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mon the representatives of deceased parties, or husbands of female parties; to ensure due notice of issuing of writs of error; and to provide for determining questions of fact arising in courts of error, by trial at a circuit court. All acts done in good faith, before reversal, under a decision of the supreme court, which is afterwards reversed, are to be so far valid as not to subject the party, doing such acts to any penalty or forfeiture.

The second article relates to writs of certiorari and error, on proceedings instituted against absent, or absconding debtors, the details of which are unnecessary to be enumerated. The third article provides for the practice on appeals from the court of chancery, and gives power to the court of chancery so to regulate appeals, as to permit the parties to proceed, unless indemnified by the parties offending from the consequences of delay.

Chapter tenth, regulates the costs to be allowed to the officers of courts, in civil suits; and when security is to be provided for the costs awarded against non-resident plaintiffs; declares the cases in which costs may be recovered, and generally provides for the whole subject of costs in civil actions. The provisons are minute, but as they are of immediate concern

only to the legal profession, they are here omitted."

The FOURTH PART consists of a consolidation of the several statutes of the state, relating to crimes, punishments, proceedings in criminal cases, and prison discipline.

These laws are here classified and simplified.

Definitions are given to crimes in most instances conforming to the common law, but in some cases modifying them.

In a future volume, it is contemplated to give a general view of this system, compared with the penal code of Louisiana; but our limits at present, confine us to the abstract of the revision of those acts relating to the civil statutory code of this state.

This is a highly important movement in the civil and legal history, not merely of this member of the confederacy, but of the whole union. It marks the greatest reform made in this state since the revolution, upon the legal precedents and statutes of England, and is pregnant with important consequences, which time alone can fully disclose.

The plan is simple and plain, and it undoubtedly has remedied many difficulties, and abolished many absurdities, but practice alone can enable us to determine as to its eperation.

NEW JERSEY.

July, 1827.-A convention was held at Trenton, composed of delegates from nine out of fourteen counties in the state. Lewis Condict was chosen president, and resolutions were passed, recommending that the legislature pass a law authorizing an election in the several counties in this state for delegates to meet in convention for the purpose of preparing such a revision, and proposing such amendments to the constitution of this state, as they may think proper for the consideration of the people.

October 23d, 1827.-The legislature commenced its session. Silas Cook

was elected vice-president of the council, and William B. Erving, speaker of the house. One of the members from Monmouth, while on his way from home to take his seat in the house was arrested on a ca. sa. by the sheriff of Monmouth. The house resolved this to be a breach of its privilege, and despatched a sergeant at arms with the speaker's warrant to compel the appearance of the sheriff with his prisoner forthwith at the bar of the house. On the 31st of the month, Isaac H. Williamson was appointed Governor.

PATERSON.-In 1808 this flourish

ing town had about 300 inhabitants, in 1820, 1837; in 1828, the population is computed at 8000! Its manufactures require 2,000,000 lbs. cotton and 600,000 lbs. of flax. One rolling mill and nail factory makes annually about 850,000 lbs. of nails; one machine making shop uses 600,000 bs. of iron, and 16,500 of brass, &c. The capital invested is more than $1,000,000. February 4, 1829.-The two houses of the legislature met in joint meeting at 10 o'clock, for the appointment of senators, clerk of Middlesex, &c. The first appointment called up was that to supply the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Dr. Bateman in the senate of the United States-Messrs. Southard, Dickerson, Wall, Ewing and Jeffers, were on nomination-and a number of ballotings ensued, Mr. Southard receiving from 23 to 26 votes, and the remainder scattering-the joint meeting then adjourned without coming to a choice and met again at 3 o'clock, when, after two successful ballotings, Mr. Potts offered the following resolution :

"Resolved, That, in the opinion of this joint meeting, the hon. Samuel L. Southard is not an inhabitant of the state of New Jersey, and therefore not eligible to the office of senator in the congress of the United States, under the 3d article of the constitution of the United States, and that his name be withdrawn from the list of nominations.

Which resolution, after some de

bate, was adopted, 29 voting in the affirmative, and Mr. Southard's name was withdrawn accordingly. The joint meeting then proceeded to vote, and on the 2d ballot Mr. Dickerson had 28 votes, and was declared to be duly elected senator in the place of Dr. Bateman. The appointment of senator for 6 years from the 4th of March next, was then taken up, and Theodore Frelinghysen elected-he having 35 votes, and Joseph W. Scott 24.

