The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays

relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of the divine authority," and the rotten rest of it The law making murder punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is

g in either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly reasoner among the gallows-downing unfortunates would hardly expect to frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course these queer illogicians can not be made to unde

sins and persons with a private system of lexicography who define hanging as murder and murder as mischance, and many another disagreeable creation, but in all this welter of crime and stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and punishment they ho

ich has so defiled with the mud of its animosity the noble office of public executioner that even "in this enlightened age" he shirks his high duty, entrusting

ell, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder proves that hanging is

held by Alphonse Karr: the expediency of abolishing the death penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with him, that the assassins should begin. They want the State to begin, believing that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their assertion that "death penalties have not the deterring influence which imprisonment for life carries." In this they obviously err: death deters at least the person who suffers it-he commits no more murder; whereas the assassin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further punishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be able to get at. Even

s, but that is because barbarians are more criminal in instinct and less easily controlled by gentle methods than civilized peoples. That is why we call them barbarous. It is not so very long since our English ancestors punished more than forty kinds of crime with death. The fact that the hangman, the boiler-in-oil and the breaker-on-the-wheel had their

ives lying between the knowledge that a murderer has been hanged and the wish to commit a murder. How, precisely, does the one beget the other? By what unearthly process of reasoning does a man turning away from the gallows persuade himself that it is expedient to incur the danger of hanging? Let us have

ts would be, whatever the motive in awarding them. Unfortunately such a system is not practicable, but he who denies its absolute justice must deny also the justice of a bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, s

ch they inserted the one just considered, though pro

more than the guilty. Death is merciful to the tortures which th

prisonment for life carries. Mere death is not dreaded. See t

consider what they really say, not what they think they say: "Death is no very great punishment, for the criminal doesn't mind it much, but hopeless captivity is a very great punishm

t-the kind of sense that has lifted "The Beautiful Cult" out of the da

ot bind tomorrow. By an act of the Legislature-even by a constitutional prohibition, we

es already, and sometimes they are served to the end-if the end comes soon enough! but the average length of "life imprisonment" is, I am told, a little more than seven years.

ote

ane check upon one who has proven his unfitn

n lines of petition it has become "humane". Truly these are lightning changes of character! It would

ment that receives the

conscience and that of

the life he took therefore, it is a most illog

does not restore the life of his victim; incarceration does

tio principii would disgrace a debater in a pinafore. And these wonder-mongers have the incredible effrontery to babble of "logic"! Why, if one of them were to meet a syllog

tly take life in defending himself society may rightly take life in defending him. If society may rightly take life in defending him it ma

stituted as we are, we can know good only by contrast with evil. Our sense of sin is what our virtues feed upon; in the thin air of universal morality the altar-fires of honor and the beacons of conscience could not be kept alight A community without crime would be a community without warm and elevated sentiments-without the sense of justice, without generosity, without courage, without magnanimity-a community of small, smug

me of woman suffrage. There can be no doubt that the vast majority of women have sentimental objections to the death penalty that quite outweigh such practical considerations in its favor as they can be persuaded to comprehend. Aided by the minority of men afflicted by the same mental malady, they will indubitably effect its abolition in the first lustrum of their political activity. The Ne