crime of self-murder, or the person who commits it. Some crimes are peculiar to certain stages of society, some to certain nations. Suicide is one of those crimes which we are led to believe not common among savage nations. The first instances recorded of it in the Jewish history are those of Saul and Ahithophel; for we do not think the death of Samson a proper example. We have no reason to suppose that it became common among the Jews till their wars with the Romans, when multitudes slaughtered themselves that they might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies. Among the Greeks this crime was forbidden by Pythagoras, as we learn from Athenaeus, by Socrates and Aristotle, and by the Theban and Athenian laws. In the earliest ages of the Roman republic it was seldom committed; but when luxury and the Epicurean and Stoical philosophy had corrupted the simplicity and virtue of the Roman character, they then began to seek shelter in suicide from their misfortunes or the effects of their own vices. The religious principles of the Brahmins of India led them to admire suicide on particular occasions as honourable. Accustomed to abstinence, mortification, and the contempt of death, they considered it as a mark of weakness of mind to submit to the infirmities of old age. A custom similar to this prevailed among many nations on the continent of America. When a chief died, a certain number of his wives, of his favourites, and of his slaves, were put to death, and interred together with him, that he might appear with the same dignity in his future station, and be waited upon by the same attendants. This persuasion was so deeply rooted, that many of their retainers offered themselves as victims. A like custom prevails among many of the negro nations in Africa. The tribes of Scandinavia, which worshipped Odin, the "father of slaughter," were taught, that dying in the field of battle was the most glorious event that could befall them. This was a maxim suited to a warlike nation. In order to establish it more firmly in the mind, all were excluded from Odin's feast of heroes who died a natural death. In Asgard stood the hall of Odin, where, seated on a throne, he received the souls of his departed heroes. This place was called Valhalla, signifying "the hall of those who died by violence." Natural death being thus deemed inglorious, and punished with exclusion from Valhalla, the paradise of Odin, he who could not enjoy death in the field of battle was led to seek it by his own hands, when sickness or old age began to assail him. In such a nation suicide must have been very common. Among the numerous Norse legends there are many picturesque instances of suicide. Beowulph's father, for example, is represented by the old scald as gathering his attendants around him by the seashore, to witness his embarkation for the other world. After arranging round him all the spoils of war which he had gained during his life, his money and his weapons, the old hero lay down by the root of the mast; the sails were set, and the helm set fair, and the lonely old man in the lonely ship stood out to sea, and was never heard of more. As suicide prevailed much in the decline of the Roman Empire, when luxury, licentiousness, profligacy, and false philosophy pervaded the world, so it continued to prevail even after Christianity was established. The Romans, when they became converts to Christianity, did not renounce their ancient prejudices and false opinions, but blended them with the new religion which they embraced. The Gothic nations, also, who subverted the Roman Empire, while they received the Christian religion, adhered to many of their former opinions and manners. Among other criminal practices which were retained by the Romans and their conquerors, that of suicide was one; but the principles from which it proceeded were explained so as to appear more agreeable to the new system which they had espoused. It was committed either to secure from the danger of apostacy, to procure the honour of martyrdom, or to preserve the crown of virginity.

Mercier says, that at Paris it was the lower ranks who were most commonly guilty of it; that it was mostly committed in garrets or hired lodgings; and that it proceeded from poverty and oppression. A great many, he says, wrote letters to the magistrates before their death. Dr Moore's correspondent from Geneva informed him that, from the year 1777 to 1787, more than 100 suicides were committed in Geneva; that two-thirds of these unfortunate persons were men; that few of the clerical order have been known to commit it; and that it is not so much the end of an immoral, irreligious, dissipated life, as the effect of melancholy and poverty. Quetelet, in commenting on the proportion of suicides annually committed throughout the world, gives the following:—Russia, 1 to 49,182 inhabitants; Austria, 1 to 20,900; France, 1 to 18,000; State of Pennsylvania, 1 to 15,875; Prussia, 1 to 14,404; city of Baltimore, 1 to 13,656; Boston, 1 to 12,500; New York, 1 to 7,797.

The statistics of the registrar-general of England and Wales give the following results:—Upwards of 1000 persons in England and Wales seek refuge from suffering by suicidal death every year. The quinquennium, from 1852 to 1856, gives a total of 5415 suicides, of which 1182 were committed in 1856, and 1076 in 1855. The number returned is probably less by one-tenth than the number ascertained to have occurred. Of the suicides included in the registrar's tables, 3886 were males, and 1529 females, making an average annual mortality of 8½ of the former and 32½ of the latter sex in every million persons living from 10 years and upwards of each sex respectively. The maximum is attained in the decennium 45–55; and then there is a steady decline until the decennium, 85–95. It would seem that the greatest tendency to suicide in this country is manifested in the male sex, from the 55th to the 65th year; in the female, from the 65th to the 75th year; and that in both sexes the tendency to suicide is greater during middle age and the decline of life than during early life and adolescence.