THE MORRIS CANAL.-This canal commences near Easton on the Delaware, and passing the flourishing town of Newark, terminates at Jersey City opposite New York. Its whole length is 100 miles and 64 chains, and the navigable feeder from the Hopatcong lake is 60 chains. It will have several inclined planes and 23 locks, the chief of which are finished, and the whole canal appears to need only a prompt aid to complete it. The entire amount expended on this work is $777,923,71; and there are demands against the company for the sum of $388,050,50, on amount of loans, notes in circulation &c., and the resources have an aggregate of $572,032, 90. The canal is asserted to be capable of transporting 300,000 tons a year.

March, 1829.-The New Jersey manufacturing and banking company at Hoboken ceased its operations, and its bills sold at twenty cents on the dollar. In June the Paterson bank also stopped payment.

PENNSYLVANIA.

LIST OF GOVERNORS.

Names of the Governors, Deputies, and Presidents of Pennsylvania, and the Dates of their appointment to office, from the first settlement to the

present time.

William Penn, Governor,

Thomas Lloyd, President,

John Blackwell, Deputy Governor,

John Blackwell, President,

Benjamin Fletcher, Governor,

William Markham, Deputy Governor,

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William Findlay,

J. Andrew Shultze,
George Wolf,

PENAL CODE. While this state has been engaged in the prosecution of internal improvements, with the view of developing her resources, and giving a fresh and redoubled impulse to her industry and enterprise; and, by the construction of canals and rail roads, has been rendering contiguous, as it were, the most remote portions of her territory; making easy and expeditious the transportation of the most cumberous articles, and the exportation of the surplus productions of her interior, and among other things, of immense quantities of iron and coal, furnishing an endless source of wealth to individuals, and revenue to the state; while, in fact, she has been applying her revenue with ardour and perseverance to accomplish those objects, which would bring into more active exercise the energies of her people, increase her commerce, and enable her to retain

her relative rank and importance in the confederacy; she has not been unmindful of the rights of the citizen, and of the security which should be extended to his person and his property. The increase of population, the introduction of luxury and of crime, have indicated in various sections of this country, the necessity of improving the criminal code, so as to render it more efficacious than it has been found in Europe, to prevent the commission of offences, and to reform the offenders. The legislature of Pennsylvania, sensible of the necessity of this reform, and fully impressed with the existing defects of the criminal code, and the imperfect discipline of their prisons, appointed in 1826, Charles Shaler, Edward King, and T. J. Wharton, to make a revision of the penal laws of the state, and also to submit such suggestions and observations on punishments and

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prison discipline, as they should deem proper for the determination of the important subject with which they are charged. In December, 1827, the commissioners submitted to the governor of Pennsylvania, the results of their labours, in order that they might be laid before the legislature. In their report upon punishments and prison discipline, a document containing a mass of information highly interesting to the legislator and philanthropist, they take a view of the principal varieties of punishments which have been inflicted in ancient or modern times, or suggested by political or philosophical writers, and arrange them under the following heads:

1. Capital punishments. 2. Mutilation. 3. Branding. 4. Whipping. 5. Banishment or transportation. 6. Simple imprisonment. 7. Imprisonment with labour, but without a separation of the prisoners. 8. Solitary confinement, without labour of any kind. 9. Solitary confinement, with labour performed in solitude. 10. Solitary confinement by night, with joint or classified labour by day. The commissioners remark, that the state of public opinion will not authorize them to suggest the application of capital punishment to any other of fence, than that of wilful and malicious murder. This was the only instance in which it was allowed by the enlightened founder of Pennsylvania, in his great law, and the wisdom and humanity of the limitation, has been evinced not merely by the experience of his own, but also of succeeding generations. The three next species of punishment, they believe to be unproductive of any beneficial effects, and justly repudiated by every Christian and enlightened community. The fifth kind of punishment they divide into simple exile, by which they mean the mere banishment of the offender, from the soil of the state whose laws he has violated, under some stipulation, or denunciation of severe punishment, in case of his return; second, into deportation, by VOL. III.

