and even in some cases of extreme provocation, as purging it altogether.*

19. In several systems of forensic morals, the destruction of new-born infants by their parents, and especially the destruction of infants in the womb of the mother, is esteemed permissible; at least under certain circumstances. Mystical morality, proceeding upon the one inflexible idea above stated, condemns these acts as among the most criminal. Forensic morals have permitted them on the ground, that death to a new-born, and especially to an unborn infant, is in fact rather a pain to the parents than to the child; that such acts are never likely to be resorted to, except when essential to relieve parents from a burden which they have no means to support; and when the life of the child, if preserved, is almost certain to be a life of degradation and misery.

Much has been said about the cruelty of these acts; and the utter helplessness of infancy is well calculated to create a feeling of pity in its behalf. But is mere life such a boon? What shall be said of that benevolence which saves the life of the child only to make its existence a perpetual disgrace to its mother and itself? which punishes child-murder

* The English common law admits several distinctions upon this subject, such, for instance, as whether the fatal blow was struck, or not, with a deadly weapon, which, though sufficiently well founded when they were originally adopted, at which time arms were universally worn, have no adaptation to the existing state of things. The consequence is, that the letter of the English law is constantly set aside, by a humane perjury on the part of jurors.

with one hand, and shuts up foundling asylums with the other?

Even with respect to children born in lawful wedlock, the Romans and the Chinese might be entitled to ask, whether to extinguish the life of an infant daughter before she is hardly conscious of existence, is, on the whole, any greater cruelty or crime, than to shut her up, full grown and full of desire, to pine away her life in a convent; or to gratify a selfish pride by educating her in a style which incapacitates her from earning her own livelihood, a style which you can leave her no adequate means to support, and which exposes, or may expose her, to a thousand miseries?

But that the act of infanticide is a violation of the primary impulses of benevolence, is sufficiently evident, even from the practices of those nations among which it has obtained. The custom is to expose the children; not to put them to death, but to leave them to perish. This practice, no doubt, is the more cruel of the two; and yet it originates in impulses of benevolence. The child that is exposed may possibly be rescued by somebody more able or more willing to support it than its natural protectors; and many Greek and Roman legends are founded upon incidents of that sort. Even if the child perishes, at least the unhappy parent escapes the misery of seeing its last agonies.

If the Roman father once lifted the new-born babe from the ground, and so acknowledged it to be his child, he could not afterwards expose it. Parental affection, if it be allowed but a moment to develope

itself, becomes so strong as to prove an overmatch for most other impulses; and for a father to hold his infant child in his arms, and not to feel the strong force of parental tenderness, would prove him, under ordinary circumstances, greatly deficient in benevolence. For obvious reasons, parental tenderness in a mother, is a still stronger sentiment than in a father; and nothing but the pressure of extreme want, or the horror of disgrace, will, under ordinary circumstances, induce a mother to consent to, or to take part in, the death of her infant child.*

20. Even with regard to those homicides which all systems of morals allow to be criminal, a great difference exists in different systems, as to the degree of criminality ascribed to them. In cultivated and refined societies, in which the supremacy of the law has long been established, and where children are trained from their infancy to keep their passions under control, a very different view is taken of this matter from that which prevails in savage and barbarous societies. As, in these latter societies, the average force of benevolence is less, and the average force of malevolence greater, the force of moral obligation is, in fact, different.

21. It is, also, to be considered, that, in the case of a man killed, the injury is by no means confined to the party murdered, a circumstance which tends greatly to add to the criminality of the act. It ex

* The punishment proper to be inflicted upon infanticide is discussed with much good sense and humanity by Bentham. Theory of Legislation, Vol. II. Part 1, ch. 12.

tends to his friends, all those dependent upon him, or who loved him; and even to society at large. Hence the murder of a king, a chieftain, a philosopher, a poet, even the head of a family, is looked upon as a more aggravated offence, than the murder of an undistinguished, isolated individual. Hence in monarchical countries the excessive guilt ascribed to regicide.

22. It is from a more distinct apprehension of the secondary evils resulting from homicide; it is from the greater mutual interconnexion of men, and the increase of humanity which civilization produces, and especially from the greater rarity of the act, that murder, in a civilized state, is looked upon as so much greater a crime than in barbarous communities. Just in proportion as homicide becomes more rare, it implies a greater destitution of moral sentiment; till at last, from being regarded as comparatively a trivial misdeed, it comes to be reckoned among the greatest of crimes. Thus the homicides perpetrated during the reign of republicanism in France, though far less numerous and atrocious than those which on various occasions had signalized the monarchy; though accompanied by far fewer acts of gratuitous cruelty; and though prompted by an impulse into which the sentiment of benevolence entered in a much greater degree; yet taking place as they did, after Europe had, for near a century, been unaccustomed to such acts, they were thought to indicate a new and strange development of human depravity; and they cast a stigma upon the cause of reform, whether political or philosophical, which, even to the present day, serves to impede its progress.

23. We have already pointed out some of the paradoxes on the subject of homicide, to which the mystical theory of morals has given rise. But there are other conclusions of that theory on this same subject which are worse than paradoxical; conclusions which have impelled men, under a mistaken sense of moral obligation, to perpetrate the most enormous cruelties, and to inflict upon their fellow-men the greatest possible injuries, not only death, but injuries far worse than death.

The personal God of the more orthodox mystics, as we have already seen, is supposed susceptible to feelings not of benevolence only, but also of malevolence, commonly disguised under the epithet of justice; and it has thence been concluded that the torment, and even the total destruction of those whom God hates, must be agreeable to God; and of course a moral duty. Each different school of mystics, setting themselves up to be God's chosen interpreters and vicegerants upon earth, have naturally concluded, that all who refuse to acknowledge and receive them in that character, must of course be God's enemies, and that God must delight in their destruction; and whenever they have possessed the power, they have conceived it to be their duty to God to suppress and destroy these his enemies. Hence we find the history of every school of mystics, whether Jews, Egyptians, Persian followers of Zoroaster, Christians in all their varieties, Pagans, Mahometans, Bhramins or Boodhists, little more than one continued series of outrages and injuries, carried to the extremity of the most cruel death against all