What is True Civilization, Or, Means to Suppress the Practice of Duelling

ceived, measure the highest degree of criminal intention in him who uses deceit.

To hold boys, under fourteen years of age, as accountable as men, although it may suit the indolence of the English government, can never satisfy the mind of any one acquainted with human nature. A general guidance to enact humane laws, and to ameliorate the condition of all men, should be this; to do nothing of what England has done. There legislators, instead of attempting to prevent crimes, punish the perpetrators of them; parents, instead of taking care of their children, send them to school, or abandon them to the Sheriff; Ministers of the gospel, instead of guiding the people, by means of example, in the practice of the Christian doctrine, have as many bibles printed as English heads, and give one a head, in order that they may learn as much, sa they are able.

A gardner, with no other instrument than the knife, will always have a few trees growing majestically in his garden, though the grass and the bushes will be prevented from growing under the chilling shade of those trees!-Boys are taught to read, but they are never taught what they should read. News-papers always eagerly bear witness to human wickedness; and boys are occasionally taught to commit crimes, before they are aware, that they can be so perverse as to perpetrate crimes. Trials are too long to interest boys in reading the accounts given of them; wherefore they early receive in their forming associations of ideas the notions of human perversity, and found the ideas of crimes, confounded in their young minds, with those of virtue, religion, and duty; particularly so, because the ideas of virtue, religion, and duty, cannot in our days, be more forcibly impressed in their minds, than those of crimes: since they read of crimes, and hear of virtue, religion, and duty. Society must lead young people to virtue, in order to be entitled to punish men, who perpetrate crimes; otherwise, society should be held unjust, because it guides men to vices and crimes; and tyrannical, because it punishes those whom it led to crimes. We believe men to be born with a good, or bad tendency, because thus we spare ourselves the trouble of making them grow good'—In 1819, a gang of robbers, at whose head

was a famous outlaw, by the name of Cavalli, was caught within five miles of Mantua, (Italy.) Their crimes requiring a Giudizio Statario, the court held its sitting in the open field, as near as possible to the house, where they had perpetrated their last crime. Cavalli, and two others of his gang, were tried, convicted and executed in the course of twenty-seven hours, as the law required. A few, among the great number of boys, who had assembled from the neighboring towns to witness the trial and the execution, convened together on the next day, and agreed to hold their sitting in the same manner, as they had witnessed it the day before. A stout and bold boy about twelve years of age, offered himself to perform the part of Cavalli; that is, he would go into a house to steal, and, if they caught him, he would undergo his trial. Some boys succeeded in surprising, and securing him; then, tied all round with ropes, he was brought before the tribunal: he was found guilty; and delivered to three boys, for to be executed. The three boys hung him to a tree, just in the same manner, as they had witnessed the operation to be performed on the preceeding day; and there he would have expired, unless one of the boys, who had sat a Judge, had gone to inform the mother of the prisoner, how things were going on. All the love of a mother was necessary to enable her to reach the tree in time, to undo the fatal knot, which, in a few moments more, had deprived her of an only son.-The power of example is great!

INDEX.

Chapter First

Division of Public Opinions

The Public Opinion which regards a Stranger

Means to correct Public Opinion

Chapter Second

Moral causes of Duelling

Nobility and Aristocracy