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which is designated the compulsory removal of the offender to some disfurther care from the mother countant place; there to be left without try; and thirdly into transportation, ders to some distant place, but still or the compulsory removal of offento remain subject to the penal discipline of the mother cuntry. The committee express their disapprobation of those kinds of punishment. Of simple exile, because it was an act of injustice for one nation to turn out its convicts to prey upon other communities; of deportation, because it would be ineffectual as a punishment, opportunities to escape and to renew as the criminals would frequently find society; and of transportation, betheir depredations and outrages upon cause it would subject the mother country to an enormous expense; an opinion sanctioned by the experience turns made to the British parliament, of the British government. From reit appeared that from 1787 to 1820, twenty-five thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight convicts had been transported to New Holland. The cost of the transportation of each one is, as estimated, at £100 sterling, and the annual expense of his support at £40 sterling, or $177.60 of our molaid before parliament, that upwards ney. It also appeared from returns of seventeen and a half millions of dollars had been expended upon the transportation of convicts to NewHolland, and their support there from 1786 to 1817 inclusive. The annual expense of the colony, is stated at £300,000 sterling, or $1,332,000. It is also estimated by British writers, upon the colony, would have supportthat one tenth of the sum expended ed the whole number of convicts at home, while something might have been gained by the treasury, from their labour, which was not obtained at New Holland. The committee cause it failed in producing a realso objected to transportation, beformation in the offender, it appearing 4376 convicts, whose sentences had from the above returns, that out of

been remitted, or whose time had expired, only 369 were considered respectable in conduct and character. The sixth species of punishment, that of simple imprisonment, the committee consider it necessary to make but a few observations upon, it being so obviously defective as a mode of punishment for convicts, that it had been abandoned in almost every part of Europe, where any attention had been paid to the subject of penal discipline. The seventh species of punishment, that of imprisonment with hard labour, but without classification or separation by day or night, was the earliest in the series of what are now usually called penitentiary punishments. Under this head, the committee mention the various kinds of discipline, which had been introduced at different periods, into the prisons of Pennsylvania. It appears that William Penn perceived the expediency of imposing labour as a means of punishment, and the earliest provisions of the laws required the employment of convicts "at hard labour in the house of correction," for a term of years corresponding with the enormity of the offence. In 1717, an alteration was made in the criminal code, in consequence, as it is stated, of the attachment of the English government to capital punishments, and the principal prison of Philadelphia is represented as a scene of profligacy and license, in which all sexes, ages, and colors were confounded without labour and without restraint. Immediately after the independence of the country, measures were taken to reform the penal code, and hard labour was again substituted in many cases, in lieu of the punishment of death. In 1786 an act was passed directing that certain crimes, which had before been capital, should for the future be punished with hard labour, publicly and disgracefully imposed. The convicts were accordingly employed about the most servile business.Their heads were shaved; their dress was of a peculiar kind, indicative of their disgrace: their keepers were

armed with swords, blunderbusses and other weapons of destruction; and the prisoners were secured by cumberous iron collars and chains, fixed to bomb-shells. And as late as 1788, the prison of Philadelphia presented the spectacle of the confinement of debtors with criminals; of honest poverty with the most enormous crimes, and the indiscriminate intercourse by day and night, of men and women. Such a system of prison discipline, was only productive of the most pernicious consequences. Offenders, instead of being reformed, became more hardened in sin, and reduced to a state of disgrace and degradation, from which they had little hopes of recovering. No sooner, however, were the effects of such discipline perceived, than measures were adopted to remedy them. In 1789, and the four successive years, acts were passed relating to them and the penitentiary discipline, which is that included under the 7th head, was established. Soon after the establishment of this discipline, but before full effect had been given to it, a great improvement was observed in the criminal calendars; but unfortunately it early exhibits a great contrast with its modern history. On the 3d of May, 1791, the number of convicts in the jail at Philadelphia, was 143, while on the third of December, 1792, the number was only 37. From 1787 to 1796 inclusive, the number of convicts, for all offences, were 990. During the next ten years from 1797 to 1807, the number of convictions for the same offences, was 1311. From 1807 to 1817, the number of convictions rose to 2612; and from 1817 to 1827, the convictions amounted to 3151. During the first ten or fifteen years after the introduction of the penitentiary discipline, the prison at Philadelphia was distinguished for order and decorum; but during the last ten or fifteen years it had presented an entirely different. appearance. The committee account for this change in part, on the ground that the prisoners, during the first pe

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