THE stoppage and ultimate bankruptcy of Messrs. Marsh and Co. in Berner's-street was a circumstance, in itself, sufficient to produce a more than nine-days' sensation. Though not bankers of the first order, with respect to the gross amount of capital entrusted to their care, the customers of the firm, in point of number, were perhaps more numerous than those of several of the banking-houses, which stand foremost in the ranks of wholesale estimation. A large proportion, also, of those whose interests were affected were probably of those descriptions to whom the loss, or the temporary privation even, of their hundreds, or their thousands, was of more consequence, both to their present credit, and their future prospects, than the tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of those great capitalists and proprietors, whose securities and rentrolls are vested in the hands, and trust ed to the management of the supposed Croesus of the banking trade. They were bankers, in fact, in whose hands what monied men would call "small sums" were kept: that is to say, with whom tradespeople, and others of the middle orders of society, were in the habit of trusting the whole of that floating capital which their credit or their concerns rendered it necessary should be always at command; but which it was neither safe nor convenient to keep in their own bureaus. The number of families, therefore, whom the sudden stagnation of these resources must have thrown into perplexing difficulties, or overwhelmed with dismay, could not but be very considerable; as the dejected and anxious countenances of the multitude gathered around the doors, the day after the suspension of payment was declared, sufficiently evinced: and when the secondary and remote action upon those who, in the complicated chain of trading connexion, were implicated with the immediate sufferers, is considered, it cannot be at all surprising, that a very extensive emotion should have been awakened. Nor, when it is recollected how many bank

ing houses there are in this metropolis similarly situated, with respect to the description of their transactions, and standing in no respect upon any higher grounds of credit and reputation, than the firm of Marsh and Co. had, for several years maintained, will it seem other than in the course of things, that an eager run of alarm and apprehension should be made upon the minor banking-houses, in general; and that one in particular (though deficient, perhaps, in nothing but immediatelyavailing resources to answer such unexpected demands), should have been obliged, a few days after, to follow the ominous example of avowing a temporary inability to answer such importunate claims. The wonder is rather, that more were not reduced to the same dilemma.

But these were, in reality, the slightest of the causes, which excited the general interest and discussion. "The extraordinary conduct of the partner, Mr. Fauntleroy" (to adopt the language of the firm itself, in the public announcement of their temporary suspension of payments), which was the immediate, and, for a while, supposed to be the only cause of failure, gave a direction to the general sympathy, more honourable perhaps to the social character of the public, than consoling to the conscious feelings of those to whom it was directed. "It was the crime of an individual," it was said, not the default of the general firm, that had produced the calamity, whatever might be its extent; and the partners were joint victims, not principals or voluntary agents, in the ruin." Nor were there wanting among the suffering creditors themselves, those, who expressed more compassion for three respectable families, hurled from esteem and affluence to distress and degradation, than for their own pecuniary embarrassments and losses.

The part that was taken,through the medium of the public press, to extend this feeling, is so fresh in remembrance, that it need not here be noticed, if it were not for the importance of warning the public against the uses that

may be made, as they are attempted to be made, of every discrepancy of that important organ, of its conduct in this particular. The rival eagerness of the nutnerous agents of that press to seize upon every flying rumour, that can gratify the avidity, "both of the great vulgar and the small," for mysterious anecdote, personality, and chit-chat (rather, perhaps, than malignant) slander, did most assuredly, for a while, blacken, much beyond the measure of equity and truth, the character of the unfortunate culprit. Accumulated charges of profligacy and prodigality were heaped upon the character of Mr. Fauntleroy, sufficient to have broken the backs of all the banking firms in the metropolis. To support his luxurious prodigalities, it was supposed, the enormous and undoubt ed forgeries had been committed; and Messrs. Marsh, Stracey, and Graham, together with all who had confided in them, were involved in ruin, by the unprincipled dissipation of the managing and confidential partner; who had appealed to forgery, when other resources failed, to supply his criminal indulgences.

To suspect those partners of having been accessory to the dissemination of these statements, would be as unauthorized, as it would be uncharitable; but surely it would not be improper to inquire whether, if they knew them to be untrue, they were not called upon, to discourage and contradict them? If the press was misled by gaping newsgatherers, who, like the spies of a distempered government, must have credulity or invention to make out a tale, if they mean to get bread by telling, it was as open to them to confute the exaggerations, as it was, to the gleaners and glossers of the random gossip of clubs and coffee. houses to give them ephemeral currency.

