amounting to a physical necessity. Men must act according to their organs and impulses, whether these be good or evil.

And what is the bearing of such a doctrine upon the nature of sin and crime, and the desert of punishment? This question opens a field of thought too important to be passed lightly over. Sin, according to the phrenologists, is rather a misfortune to be pitied; a disease to be, if possible, curbed and cured, than a moral wrong, an offence against God, for which the perpetrator is guilty and deserving of punishment. Thus Mr. Combe says: "According to this view, certain individuals are unfortunate at birth, in having received organs from their parents so ill-proportioned, that abuse of them is an almost inevitable consequence." "There exist individuals," says Prof. Caldwell, “who steal, and others who deceive and lie, by a force of instinct which seems irresistible. In others, the instinct of destructiveness is like that of the tiger. Nothing can appease it but blood." Mr. Combe represents the convicted criminal as "the victim of his own nature, and external condition." At the same time, "he is not the cause of the unfortunate preponderance of the animal organs in his brain. Neither is he the cause of the external circumstances which lead his propensities into abuse." He is, therefore, to be pitied more than blamed. He is to be taken care of and restrained, so that he may not be left to injure himself or others, but not punished, as though he had done anything wilfully wrong.

Having exhibited the head of Pope Alexander VI., or what purports to be a drawing of his head, Mr. Combe further says: "Such a brain is no more adequate to the manifestation of Chris tian virtues, than the brain of an idiot is to the exhibition of the intellect of a Leibnitz or a Bacon." "Such a head is unfit for any employment of a superior kind, and never gives birth to sen timents of humanity."

Pope Alexander VI. was, indeed, a monster of wickedness. He has been called, not improperly, "the Nero of the Pontiffs." But, according to the view here taken, wherein was he culpable? Wherein was he, properly speaking, wicked at all? "His brain was no more adequate to the manifestation of Christian virtues, than the brain of an idiot." He was the victim, therefore, of his brain, which he had no hand in creating, and for which he was to be pitied, but not blamed. It was unfortunate, indeed, that he was exalted to so high a station, that he was placed in cir cumstances to do so much mischief. But we are in fault in

pronouncing him a monster of wickedness, who justly deserves the execration of mankind.

The New York Phrenological Journal presents us with the picture of another head—whether from life, or not, we cannot say—and descants upon it in the following terms: "Such a head will be sensual in love; ferocious, stubborn, and contrary in disposition; a glutton in appetite; destitute of taste and refinement; stupid in intellect; incapable of reasoning; and extremely low in moral emotion; a natural vagabond, open to all the excitements to low and vulgar criminality; a being who, for the sake of society, should be guarded by law, as we would a lunatic."

We are here presented with a character, embodying all the bad qualities which can cluster around, or be crowded into, a human being. And yet, in what respect is he strictly blameworthy for one of them? They grow out of the conformation of his head; and he did not make his head. As Mr. Combe says: "He was not the cause of the unfortunate preponderance of the animal organs in his brain. Nor was he the cause of the external circumstances which led his propensities astray." He is, therefore, to be pitied, but not blamed. He is to be confined and taken care of, but not punished. In the language of the Journal just quoted: He is "a being who, for the sake of society, should be guarded by law, as we would a lunatic."

Observe, he is to "be guarded by law." But how is the law to take hold of such an one? For what is he to be indicted? We see not for what, unless it be for the shape of his head. He may not have done anything, as yet, to merit punishment. Indeed, on the theory before us, he cannot do anything to merit punishment. Of course, he must be tried for the shape of his head, and tried before a jury of phrenologists; because no others would be competent to try him. The Lord save the poor fellow from the tender mercies of such a jury!

The right to try and confine a man for the shape of his head, or, in phrenological phraseology, for his developments, is here presented in the shape of inference; though we think a just inference from the premises given. But some of the phrenologists advocate it openly. Thus Prof. Caldwell says: "Convicts should be sentenced to a period of imprisonment and discipline, proportioned, not only to the enormity of any single crime, but to their age and developments. Were two youths convicted of crimes precisely alike, or as accomplices in the same crime, the one of

better, the other of much worse developments, the latter should be sentenced to the longest discipline." A writer in the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal, speaking of prisoners, says: "The measure of the restraint ought to bear reference, not so much to the amount of crime actually committed, as to the degree of criminal tendency in the individual." "Persons having brains of" a certain "class ought to be viewed as moral patients, and treated as such; and the form of their brains, combined with their manifestation of criminal tendencies, should be sufficient to warrant their being subjected to treatment," i. e. confinement. "This," he adds, “is the grand practical principle that must be adopted and acted on, before a successful result in criminal legislation can be reached.”

