I have often spoken of our penal law as wrong in its principle, taking it for granted that the ignorant and miserable men who commit crime do it always from wickedness, and not from the pressure of circumstances which have brutalized the man; wrong in its aim, which is to take vengeance on the offender, and not to do him a good in return for the evil he has done; wrong in its method, which is to inflict a punishment that is wholly arbitrary, and then to send the punished man, overwhelmed with new disgrace, back to society, often made worse than before,--not to keep him till we can correct, cure, and send him back a reformed man. I would retract nothing of what I have often said of that; but not long ago all this was worse; the particular statutes were often terribly unjust; the forms of trial afforded the accused but little chance of justice; the punishments were barbarous and terrible. The plebeian tyranny of the Lord Brethren in New England was not much lighter than the patrician despotism of the Lord Bishops in the old world, and was more insulting. Let me mention a few facts, to refresh the memories of those who think we are going to ruin, and can only save ourselves by holding to the customs of our fathers, and of the "good old times." In 1631, a man was fined forty pounds, whipped on the naked back, both his ears cut off, and then banished this colony, for uttering hard speeches against the government and the church at Salem. In the first century of the existence of this town, the magistrates could banish a woman because she did not like the preaching, nor all the ministers, and told the people why; they could whip women naked in the streets, because they spoke reproachfully of the magistrates; they could fine men twenty pounds, and then banish them, for comforting a man in jail before his trial; they could pull down, with legal formality, the house of a man they did not like; they could whip women at a cart's tail from Salem to Rhode Island, for fidelity to their conscience; they could beat, imprison, and banish men out of the land, simply for baptizing one another in a stream of water, instead of sprinkling them from a dish; they could crop the ears, and scourge the backs, and bore the tongues of men, for being Quakers; yes, they could shut them in jails, could banish them out of the colony, could sell them as slaves, could hang them on a gallows, solely for worshipping God after their own conscience; they could convulse the whole land, and hang some thirty or forty men for witchcraft, and do all this in the name of God, and then sing psalms, with most nasal twang, and pray by the hour, and preach--I will not say how long, nor what, nor how! It is not yet one hundred years since two slaves were judicially burnt alive, on Boston Neck, for poisoning their master.