The Sun.
London, England, 1828-12-06 00:00:00

tr reward them for their evil or good actions.
But then, the punishment and reward extended
not beyond the limits of this life, in the parties
or their offspring. There is no point on which
Divines of every country—since Warburton
called attention to the subject—are more agreerh
than that the Mosaic Law contains nothing in-
dicative of a belief in a future state ; and this
belief originated in a subsequent period of the
Jewish history. But the prisoner knew what he
was about. He did not ask the witness, are you
an _Atheist ?- But do you believe in a future state
of rews.rds and punishments? Now itis distinctly
laid down by Phillipps, on the authority of a
number of cases, that 4, Infidels, who believe
not that there is a God, or a future state of re-
wards and punishments, cannot be admitted in
any case. Here, then, we have a Magistrate,
on his own belief, that there cannot be such a
personage as an Atheist—an Atheist being exclu-
ded from giving testimonraccepting a witness,
who, though he may or may not be an Atheist,
expressly stated that he did not believe what the
best authorities say is necessary to be believed,
to entitle hint to swear in a Court of Justice.
What a door is here opened to arbitrary power.
One Magistrate is anxious to commit a prisoner
for trial, and he sets aside a well-known rule of
evidence, by virtue, first, of applying an erro-
neous term to a declaration of faith, and affirm-
la, that the tern, though the subject of a pro-
vision in law, applies to a non-entity ; and then
by failing to perceive that, independently of the
term Atheist, the particulars disbelieved amount
to the precise disqualification of the law. An-
other Magistrate, anxious to mortify a prosecu-
tor, or to favour the escape °fa prisoner, will lay in
wait for a pretext to class rt witness among the per-
sons disqualified by law. What may not be done in
this way? But see the absurdity of this qualifica-
tion. A material witness may state truly, Ido
not believe in this or that, and justice may.
he defeated. The very same witness who has
Leen rejected, retaining his former belief, may
be purchased to give false evidence, and when
asked as to his beief, say, I was rejected on a
former occasion, it is true, but 1 now have
changed my mind ; I believe- now what every
good Christian believes, and his evidence must
now he received, though the presumption is so
much greater that he speaks falsely the second
time than it was the first. Will a man, deter-
Inined to perjure himself, be-such an idiot as to
disqualify himself by a declaration of unbelief ?
Were there any way of reading the inward man
and ascertaining what the belief actually is, there
might be some ground for making the belief ;I
test of admissibility. But the logical blunder is,
that the man who, is supposed ready to perjure
himself is yet believed in his statement of the
qualifying or disqualifying circumstances ; and
that what ought to be a presumption in his fa-
favour—for if he wished to lie he would lie all
through—is turned again;,-t lihn. Besides, see
the mischievous consequence of enabling men un-
willing to give evidence to escape the punish-
ment of perjury, by falsely calling themselves
Atheists, which prevents their being sworn. If
men were, immediately after makin, such a de-
claration, taken from the bar,-to-the'lnquisition,
this might be some check ; but a declaration may
be made one day, and recanted another with im-
punity, by a person indifferent to public opinion
—Morning Chroilide.

There can no longer exist any doubt that the
taw of forgery is opposed to almost the univer-
sal feeling of the country. We are not aciluainted
with any subject on which public opinion is so
nearly unanimous. Nor do we wonder at it. A
law which deals out punishment, not according
to the nature and degree of the offence, but on
a cruel calculation of the effect of sanguinary
examples, must ever be revolting to the-reason
of a civilized people ; and the more so, the more
enlightened they become. That this law must,
sootier or later, he abolished, for one more con-
formable to the principles of justice, we firmly
believe ; but, in the mean time, it is shocking to
think that the scaffold has its victims just as
plenteously as if the general voice of the public
were not raised against it. A gradual and prac-
tical reform has taken place, with regard to the
punishment of death, as applied to several other
crimes. Who ever hears of a sheep-stealer being
hanged now-a-days upon any one of the six cir-
cuits of England ? The crime is capital on the
statute-book, but, though the judgment of death
is recorded against the offender, it is never in-
flicted, because the improved sense of justice at
the present day, arising out of the advancement
made by Christian civilization, has made the
feelings of the Bench revolt against the
execution of a punishment so dispropor-
honed to the crime. But it is said by the
few, who would have Mammon propitiated
on the scaffold by periodical oblations of blood,
that the commercial, and, above all, the banking
interests, require that he who defrauds by the
.
utterance of a forged die the death of
the murderer—and that, it this is not justice, it
ow are of opinion,
is, at least, pixy. e, however,
that the policy of the law is never so sound as
when it is bottomed on the principles of justice.
We need not here repeat what we have before •
urged in reference to this question, that the vi„.
dictive character of the law makes considerate

and humane persons prefer suffering any loss by
forgery, rather than, by pursuing justice, make
themselves the instruments of a sanguinary reta-
liation. Hence many forgers escape with total
impunity, while others, who fall into the hands
of those who consider money a more sacred pos-
session than human life, perish by the hands of
the executioner. Again, if the Banking inte-
rests require that forgers should be hanged,
surely thefarming interests equally require that
sheep-stealers should be put to death. So it
was thought by those Legislators who made
sheep-stealing a capital crime ; but an en-
lightened sense of justice has 'discovered
that their reasonino, was erroneous, and the
extreme sentence, thoughc verbally pronounced,
is practically repealed. When bigamy was
a capital offence, the prosecutions for that crime
were very rare, because: people in general were
reluctant to prosecute, through a tenderness of life ;
but now that the law of capital punishment for this
offence is repealed, the cases of this nature that come
into Courts of Justice are far more numerous. Not
that society have become more demoralised in this
re4pect, but on account of the spirit of the law being
no longer, by inordinate severity, opposed to those
natural feelings of justice which God has implanted
in the hearts of mankind, as well as enacted in that
code of sublime morality which his holy religion
reveals. We shall not here ask the rigid admirers
of sanguinary punishments why, in a land where
forgery is visited with death, the adulterer—that
poisoner of the very fountain of domestic happiness
—that desolater of the charities of life—has not a

hair of his head touched by the fing;:of criminal
justice ? Is it because we worship Mam►non more
fondly than we venerate virtue ? We would not
extenuate the guilt of forgery—but we would have
the law that punishes it consistent with reason, and
consistent with itself. 'I hese remarks apply to the
question of the law of forgery in a general point of
view—but when we recollect that another victim of