The returns of 1838–9 indicate that the tendency to suicide is greatest during middle age and the decline of life. In the quinquennium already mentioned, 19 males and 14 females destroyed themselves at 10 years of age; 348 males and 273 females at 15; 547 males and 244 females at 25; 726 males and 272 females at 35; 940 males and 346 females at 45; 778 males and 219 females at 55; 410 males and 135 females at 65; 127 males and 28 females at 75; and 9 males with 5 females at 85 years of age. The modes of suicide are various, and adapted to all tastes. There were 10 suicides on railroads, 13 by self-precipitation down the shafts of mines, 1424 by mechanical injuries of all kinds, 561 by chemical injuries, such as fire and poison, and 3212 by suspension of the respiration. It is strange and almost incredible that, while the apothecary's shop offers so many easy methods of terminating existence, yet in England the vulgar death of hanging, or strangulation, is preferred both by males and females. With males, cutting the throat ranks next; drowning, third; and poisoning, fourth; with females, the order is strangulation, drowning, poisoning, and cutting of throats. Females resort to the rope and to steel less frequently than men; they prefer the bowl and the water. Among poisons, females very judiciously choose opium, and its preparations, as the favourite agent of destruction; next come arsenic and oxalic acid, two clumsy and barbarous means, because slow and torturing. Women use essential oil of almonds more than pure prussic acid. Ten different forms of poison are used by males, and 17 by females; even nitric acid, camphor, and phosphorus have been used, and one female took the deadly cyanide of potassium as her sleeping potion. It may be deduced from the extant statistics, that the annual average number of suicides occurring in England and Wales, in every 100,000 of the population in the five years 1852–56, was 5·81; and the annual average proportion per cent. to the total number of deaths from all causes, 0·26. There is no doubt that many more suicides are committed, but that these are hushed up for obvious reasons, owing particularly to the peculiar and almost superstitious abhorrence of suicide in this country. In Geneva, for example, the annual average of suicide to the mortality from all causes is as high as 1·21 per cent., and in this canton the suicides took place at a far earlier period of life. In Geneva, the maximum is reached at 30 years of age, in England not till 65; in the one country it occurs in early life, in the other when life has begun to decline. In Paris the maximum is also attained, as in Geneva, at 30 years; but the maximum of suicides in Paris coincides with that of females but not of male suicides, the greatest number of the latter occurring from 30 to 40. The excess of early suicides in Paris (from 20 to 30 years) has led to much inquiry among psychologists. The number of suicides is invariably greater among males than females, who have fewer of the struggles of life to sustain. Suicides by hanging, and suicides by cut-throat, are more numerous in France by twice and thrice respectively than in England; poisoning is also more common, in the rate of seven to four; asphyxia, or suffocation by carbonic acid gas (the charcoal process), and suicides by falls from elevated places, appear peculiar to France, Geneva, and Sardinia. (See Journal of Psychological Medicine for 1859.) John Stuart Mill, who is decidedly opposed to legislative interference with the sale of poisons, as exerting over the subject an entirely unnecessary degree of state surveillance, has nevertheless the following remarks:—"When there is not a certainty," he remarks, "but only a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself can judge of the sufficiency of the motive which may prompt him to incur the risk [of buying poison, e.g.] in this case, therefore (unless he is a child, or delirious, or in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full use of the reflecting faculty), he ought, I conceive, to be only warned of the danger, not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it." (On Liberty, p. 173.) Buckle, a somewhat hasty theorist, regards suicide as a common and constant phenomenon, and tries to show the folly of law-givers thinking that by their enactments they can diminish suicide. Preventive measures, however, have been recently tried in London with success; and Plutarch acquaints us that an unaccountable passion for suicide seized the Milesian virgins, from indulging in which they could not be prevented by the tears and entreaties of parents and friends; but what persuasion and entreaty could not effect was accomplished by very different means. A decree was issued, "that the body of every young woman who hanged herself should be dragged naked through the streets by the same rope with which she had committed the deed." This wise edict put a complete stop to the extraordinary frenzy, and suicide was no longer committed by the virgins of Miletus.

Buckle justly remarks, farther on in his History of Civilization, vol. i., "that suicide is merely the product of the general condition of society, and that the individual felon only carries into effect what is a necessary consequence of preceding circumstances. In a given state of society a certain number of persons must put an end to their own life." He remarks again—"We are able to predict within a small limit of error the number of voluntary deaths for each ensuing period, supposing, of course, that the social circumstances do not undergo any marked change."

As suicide was deemed criminal by the most illustrious and virtuous of the Greek philosophers, it was considered as a crime by the laws, and treated with ignominy. By the law of Thebes suicides were to have no honours paid to their memory. The Athenian law ordained the hand which committed the deed to be cut off, and burned apart from the rest of the body. The body was not buried with the usual solemnities, but was ignominiously thrown into some pit. In Cæa and Massilia (the ancient Marseille), it was considered as a crime against the state; and it was, therefore, necessary for those who wished to destroy themselves to obtain permission from the magistrates.

In the early part of the Roman history there seems to have been seldom occasion for framing any laws against suicide. The only instance recorded occurs in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus. The soldiers who were appointed to make drains and common sewers, thinking themselves disgraced by such servile offices, put themselves to death in great numbers. The king ordered the bodies of all the self-murderers to be exposed on crosses, and this put an effectual stop to the practice. In Justinian's Pandects there is a law, by which it was enacted, "that if persons accused, or who had been found guilty, of any crime, should make away with themselves, their effects should be confiscated." But this punishment only took place when confiscation of goods happened to be the penalty appointed by the law for the crime of which the self-murderer was accused or found guilty, and was not inflicted for suicide committed in any other circumstances.

It was decreed in the sixth century, that no commemoration should be made in the eucharist for such as destroyed themselves; neither should their bodies be carried out to burial with psalms, nor have the usual service read over them. This ecclesiastical law continued till the Reformation, when it was admitted into the statute law of England. As an additional punishment, however, confiscation of land and goods seems to have been adopted from the Danes, as we learn from Bracton. At present the punishment consists in confiscating all the personal property of a felo de se for the use of the crown, and in excluding his body from Christian burial.