread 

 Britain in 1825 — 6, which he regards as having originated in an 

 excessive activity, combined with a general ascendancy, of the ani- 



VOL. IV. NO. XVI. ' P 



