CRIME: HOW TO BE SYMPATHIZED wrni.

TB AT crime is always pitiable, is one of those secret nets which

ties law, as a thing practieal, is forced to ignore. It would teed to weaken, if not dissolve, time distinctions between rLimt and wrung, were truths, thought incontrovertible in reason, yet so puz- zling to common understandings, propounded for popular reception. To the philanthropist and the philosuph,T, who tets in crime the

timer pitiable offspring of three timings pitiable—ignorance, me;o1...me and constitutional viciousness—it may be sufficiently main test that compassion -lbr it can only stop short in obedience to a political obligation ; that it must stop while the Lov, in the neme of society, takes vengeance ; that, in the inner heart, it cannot stop et any time. There are things fit to be spoken, and things not fit to be spoken to the world—while, at least, it is the mixed audience of worthy and unworthy em's that fbrty centuries have reported it, and Which even a fivty-first century will hardly not report it and this is one of those melt comemniestions—that crime is ever piti- able. There are mane such in the crypt of knowledge, that lie there like poweeful thugs in the physician's chest—marked " poison," perhaps, for the protection ot time ignorant, but known to the phy- sician simply as invaluable medicines. Dangerous truths may elso be precious truths, and no less necessary to be used in the science of political healing because not fitly retailed to the world without precautionary label.

The knowledge that all crime i3 pitialde, if it is to be used fur- tively, shares in that respect the condition !whinging, at one time or another, to all the best truths in the world. Its use is, at any rate, to temper the feelings in regard to criminals; not to ob- struct the ends of conventional justice, but to fortify and preserve the impression—too soon obliterated—of our common humanity • to make us fed that punishment, which is but retaliation, being

pushed beyond the exact point of its utility, becomes outrage, as a thing in itself of no abstract sanctity ; filially, to lead us to the con- viction, that criminals punished only, anti otherwise not cared for,

leave as it were on the hands of society the very stain which, like a bad, scourer, she so unskilfully endeavours to efface ; that society, in fitct, becomes criminal in its turn—respbosible not only for what its treatment fails to repress but for what it avails to call forth. .

When Christ commanded men to " love one another," Ime reck- oned no exceptions—the love was to be universal and uncondi- tienal. It was not that love, therefore, which daily intercourse seises up, partly out of selfish materials, between [me individual and anothee, but such habitual natural-flowing stream of charity as the sense nf common woes and common joys and the necessity for mutual

cxemes may at all times inspire without reference to circumstances or coudilio:m. It was the charity which belongs to every mind that

modestly and justly estimates its own strength ; which feels that

there is no sin, however terrible, that it can be called to resent in other:, of which it might not, in the chapter cf human trials, have been itself the perpetrator ; that to it also belongs the tongue to lie, the hand to slay, the passions to goad and madden ; nay, that its own innocence—if it be innoetnt—and which shows so glossy

fair by time side of its guilty fellow, is at best no bettcr than a com-

parative strength—a strength which takes more provocation to sin. For whin themon in the shape of vicc could put forth ell his de- moidac power, bet the smrongest-mailed moral dragon-slayer, seeing such odds, muo: doubt the issue of the strnszgle ? From the mys- tery which still wraps the deed Of ABC111BALD BOLAN:, who but must shrink beck with an mulefined dread mind sort of sinking dis- trust or hhasdr, as he reflects oo the previously unimpeached cha- racter of' tiett man—his kindness and gentleness, nttested by wit- nesses—all the circumstances which appear to refer the ease to the most ordinaey pentilel, and then looks at the sequel I For the most part, vices present themselves to us with but a small pert of their entire conquering forces and auxiliaries ; we meet temptetiens one by one, and singly resist them ; but few judge of crime with reference to this sort of antagonism, and " guilty" or " not guilty " is the only question. To many vices the temptations arc stronger and more frequent in low than in high • life; while with respect to others time reverse is time fact : with which stntement this important continent is to be taken in con- nexion, that admost all the more violent crimes, demanding violent social retaliation, are in the number of the former, or of those to which the temptotions lie thickest amongst the poor and, speaking. morally, defenceless ranks. These are proportions and relations very necessary to be considered in estimating the comparative mo- rality of •lifferent classes. The fluid that streams from the heirs of a stroked kitten is the same that cleaves the thunder-cloud ; but we, whom the kitten's sparks kill not, may not therenre conclude hint weaker than ourselves who has fillen by time lightning• iIany timings go by the same name in morals, being also of one nature, which differ in respect of proportion more widely than other things do in respect of essence.

