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182G.] On Capital Punishment. 251 



his necessities, or supplies the means of indulgence in those sensuui 

 gratifications whicii form the only happiness a depraved appetite can 

 imagine: where, then, is the sting of death to the habitual sinner, to the 

 man born and nurtured in the walks of infamy ? To him life is only 

 valuable so long as he can enjoy it. The means of enjoyment of liim- 

 self lie does not possess, but is ready to procure them by the perpetra- 

 tion of any crimes, however odious or atrocious ; the consequence of 

 the crime is unheeded altogether — the chance of escape is as great as 

 tlie chance of detection. But suppose the law triumphant and the cri- 

 minal convicted : the sentence of death is entirely disregarded, and the 

 execution itself, as it is attended with little personal pain, is scarcely 

 more regarded than the sentence ; we daily witness the hardihood with 

 which the greatest offenders meet their doom, leaving to their com- 

 panions in infamy an example of the same callousness in death they 

 had exhibited in life. By this hardihood in meeting death that impres- 

 sion which was intended to be conveyed by public execution is 

 weakened and destroyed, and the last hour of the guilty becomes more 

 pernicious to society than their long career of open infamy and detected 

 crime. 



We now proceed to examine by what riglit man disposes of the 

 life of his fellow-man. If want, if ignorance, if brutal ferocity unre- 

 strained by morality or religion, if avarice, if lust, if every evil passion 

 which pervades our fallen nature, if our infirmities or our necessities 

 are alike insufficient to extenuate or excuse the shedding of blood, how 

 can we reconcile to ourselves the formal sentence of the law, delivered 

 without heat or passion or necessity to justify it? The Mosaic law gave 

 blood for blood ; but the Saviour of the world, when he suffered upon the 

 cross, introduced a milder and more heavenly doctrine, and forgiveness 

 of injuries became the standing principle of the Christian's creed — judge 

 not, lest ye be judged — judgment belongeth to the Lord. It will possi- 

 bly be attempted to justify the punishment of death, by an appeal to the 

 well-being of society ; but is there no other mode of withdrawing a crimi- 

 nal from society than by hurrying him from life ? If we are so struck 

 with horror at the enormity of his offences, that we fear contamination 

 from his existence, is it charitable, is it Christian, to throw him at 

 once upon his justification before his God? True, that God is a God of 

 mercy, fortunately for the unhappy convict, or otherwise how dreadful 

 would be his fate ! forced by the unforgiving cruelty, falsely called jus- 

 tice, of an earthly tribunal, to appear, with all his crimes yet fresh in 

 the record of the angel's book, before the judgment-seat of Heaven .! 

 From the tenor of his life he can expect no mercy ; he has offended 

 God — he has denied his son — and yet we, the creatures of an hour, 

 ourselves guilty and unprepared, daily imploring mercy and for- 

 giveness, and knowing the wretched state of this man's soul, precipitate 

 him from life into death, and, as we fear and believe, into damnation also. 

 Can this be our practice, and yet do we believe our religion to be that 

 of Christ, and our law to be founded upon the spirit of his doctrines ? If 

 punishment by death can neither be reconciled by its influence on the 

 criminal, or the religion we profess, still less can it be justified by civil 

 polity. The first object of all laws is the melioration of that community 

 which they are enacted to control. Now, it will be difficult to point out 

 how the spectators of a public execution can be in any way benefited by 

 a spectacle so disgusting, so harassing to the feelings of the timid and 



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