But, perhaps, they may answer (for they might answer truly) that it was better to leave misrepresentation to its natural course-to let the lie of the day gossip itself out of breath; for that Mr. Fauntleroy, in the end, would be any thing rather than injured by the exaggerated colourings of his crime.

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That such has been the result, is sufficiently obvious: that such must, ultimately, be the case with respect to all the aberrations of a free press, recollection and reflection will demonstrate: it is only inasmuch as it is not free, that the press can be permanently or ultimately injurious, even to those whom it wrongfully assails; for the day of reaction, if it be free, is sure to come; when the very wrongs it has committed will become graces.

Whence, but from this very cause, it may confidently be demanded, has arisen that very general and very liberal sympathy expressed for the impending fate of Mr. Fauntleroy?

Far be it from the thought of every friend to the essential justice of humanity, when the life of a fellow being is at stake, to step between the pleading pity of the public, however excited, and the attribute of mercy which "becomes the throned monarch better than his crown," and to which that sympathy appeals. But, assuredly, it may be said, without detriment to such appeal, which may be urged upon more cogent principles, that there is nothing, in the naked case of Mr. Fauntleroy to distinguish it so broadly from those of many a wretched victim, who has been quietly resigned to the merciless penalty of a sanguinary law, without a sigh or an effort in his behalf, except from private and personal connexions. It would be absurd to suppose, that the extent of the injury resulting from the crime, is the cause of the extensive sympathy exerted in favour of the criminal. Whence, then, has arisen this extraordinary sympathy, but primarily from those very exaggerations which the enemies of the public press, on every such occasion, would use as an argument for its suppression. It cannot be said that they had any influence in procuring the conviction.

The Attorney-General found no political motive for availing himself of the prejudices excited; he repelled and discarded them, there fore, in a manner which, it is hoped, will be remembered as a precedent on all future occasions whatever; and nothing could be more candid and dispassionate than the whole proceedings.

Mr. Fauntleroy, in fact, was convicted, as far as forgery was at issue, upon his own evidence. He had most strangely recorded against himself, that he had committed a mass of forgeries, which should make the Bank smart for having injured the credit of his house. Let the Bank Directors beware, that in pursuing their victim to execution, they mingle, in their turn, no feeling of retaliative revenge. Some of them, perhaps, are members of the Bible Society; or, at least, occasionally say their prayers. Let them remember, that in that short and beautiful formula, dictated by the author of their religion, and which sums up in a few words every thing, perhaps, which a Christian ought to pray for, there is a clause of covenant,-" forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us ;" and let them remember that every man who pursues revenge (whether as an individual or a corporationist), every time that he pronounces this prayer, pronounces his own condemnation.

But to return to the cause of the general sympathy in behalf of the unhappy convict.

It became evident from the circumstances, which came out upon the trial, that the character of Mr. Fauntleroy had been much traduced-that his crime, at least, was free from many of the aggravations imputed, by previous rumour; and it is now sufficiently notorious, that a part at least, of his plea of palliation is substantiated; that the monies procured by his forgeries, were not, as had been rumoured, profligately wasted in debauchery and extravagance, but were regularly paid in to the general stock, to support the else tottering credit of the concern. Hence, to the creditors of the firm, the aspect of the onus of moral responsibility, for the default, becomes essentially altered; and a question naturally arises, whether it was possible that the partners could be ignorant that something wrong was going on? -that the large sums of money, by which their credit was, successively, bolstered, were, to say the least, mysteriously obtained: whatever reasons they might have for not inquiring into

the nature of the mystery. The public, in the mean time, in commiseration for the calumnies which had aggravated so unmercifully the offences of the criminal, extend their sympathies from the aggravation to the crime itself; and by a reaction natural to the innate, though sometimes slumbering, benevolence of the human breast, finding that the offender has not been so guilty as they imagined, forego their resentment for the proven guilt.

