The law of a life for a life does not altogether prevent murder. No law
can altogether prevent any form of crime, nor is it desirable that it
should. Doubtless God could so have created us that our sense of right
and justice could have existed without contemplation of injustice and
wrong; as doubtless he could so have created us that we could have felt
compassion without a knowledge of suffering; but he did not. Constituted
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 mercy, without magnanimity--a community of
small, smug souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We
can have, and do have, too much crime, no doubt; what the wholesome
proportion is none can tell. Just now we are running a good deal to
murder, but he who can gravely attribute that phenomenon, or any part of
it, to infliction of the death penalty, instead of to virtual immunity
from any penalty at all, is justly entitled to the innocent satisfaction
that comes of being a simpleton.