This difference of words,' adds Mr. Buthrick, 'prevents the necessity of mentioning the object washed. So also with the verbs love, take, have, leave, die, weigh, &c. Upon reading this part of Mr. Buthrick's communication we had the curiosity to look into father Ralle's MS. Dictionary of the Norridgwock, or Abenaki, language, which we mentioned in our review of the Correspondence of Mr. Duponceau and Mr, Heckewelder; and under the French verb laver, to wash, we found the following various examples; in which, it is to be observed, the Indian words are to be pronounced as a Frenchman would sound them:

Nekesebéhadoun

Nekeseséghenemen,

Je le lave, I wash him or it. [skins, linen, &c. vel Nekesestaghenemen, Je lave du peau, linge, &c. I wash Nekeseséghenan V. g. une chemise, I wash

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[a shirt. Nekesígoua, Je (me) lave le visage, I wash my face.

Nekesesigouenan,

Nekesíretsa,

Nekesiretsenan.

Nekesebahadóunar,
Nekesesesiténan,

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à lui, I wash his face. les mains, I wash my hands.

à lui, I wash his hands. les piés, I wash my feet.

à lui, I wash his feet.

After such evidence of the copiousness of these languages, what shall we say to the theories of ingenious men, who have represented them as destitute of almost all the powers of the cultivated languages? In the instance from Mr. Buthrick's communication, we see there are no less than thirteen words to denote the same action when applied to different objects, Now in our own, or in the French language, which last we cite as the most familiar of the foreign languages to readers in general, what instance can be produced that can be com

* Vol. ix. p. 184.

pared with this? In some cases, it is true, we have terms somewhat resembling these Indian verbs; as, for example, the verb to eat implies taking food that is solid, and the verb to drink, that which is liquid; to walk signifies to go on foot, and to ride is to go on horseback, as the English generally use it, or, to go either on horseback or in a carriage, according to the use of the word in this country. For either of these words we may, in our language, employ a more general term as the verb, and then subjoin the noun which shall designate the kind of food we take or the manner of going from one place to another. But the Indians express modifications or circumstances attending the action spoken of, by single verbs and to a vastly greater extent than we can do. » For example, to take an instance from father Ralle's Dictionary again, the word nepangoude dámen signifies, I eat only meat; nebangouie nougoué, I eat only the fat; nebangouáttogeué, I eat only acorns, or mast, &c. Again, I walk in the water is expressed by the word nepemansoughé; I walk in a bad road, nesaagoussé ; I walk or go upon my knees, nedatsitegouakessé; I go on all fours, nepemigonsi; I walk in the rain, nekegheranroussé, &c.

We have dwelt the longer upon this part of Dr. Jarvis' subject, from a desire to draw the attention of our philologists to the curious structure of these languages; being strongly inclined to believe with Mr. Duponceau, that we have yet much to learn upon the subject of universal or philosophical grammar. Will it be asked of what use is it to examine the structure of languages in which there is no literature to compensate us for our labour? If, indeed, our only motive in the study of languages were to repay ourselves by the stores of learning locked up in them, we should be but poorly rewarded for the labour of investigating the Indian dialects; but if we wish to study human speech as a science, just as we do other sciences, by ascertaining all the facts or phenomena, and then proceeding to generalize and class those facts for the purpose of advancing human knowledge; in short, if what is called philosophical grammar is of any use whatever, then it is indispensable to the philologist of comprehensive views, to possess a knowledge of as many facts or phenomena of language as possible; and these neglected dialects of our own continent certainly do offer to the philosophical inquirer some of the most curious and interesting facts of any languages with which we are acquainted.

ART. VIII.—Trial of Robert M. Goodwin, on an indictment of manslaughter, for killing James Stoughton, Esq. in Broadway, in the city of New York, &c. Taken in short hand by William Sampson, Counsellor at Law. New York, pp. 195.

1820.

In that part of criminal law, which may be denominated the penal code, the legislation of this country seems to have reached as near perfection, as the infirmities of human nature and human institutions will allow. The punishment of crimes is at least quite as mild as is consistent with the object of all punishment, and is graduated by a scale as accurate as the nature of the subject will admit. But that part of this law which relates to the definition of the offence, the process, the trial, the rules of evidence, and every thing which precedes the infliction of punishment, may perhaps still be considered as requiring the interference of a prudent reformer to simplify its details, to settle its principles and reduce them to a text, and purify it from many deformities, the growth of a barbarous age. Fortunately for us, the comparatively pure source, from which we have drawn our legal institutions, has transmitted to us none of those glaring abuses in the administration of penal law, which the eloquent pens of Beccaria and Voltaire exposed to the public eye during the last century, and too many of which have never yet been abolished, or have recently been revived on the European continent. That hateful system of torture, of secret trial, and of self-crimination, which rendered even the mind of a Pothier incapable of fulfilling the duties of a criminal judge, in the most enlightened age of French jurisprudence, when it was adorned by this accomplished lawyer, and by a D'Aguesseau and a Montesquieu, has ever been unknown to us and our ancestors. But it does not therefore follow, that this branch of the administration of justice is yet brought to that degree of perfection of which it is susceptible, in respect to the precision of its rules and the certainty of their application.