In considering circumstances of extenuation in trials for capital offences, the law takes into its account provocation, temptation, youth, previous character, and all the matters of fact immediately touching the inquiry ; and, in so doing, does all it can, in its own province, for justice. Those other, by-laid pleas of equity, se- creted in the inner courts of reason, it never touches, as beyond its cognizance. Though armed with the scales of justice, in fact, the weights and mensures of the law are large, and in its deliberation the minute qmiantities go unaccounted for ; but the mind, in the greater line:WES of her operations, rejects your aroiedapois and em- ploys a balance that responds to every grain. This is so, and should be so. The justice of the law mnay be too coarse for a court Of reason, but not for its own halls, nor for the public service ; while that which the reason decrees, thongh too fine for common use, has its important and sacred ends also, in directing the thoughts into channels connected whim the redress of those griefs or the rethrination of those errors which engender the crime ; making it, as has been snid, ever pitiable.

It is this species of justice, then, which gives birth to the best and purest charity. In a previous article we discriminated various kinds of chaeity, real or superficial; giving, preffrence to Bea which springs 115th mi cert :hi mixed " kindness and wisdom." This wisdom limy be taken to include modesty as well as justice. If it be true, syhich it le, that all men are born with the same neulties, not to say propeosities, for crime, and that few it' any among the sons of Alamo eau bald themselves so aloof in their self-discipline from the liabilities of our stature as to be quite sur; they may not them- selves he the next to be charged with a capital offenee, the reflec- tioti. should operate not less as a snotic to charity, and that " love"—in the ssnse of' a certain sympathy—which the universal injanction to " love one another" requires to be extended even to the mest abject ot our species, than as a spur to increased vigilance in the work of self-control. The moral pride, on the contrary, which rejects with disdain the idea of any enormous lapse from virtue in its own case, is bad in several vital ways : it lessens caution, pro- motes deception, (deceiving itself to begin with,) and, lastly, is a principal generator ef the intolerance and inhumanity against which we habitually inveigh.

Dot the sort of sympathy—or call it sorrow—for a criminal fullow-creature, which proceeds on a basis of pity and self-know- ledge, (pq, that feels that a good conscience is time thing most sad to be forfeited—self-knowledge, that. knows the black side of its own heart,) is a different sort of sympathy from that which riots in the Newgate Calendar—that which pollutes the literature

of modern Europe with filth and horror, which writes half the novels of "young France" in letters of blood, which in London fills seven theatres at one time to behold " Jack Sheppard," and all the theatres more or less with audiences craving murder before every other entertainment. There is in the latter no emotion of sorrow, of pity for fallen- humanity—the sympathy is with the crime; it is a sneaking relish for the horrors themselves, as de- picted or represented, and a sort of cowardly way of approximating to a participation in them as nearly as it may be safely done. The other is the sympathy of the Christian and the philosopher ; of hint who knows that " all the world" is " kin ;" who forgets not that every mother's son, be his life famous or infamous, his end happy or ignominious; filled once the same cradle., and must fill the same grave ; that in the most depraved heart there are still rem- nants of conscience, even sparks of virtue, could you find them, never wholly extinct—ties always sufficient to attach it to the rest of the human flintily. The sort of sympathy which these reflections teach fills no theatres with claimants for mimic murder ; it is essen- tially active, aims at the reformation of evil by practical means, and pursues its object with an energy founded. on the belief in human goodness.