them, he injures himself; or, if he benefit them, he does good to himself. An injury done to one person by a ruler, is an injury to all. Hence, no government is as pure as it should be, which wrongs one to govern the many. I have seen men, educated in crime by law ordained, condemned and wronged by law. I have seen a mind who had been taught the law of death for death, wronged by the instruction. It was a mind who once resided in Philadelphia. I knew the mind when he was in his childhood. I have often wondered, that my adopted commonwealth should have engrafted upon their criminal code, so barbarous and cruel a law as the death penalty. I saw that young man in his childhood taught the doctrine of revenge. I heard his parents justify death for death, and express even gratification, when some poor criminal had expiated the death penalty. The child imbibed the horrid teaching. The parents verily believed the lesson salutary upon their son. But the son felt the malice, the wrong, the wrangling in his mind, struggling against sympathy, until sympathy yielded to the wrong. I saw him again. The gallows was his death bed. The parents had taken the farewell interview. The executioner inquired of the criminal, if he wished to say any thing to the spectators. The young man made a brief speech. He said: “The sentence of the law is about to be executed upon me. I have sinned against God, but I hope for mercy in Christ. I have no ill will to any one. I acknowledge that my sentence is just. I hope this may be a warning to all, not to do as I have done. May God have mercy on my soul.” He was killed. The people said, “It was just.” But when the mind reached this sphere, it was corrected. It was disabused of its malignity. It was educated in the knowledge of nature. It was disrobed of its cruel garments. It was taught the divinity of natural justice. It was inspired with the sympathy of united brotherhood, and wretchedness departed. The wrong instruction had made his sympathetic mind callous to benevolence. He was chilled with the malignity of cruel instruction. The noble aspirations of his soul were blighted with notions, which made him unfeeling and brutal, and which prepared him for the worst crime of which society makes a record. The wrong which he committed was the work of ignorance. It was ignorance on the part of the parents, which led them to inculcate the cruel sentiment of death for death. It was ignorance on the part of legislators, which induced them to make laws that sought the correction of one wrong by requiring another to be done. It was ignorance on the part of the instructed in the wrong, which led him to deny the right of life to one to whom nature had given birth. Ignorance taught wrong, legislated wrong, and made one wrong to justify another wrong. It made both, but not directly. It will not be otherwise, until ignorance is removed from power.