After the address was read, the King remarked that "the warrior who sought for glory, and those whose objects were to aggrandize themselves in the world, had their gratification in things external and transitory, while those who went about doing good, enduring fatigues, and submitting to many privations and difficulties for that purpose, had a much richer reward in the inward satisfaction of their own minds." Upon speaking respecting their friends in Norway, he told them that the subject of marriage, which it seems had caused some difficulty there, had been before the council, and it was concluded that, provided it was performed after the manner of Friends, and registered, it should be lawful, and that he would protect not only the Friends there at present, but those who might join them in future. He said, "Your Friends cannot avenge themselves, all that their principles permit, is, if possible, to parry the blows which may be aimed at them, but they cannot otherwise defend themselves; they, therefore, have a double claim to protection," and this, he assured them, they should have. On this W. Allen remarks, "This was a highly interesting opportunity, and it was, indeed, the crown to our labours in this place. Here, as at Rosenthal, we felt the precious influence of that power, which, in every place, had set an open door before us, and we could only, in deep humility, say, 'It is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our eyes." (To be continued.)

999

For Friends' Review.

THE LETHEON.

Letheon is but another name for rectified sulphuric ether, which has recently acquired a great renown for its wonderful control over the sentient nervous system, and established "a memorable epoch in the annals of medical science." It gives us the power of mitigating the most excruciating pains to which the human body is liable, whether these pains are the attributes of disease itself, or are consequent to surgical operations. Its effects are rapidly induced, and as rapidly pass off when the ether is withdrawn, leaving behind less distress or difficulty than ordinarily follows in the train of any active article of the materia medica. If a few sinister results have attended the inhalation of ether by many thousand patients, they only show, what is a proverbial truth, that the same medicine is not equally adapted to every constitution, and that we have yet much to learn in the application of this wonderful agent. It has been in use about a year and a half; it has been tried in every variety of cases, in every diversity of physical and mental constitution; and in many different and distant parts of the world; it has been resorted to by the ignorant as well as by the

learned in medicine, and yet how few are the injuries that have resulted from its use! So few, indeed, as to convince us, that with a further knowledge of its effects, a more perfect mode of administration, and the same amount of caution that is habitually had recourse to in the use of other active remedies, with these precautions we insist that we have within our reach one of the most powerful, and at the same time most manageable agents, for the relief of suffering humanity, that Providence has hitherto vouchsafed to man. What are the objections to the Letheon? Some persons object to it that it stupifies the senses. and suspends consciousness. So does opium, and every other anodyne that relieves pain or induces sleep; and which, without this property, would be of little or no value. Besides, the oblivious state resulting from ether is of shorter duration than that from other narcotics. It is also objected that it is occasionally followed by bodily indisposition; but this seldom extends beyond a disordered stomach or a temporary head-ache, which are surely secondary evils when compared to the distress or agony that may have been removed by the ether.

Again-we are told that the arterial blood becomes dark coloured or venous, in consequence of the inhalation of ether, as proved in surgical operations. Let experience speak on this point: "The blood that flows in operations under the influence of ether, is not much altered in colour. The blood which spirts from a divided artery, is sometimes of its usual vermillion tint, at the very time the inhalation is going on; frequently, under these circumstances, however, the arterial blood is rather less bright than usual, but the venous blood being at the same time less dark than common, the flow of mixed blood is of the ordinary colour of such blood, and the patient's lips remain unchanged in hue. It is only when the patient has been holding his breath or coughing, that I have observed the arterial blood to be of a dark colour; and I consider that those writers who have described it as being, usually or always, of a venous appearance, must have used inhalers that did not allow of a proper supply of fresh air.'

It has moreover been said that patients are more likely to bleed after operations performed under the use of ether. Of this there is not the smallest proof; but suppose it to be a fact, the surgeon has unfailing resources in such an emer

We have seen ether used on many occasions, always mitigating pain, mostly preventing it altogether, and in no instance followed by any other than the most transient discomfort. Further -the writer has taken it repeatedly himself, under circumstances of great bodily suffering, attended by almost entire absence of sleep; and his personal experience corresponds with the great mass of testimony in favour of the ether its surprising power of controlling pain, when other means have proved unavailing, and this, too, without necessarily depriving the patient of either consciousness or volition. Push its use yet further, and an oblivious sleep ensues, during which the most frightful operations can be performed with perfect safety, yet without the knowledge of the patient.

We are far from urging the indiscriminate use of ether. There are many cases in which it should be resorted to with caution-some in which it is wholly inadmissible. Experience must decide such points; but our prepossessions should not hastily condemn a remedy which has already done so much good, and which promises to become, more and more, a balm for "the many ills that flesh is heir to."

M.

For Friends' Review.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT..

In a late number of the Massachusetts Spy, we find an account of an execution consequent on a conviction which was founded upon evidence chiefly or wholly circumstantial. Yet the circumstances must, at the time, have been strongly against the person accused. From the narrative, it appears that two men, while riding along the road, heard, at some distance before them, a man shriek out, "mercy, Harry ;" and upon coming to the place, they found a man with a knife in his breast, and another, who bore the name of Harry Blake, with his hand on the handle, endeavoring to draw it out. The weapon, it appears, had been so forcibly impelled that it was difficult to retract it, and Harry Blake did not succeed in effecting it. Though no one saw the stroke, yet the circumstances were so strong that Harry Blake was convicted, on the testimony of one of those who witnessed what has been above related, and executed.

situation was discovered by the horsemen, and seized as the murderer. The man who made this confession, is represented, in the narrative before us, to have mentioned several particulars which proved, too clearly to admit a doubt, that he saw the arrest of Blake, and of course must have been near the place where it occurred.