It is evident that the crime of homicide may involve various degrees of guilt, to which it would be unwise and unjust to apply the same term of reprobation and the same measure of punishment. From the slightest degree of culpable negligence, by which a human being is deprived of that existence which is the gift of his Creator, to the astrocious guilt of the assassin

and the poisoner, there are various shades of criminality, which require the application of different considerations in the judgment that may be formed of them by human tribunals. In all of them however it would seem, such is the infirmity of human judgment, that it must necessarily enter into the very idea and definition of the crime that the corpus delicti should not be wanting; that death should ensue the act by which it was intended to be consummated. Yet by the civil law it was the intent and not the event which constituted the essence of the crime. Thus by the Cornelian law de Sicariis, made by Sylla himself the greatest of murderers, in order to restrain the excesses produced by the bloody scenes of the civil wars in which he was the chief actor, Si quis hominem occiderit,aut hominis occidendi vel furti cum telo ambulaverit, aut qui hominis necandi causa venenum confecerit,'-in all these cases the offender was punished capitally. This extreme severity was probably necessary to strike terror into the armed bands of robbers and assassins, who prowled over Italy in those ferocious times; but it was subsequently applied so as to confound all distinction between the intent to commit homicide and the actual consummation of the crime. Nihil enim interest an quis hominem occiderit, an ejus vitæ attentaverit quamvis non occidat.' So also by the old French law, if a person struck or wounded another, with intent to kill, the offender was punished capitally, in the same manner as if death had ensued. Domat, Loix Civiles, tom. ii. p. 209. Denizart, tom. i. p. 585.

The Roman law determined the criminality of an action by the intent and not the event, in those offences only, which were emphatically called maleficia; such as treason, assassination, parricide, poisoning, &c. In these cases, where the intent was clearly manifested by some overt act, it drew after it all the consequences of a capital crime, although not consummated by the death of the person against whom it was directed. 'Maleficiis voluntas spectatur, non exitus.' But in all other cases it adopted the safer rule of determining conjointly by the motive and the event of the action. Bynkershoek, Obser. Jur. Rom. iii. 10.

This rule of the civil law was once attempted to be applied in the tribunals of our own country, to supply a defect in their jurisdiction. By the act of Congress of 1790, for the punish

ment of certain crimes against the United States, cognizance was given to certain courts of murder, &c. committed on the high seas, and in foreign ports and harbours. In the case of Mr. Gill, which will be found reported in Dallas' 4th Volume of Reports, p. 426, the mortal blow was given in a foreign port on the water, and the person on whom it was inflicted died on shore. Of course, according to the common law definition of the crime, it was not consummated within the limits of the jurisdiction given to the court by the act of Congress. But as this jurisdiction was conferred as a part of the admiralty jurisdiction granted to the federal government by the constitution, and as the proceedings of the admiralty are, in general, regulated by the Civil or Roman law, in the absence of any statutory provision to the contrary, it was insisted by the counsel for the prosecution, that the offence was consummated, according to that law, within the limits of the jurisdiction of the court, as prescribed by the act of Congress. But, this position was overruled by Judge Washington, who held that we could not escape from the silence of our own code by invoking that of the Civil law: and we were to look to the common law for the definition of the crime of murder, when made punishable, eo nomine, in an act of the legislature: not but that Congress had competent authority to provide for such a case; because having power to define and punish felonies committed on the high seas, they might declare that a mortal stroke given on the seas, of which the party died elsewhere, should be a capital felony. But that they had not in fact made provision for such a case.

It is stated in Mr. Christian's Notes to Blackstone's Commentaries, that the distinction of manslaughter from murder is not recognized by the Civil law. In the Civil law and the law of Scotland, the distinction doth not exist; and persons tried at the Admiralty Sessions, where the Judges proceed according to the rules of the Civil law, must either be convicted of murder, or acquitted.' As to the law of Scotland, it is true that by a modern statute, the distinction is taken away. But it is equally true that by the old law of Scotland, which is principally derived from the Civil law, it was clearly laid dawn. The distinction,' says Erskine, which obtained in our ancient law, between slaughter premeditated, or upon forethought felony, and that which was committed on a suddenty, or chaud mella, indulging to the last the privelege of