888 
ment is not reyenge, or even atone- 
ment, but prevention, “ You are not 
hanged,” said the judge to a remon- 
strating convict, “ for stealing a sheep ; 
but you are hanged that sheep may not 
be stolen.” 
The question then resolves itself into 
this, “ Does experience of the past, or 
does what we know of the prospective 
passions and apprehensions of human 
nature, indicate that the punishment of 
death is an adequate, or the most likely 
preventive of the crime of forgery?” To 
the first part of this inquiry, the reply 
is obvious. Forgery has increased, and 
is increasing in despite of the sanguinary 
seyerity of the law;* and the crime, 
always, of necessity, confined to the 
comparatively educated classes, has kept 
climbing upwards, in the midst of in- 
éreasing executions, till it has tainted 
some of almost the best families in the 
nation. It is a crime of gentlemen. 
And though, in all sane and moral 
estimation, the higher the rank of the 
offender, the more atrocious and unpar- 
donable the offence ; yet, /egislating for 
prevention, we should consider only 
the motives of apprehension that are 
likely to be operative on the classes to 
whom the legislative prevention is to 
apply. Now, is the fear of death, the 
most powerful of preventive motives in 
the minds of gentlemen? Should we 
acknowledge as a gentleman, or as 
worthy of gentlemanly association, the 
man whom we believed to be as much 
in dread of death, as of a life of branded 
infamy and degradation ? 
_ It may be true indeed that, when it 
comes to the pinch—when the execu- 
tioner and vital extinetion are immedi- 
ately before our eyes,—that the instinct- 
ive shrinking—the fearful clinging to mere 
consciousness and sensation, which be- 
long to the frailty of our nature, may 
bow almost the proudest spirit; and 
life, upon almost any terms, may appear 
preferable to immediate dissolution. 
** For who would lose, 
““Tho’ full of pain, this intellectual being, 
“Those thoughts that wander through eter- 
nity ?”’+ 
But for objects that are viewed in 
prospective distance, we have different 
and more reasoning eyes; and to the 
educated mind, familiar to the proud 
* In Scotland, where it is not punished 
with death, it is much less frequent. 
+ Which thoughts, by the way, in the 
generality of cases, when the crisis is at 
hand, may naturally enough increase the 
horror of dying. 
Topic of the Month.— Mr. Fauntleroy, &c. &c. 
[Dec. 1, 
decencies and respectful distinctions of 
society, to die, to cease to be, to bid 
an eternal farewell to the embarrass- 
ments and anxieties that surround us— 
to the privations, the expulsion from 
the accustomed sphere of association 
that menace us, appears but a trifle, in 
comparison with the degrading toil, the 
branded front, the stigmatizing fetters, 
the felon’s sordid garb, the wretched 
pallet, the noisome dungeon, and, worst 
of all, the contemptuous exposure and 
brutified assimilation, to which a less 
sanguinary code might condemn the 
educated and sensitive offender, It is, 
in fact, to avoid the /esser degradation, 
that the offence of forgery is frequently. 
committed—that it was, as it appears, 
committed in the’ case in question. 
How horrible to imagination the greater 
which reason would therefore commend 
as the expedient of preventive legisla- 
tion. 
But there are still other subjects con- 
nected with the case under discussion, 
which, as far as the security of property 
is concerned, are scarcely less important, 
and, in political consequence, may, per- 
haps, be more widely operative, than 
that which has preceded, is, in refer- 
ence to moral justice and humanity : 
the subjects of the banking system, as 
regulated and acted upon, at this time; 
and of the projected association or 
joint-stock combination of land-holders 
and capitalists, already talked of, as 
likely to arise out of the recent failures, 
The latter part of this subject it is 
impossible now to enter upon; though 
it involves considerations of the deepest 
importance, which, perhaps, there may 
be occasion to resume more particu- 
larly hereafter, Neither can the former 
part be discussed with the amplitude it 
demands, at the end of so long an article, 
as the present. But, assuredly, the 
question ought seriously to be weighed, 
whether the failure of a London banker, 
or of any of those bankers who pay no 
interest on the money deposited for 
safe custody in their hands, ought to be 
placed by the law of the land on the 
footing of ordinary bankruptcies? 
Where two, three, or four per cent, is 
given by the country banker, (and. there 
have been some, who haye even prof- 
fered five), they become no longer the 
mere trustees and agents of their eus- 
tomers, but, to all intents and purposes, 
traders, who deal in money, upon the ‘ 
implied, common-sense condition, that 
they should use the borrowed capital, 
for the use, of which they pay, in specu- 
lations 
