clearly, and in few words expressed his opinion on the right of death; an opinion in which we cordially agree, and which as we cannot better express than in his own words, we will extract.
"What can be the right which men have assumed to themselves of killing their equals? certainly not that which results from the sovereignty and the laws—these are but a sum of minute portions of the private liberty of each one—they represent the general, which is an aggregate of individual wills. Now in this small sacrifice of the liberty of each one, can there be that of the greatest of blessings, life? And if it were so, how agrees this principle with the common one, that man is not master of killing himself—which power he certainly should have, if he could either yield it to another or to society in general." Becc. dei Delitt. &c. sect. xvi.
We believe all will agree with the above quoted, in condemning the suicide; for whatever may be the dispute with regard to the courage possessed by the man, who makes away with himself, all must agree, that our being here originating from God, it is not allowable to take into our own hands our own dismissal. All nations in their laws have condemned the suicide, and whatever might be the doctrines of a Cato, or other stoic, antiquity itself generally condemned them. Agreeing in this point, we would ask, wherein is the difference, whether Brutus kills himself, or consigns the sword to a slave? he is still a suicide. If then Brutus could not give to the slave a power of life and death over himself, does not this reasoning hold if he were to attempt giving it to two, and if to two to many, or finally to a nation? Some will, however, argue, that his giving his life brings to himself here no benefit, whereas in the instance of society’s requiring his life, amongst the other pledges of its safety, he gains indi-