Nor does the current of considerate inquiry pause even here. General conclusions, "of great pith and moment," are, not unfrequently, the results of the attention excited by individual occurrences. The eyes of the public seemed to have opened, at last, to the conviction, to which reason and humanity ought never to have been blind, that the punishment awarded is too heavy, and disproportioned to the offence: while the press itself, partaking of the reaction, urges on the prayer of mercy and forbearance; and chimes in with, and diffuses, the general sentiment, that those only who have shed the blood of man, should pay the price of atonement with their blood.

This then, and not any peculiarity, in the particular case itself, is the true ground of petition for the life of Mr. Fauntleroy.

The necessary limits of this essay render it impracticable to enter, at large, into all the important considerations involved in the general subject; or to amplify upon the axioms, however capable of illustration,-that all unnecessary punishments by death are no other than legalized murders;—that murders, by the law, are, in fact, much more enormous and atrocious stains upon national character, than murders against the law;-that the latter are the crimes of individuals only, the former are the crimes of the state; and, as far as the nation can be regarded as assenting to such laws, are the crimes of the nation at large.

But the best way, perhaps, for the petitioners to fortify their plea is, by appeal, not to Scripture and Christianity (more talked of than reverenced in matters of government and legislation!) but to the politician's creed, ex

pediency. This is, in fact, and, perhaps, for ever must be, while states and legislation last, the load-star of judicial enactment. Our constitutional lawyers well know, though the surly lexicographer, who still from the sepulchre dogmatizes over our language did not,* that the object of punishment is not revenge, or even atonement, but prevention. "You are not hanged," said the judge to a remonstrating convict, "for stealing a sheep; but you are hanged that sheep may not be stolen."

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The question then resolves itself into this, "Does experience of the past, or does what we know of the prospective passions and apprehensions of human nature, indicate that the punishment of death is an adequate, or the most likely preventive of the crime of forgery?" To the first part of this inquiry, the reply is obvious. Forgery has increased, and is increasing in despite of the sanguinary severity of the law ;t and the crime, always, of necessity, confined to the comparatively educated classes, has kept climbing upwards, in the midst of increasing executions, till it has tainted some of almost the best families in the nation. It is a crime of gentlemen. And though, in all sane and moral estimation, the higher the rank of the offender, the more atrocious and unpardonable the offence; yet, legislating for prevention, we should consider only the motives of apprehension that are likely to be operative on the classes to whom the legislative prevention is to apply. Now, is the fear of death, the most powerful of preventive motives in the minds of gentlemen? Should

See the miserable misinterpretration of the word punishment in Johnson's Dictionary.

In Scotland, where it is not punished with death, it is much less frequent.

we acknowledge as a gentleman, or as worthy of gentlemanly association, the man whom we believed to be as much in dread of death, as of a life of branded infamy and degradation?

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It may be true, indeed that, when it comes to the pinch-when the executioner and vital extinction are immediately before our eyes, that the instinctive shrinking the fearful clinging to mere consciousness and sensation, which belong to the frailty of our nature, may bow almost the proudest spirit; and life, upon almost any terms, may appear preferable to immediate dissolution.

"For who would lose "Though full of pain, this intellectual being, "Those thoughts that wander through eternity?"

But, for objects that are viewed in prospective distance, we have different and more reasoning eyes; and to the educated mind, familiar to the proud decencies and respectful distinctions of society, to die, to cease to be, to bid an eternal farewell to the embarrassments and anxieties that surround us-to the privations, the expulsion from the accustomed sphere of association that menace us, appears but a trifle, in comparison with the degrading toil, the branding front, the stigmatizing fetters, the felon's sordid garb, the wretched pallet, the noisome dungeon, and,worst of all, the contemptuous exposure and brutified assimilation, to which a less sanguinary code might condemn the educated and sensitive offender. It is, in fact, to avoid the lesser degradation, that the offence of forgery is frequently committedthat it was, as it appears, committed in the case in question. How horrible to imagination the greater which reason would therefore commend as the expedient of preventive legislation.

TO A LADY, ON HEARING HER SING
"Angels ever bright and "fair,
Take, Oh take me to your care!"
While you implore the angels' care,
In strains so sweet, so soft, so rare,

I tremble lest you should be heard,
And they should take you at your word.

ON THE STATUE OF CUPID.

Nay, Chloe, gaze not on his form,
Nor think the friendly caution vain";
Those eyes the marble's self may warm,
And look him into life again.