We
are taught also that men, independently of their accountableness to
their own governments, are accountable for their actions in a future
state, and that punishments are unquestionably to follow. But where are
our forbearance and our love, where is our regard for the temporal and
eternal interests of man, where is our respect for the principles of the
gospel, if we make the reformation of a criminal a less object than his
punishment, or if we consign him to death, in the midst of his sins,
without having tried all the means in our power for his recovery?
Had the Quakers been the legislators of the world, they had long ago
interwoven the principles of their discipline into their penal codes,
and death had been long ago abolished as a punishment for crimes. As far
as they have had any power with legislatures, they have procured an
attention to these principles. George Fox remonstrated with the judges
in his time on the subject of capital punishments. But the Quakers
having been few in number, compared with the rest of their countrymen,
and having had no seats in the legislature, and no predominant interest
with the members of it, they have been unable to effect any change in
England on this subject. In Pennsylvania, however, where they were the
original colonists, they have had influence with their own government,
and they have contributed to set up a model of jurisprudence, worthy of
the imitation of the world.
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