It is very possible that this article of news may be an imaginary case, yet we have numbers of a similar character which are unquestionably true; and so long as our laws continue to authorize the punishment of death, we may reasonably expect that mistakes of this kind will be occasionally made. Till human tribunals become infallible, the infliction of capital punishment can hardly be less than presumptuous. This would be true even upon the admission that the actual murderer might, with propriety, be consigned to the gibbet.

If the man, who, without the authority of law, destroys the life of another, is to be adjudged a criminal worthy of death, in what category must we place the legislator who makes or supports a law, which in its practical operations, must sometimes, almost unavoidably, consign the innocent to the gallows? Is it less criminal to commit murder by law than without law? It is, however, to be hoped that the time is approaching when the light of Christianity and civilization will so far illuminate our legislative halls as to establish the principle that reformation, not extinction, is the legitimate object of penal law. The mission of our Lord was to seek and to save that which was lost; he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Probably few murders on record were more atrocious than that of the martyr Stephen, to which Saul of Tarsus was consenting; yet the Divine mercy was extended to Saul, and the gifts of apostleship conferred upon him. Moses slew the Egyptian without law; yet he was appointed to lead his people out of bondage, and was peculiarly honoured of the Most High. With these, and other cases equally strong, in our view, who will assert that the man who, without legal authority, takes the life of another, is beyond the pale of Divine forgiveness? And shall man, and particularly a Christian, be inexorable in cases which the Almighty has condescended to pardon?

DOGMATISM.

L.

for assurance, be not too early nor too frequent in expressing this assurance in too peremptory and positive a manner, remembering that human nature is always liable to mistake in this corrupt and feeble state.-Watts.

From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. REMARKABLE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRY.

Some years ago, we gave our readers a sketch of the race of hereditary robbers and murderers in India called Thugs; and we have now the task, as strange as it is pleasing, of describing a series of measures by which, in the part of the country where the experiment has been tried, these preternatural monsters have been already converted into quiet and useful citizens. We are enabled to do this by the kindness of a stranger, who dates in July last from Jubbulpoor, in the Saugor and Nerbudda territory.

Jubbelpoor, we may premise, is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants, and somewhat remarkable, even in India, for ignorance and superstition. Its neighbourhood was specially infested with Thugs and poisoners, and its citizens, to a man, were—and most of them are still devout believers in the grossest species of sorcery. We mention this to show that the singular School of Industry we are to describe set out with no peculiar advantages of locality.

The grand difficulty that was at first found in the suppression of Thuggee, arose from the vast extent of the territory it pervaded, and the want of local courts for the special cognizance of that gigantic crime. Such tribunals were at length formed in the capital cities of various native princes, with our Residents for their judges; while at Jubbulpoor, Colonel Sleeman established himself, in 1836, as chief superintendent of the whole. Thanks to the energy of this meritorious officer, murder was now no longer permitted to traverse the country unchecked. Upwards of a thousand Thug families were apprehended, aud sent in to Jubbulpoor for trial; and as everything is on a great scale in India, it was no uncommon thing to see in a single morning fifteen, twenty, even twenty-five, of these wretches swinging upon the gallows. The consequence of this severity was, that the whole race was seized with a panic; the gangs separated and fled; their individual members, of course, found their occupation gone; and in a space of time wonderfully short, a system that had been for hundreds of years rooted in habit and religion was broken up and destroyed.

But all the convicts could not be hanged, and many were found useful as approvers in obtaining the conviction of the rest, as they were captured from time to time. Of these there had collected at Jubbulpoor, in the year 1837, 450 men with their wives and families, who resided during the day in a walled village in the neighbourhood built on purpose for their reception,

while at night the men were locked up in the jails of the town. Each family, according to size, received from four to eight shillings a-month for its support; but as the mouths increased in number, this grew more and more inadequate, and the children were sent out by their parents to work, beg, pilfer, or forage for themselves in any way they thought proper. Colonel Sleeman saw that this system could not go on. As the children grew up, their wants would be greater, and their will stronger, and the convict village would turn out to be a nursery of crime. Under these circumstances, he suggested to his able and energetic assistant, Lieutenant Brown, the necessity of their attempting to introduce habits of industry among the convicts and their families.

Lieutenant Brown set to work with his customary alacrity, and erected a few sheds near his own house, where he induced about two hundred of the approvers themselves to repair, for the purpose of working at some common manufacture. These men, however, had never in their lives tried their hands at anything but murder, and such work as they were now set to did not come kindly to them. Their reward was to be the profit on the articles manufactured; but the manufacture was so bad, and the profit, in consequence, so small, that the labourers became first discontented, then disgusted, and then enraged, at their having condescended to anything at once so mean and unprofitable as regular industry. One day, in order to make an end of the business, they set fire to the whole place, and burned it to the ground. Here they had reckoned, however, without their host, Lieutenant Brown; for the circumstance only made him the more determined and peremptory. He turned out the whole village, morning and evening, for six hours, to make bricks sufficient for a shed eighty feet by forty; and having completed the building, he borrowed £50 from the government to roof it in. The lieutenant himself, however, had to attend to his magisterial and other duties from ten till five o'clock; and the native guards were useless in superintendence, as they stood in the most abject awe of their desperate prisoners, and allowed them to work or play just as they pleased. He applied, therefore, for an overseer, and obtained, in 1840, the services of a Mr. Williams, a daring and indefatigable officer, who kept four hundred desperadoes at work from seven A. M. till five P. M., thrashing with his own hands the idle and refractory. Under this discipline, the convicts were able in two years to spin hemp, weave common carpeting, make coarse towels, doormats, &c. all of which were sold at Jubbulpoor and the surrounding stations.

It was now considered advisable to make an attempt with the children; and the approvers were informed that all who chose might bring their sons to the factory, who would be taught a