Here, then, we have it, on the highest phrenological authority. Men should be tried, convicted and imprisoned, not so much for actual crime committed, as for their "criminal tendencies," their cranial “developments," the "form of their brains." ! "This is the grand practical principle that must be adopted and acted on, before a successful result in criminal legislation can be reached."!! But we have not yet done with the positions of the phrenologists, as to the nature of crime, and desert of punishment. Mr. Combe speaks of three sources of crime, and only three: "First, particular organs are too large, and spontaneously too active; secondly, great excitement produced by external causes; and, thirdly, ignorance of what are uses, and what abuses, of the faculties." And each of these causes, he says, " exists, independently of the will of the offender." The will, therefore, as we might expect on phrenological principles, has nothing to do with. the causes of crime at all. It is excluded.

But in excluding the will, it is obvious that Mr. Combe excludes that which is, in fact, the cause of all crime, without which it is impossible that crime should exist. He forgets, or does not consider, what crime is. “It is not simply evil, but evil arising from one definite source; and that the very source which phrenology excludes, viz. the consent of a free, responsible will. The crime of murder, for example, is not simply the killing of a man. The man must be killed maliciously, wilfully. Destructiveness, in the sense of the phrenologists, may be a remote cause; but if it be destructiveness, apart from a responsible and consenting will, as in the case of a maniac, or a ravenous beast, it is not murder. It is, in fact, no crime at all." It follows, from Mr. Combe's theory as to the causes of crime, that there is, in fact, no such

thing as crime; and so we are brought back to the same conclusion as before: The criminal incurs no guilt, and deserves no punishment. He is the mere victim of his nature, and of exter

nal circumstances.

Nor is Mr. Combe alone in this conclusion. It is concurred in, as we have seen, by all the more distinguished phrenologists. Their idea is, that bad dispositions and criminal acts, imply disease, rather than guilt. All wrong character is a brain disorder, as much as fever is a disorder of the body; and we can no more will away the former, than the latter. The words sin, guilt, blame-worthiness, ill-desert, have no place in the nomenclature of these men, as they have no ideas corresponding to them in their philosophy.

And the proper idea of punishment is as foreign from their system, as is that of sin. Punishment, we are told, serves only to "irritate and inflame the propensity which it was designed to check. We might as well undertake to whip a sore, or beat the typhus fever out of the body, or steady a wild horse with spurs," as to reform a vicious mind by punishment. "The only effect will be to chafe the disorder into greater malignity."

The true course, therefore, is, to treat the transgressor as a patient or a lunatic, in the hands of a physician, rather than as a culprit deserving punishment. "Capital punishments should be forthwith abolished; prisons should be turned into hospitals; the rod of the parent and teacher should be laid aside; the diseased, over-worked organs should be put to rest; while their too feeble neighbors should be fed and drilled into activity." Punishment for crime, and reward for well-doing, are both entirely foreign to the system. They "both appeal to the animal feelings, and thus serve to defeat their own proper end, which is to set the moral feelings on the throne."

That we do not misrepresent here the great teachers of phrenology, might be shown, were it necessary, by further quotations. Says a writer in the Edinburgh Journal: "No one would propose to punish a man capitally for being infected with a contagious disease; although by putting him to death, at its first appearance, we might save many lives more valuable than his. Yet it would be as becoming to do this, and thereby protect society from physical contagion, as to guard it from moral contagion, by the destruction of a patient, who was defective in his moral constitution."

Mr. Simpson says: "When penitentiaries shall be held to be hospitals for moral patients, and not engines to protect society, by holding out the spectacle of the sufferings of perfectly free agents, either paying back the loss which their actions have occasioned, or deterring others from crimes by their example; the duration of the convict's detention will depend, not upon the mere act which brought him there, but upon the continuance of his disease." The purport of this long, bungling and obscure passage is, that men are not "perfectly free agents;" that sins and crimes are to be regarded and treated as particular forms of disease; that prisons should be considered as hospitals, and not places of punishment; and that the term of confinement should be regulated, not by the nature of the crime committed, but by the continuance of the disorder.

Mr. Simpson's whole book (and the same is true of Mr. Levison's) is based upon this one idea. Their plan of " efficient protection from crime" is, to lay hold of the offender, on the first breaking out of his disease, and keep him until the remedial process is completed. Murder, they tell us, comes from "homicidal insanity," or "diseased destructiveness. To torment the murderer will not annihilate this propensity. The only remedy is, to stifle the disease, by exciting the other propensities into predominance."

Much has been thought and written, within the last thirty years, on the punishment of crime, and the proper treatment of its perpetrators. A strong sympathy has been awakened for poor criminals, thieves, robbers, murderers, adulterers, because they have been punished in some instances severely, as they deserved. This course of remark, assuming the appearance of great philanthropy and benevolence, was received with some favor for a time; but the public have, at length, become nauseated with it. They see through it; see the folly and mischief of it; and will not tolerate it further. When a man knocks us down upon the highway, and steals our purse; when he fires our dwelling, and destroys our property, and perhaps our family; sensible people cannot see why all the sympathy of the community should be lavished upon him, rather than upon us; why he should be caressed, and cared for, and screened from punishment, and nursed and sheltered in a hospital, at the public expense; while we are left, unprotected, to bear our injuries as best we may.