I.

"DOWN with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is

always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle of "a life for

a life"--to represent it as "a 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 the

display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without

provocation. Even the most brainless opponent of "capital punishment"

would do that if he knew enough. It is in precisely the same sense an

admonition, a warning to abstain from crime. Society says by that law:

"If you kill one of us you die," just as by display of the pistol

the individual whose life is attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be

effective the warning 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

understand that their position commits them to absolute non-resistance

to any kind of aggression, and that is fortunate for the rest of us,

for if as Christians they frankly and consistently took that ground we

should be under the miserable necessity of respecting them.

We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in

this country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws--that

the death penalty is threatened but not inflicted--that the pistol is

not loaded. In civilized countries, where there is enough respect for

the laws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man

still has as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold widiout

cracking we shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and

assassins 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 hold

it. Against the life of one guiltless person the lives of ten thousand

murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a public good, without

reference to the crimes that disclose their deserts. If we could

discover them by other signs than their bloody deeds they should be

hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death as evidence. The

scientists who will tell us how to recognize the potential assassin, and

persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest benefactor of his century.

What would these enemies of the gibbet have?--these lineal descendants

of the drunken mobs that pelted the hangmen at Tyburn Tree; this progeny

of criminals, which 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 it to a hidden or unnamed

subordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether it's

punishment by death be just or not?--nobody needs to incur it.

Men are not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is

not deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather pelted the

hangman. Well, 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 not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it

is somewhat deterrent--it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder

is his crime, his second is ours.

The voice of Theosophy has been heard in favor of downing the gallows.

As usual the voice is a trifle vague and it babbles. Clear speech is the

outcome of clear thought, and that is something to which Theosophists

are not addicted. Considering their infirmity in that way, it would be

hardly fair to take them as seriously as they take themselves, but

when any considerable number of apparently earnest citizens unite in a

petition to the Governor of their State, to commute the death sentence

of a convicted assassin without alleging a doubt of his guilt the

phenomenon challenges a certain attention to what they do allege. What

these amiable persons hold, it seems, is what was 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 as matters now are, the most incessant vigilance is

required to prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants

and one another. How would it be if the "life-termer" were assured

against any additional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally,

or strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described

as a place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed the

difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would

be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would

have to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what

these Theosophical gentlemen propose to substitute for death?

These petitioners call the death penalty "a relic of barbarism," which

is neither conclusive nor true. What is required is not loose assertion

and dogs-eared phrases, but evidence of futility, or, in lack of that,

cogent reasoning. It is true that the most barbarous nations inflict the

death penalty most frequently and for the greatest number of offenses,

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 hands full does not show that the laws were futile; it shows that

the dear old boys from whom we are proud to derive ourselves were a bad

lot--of which we have abundant corroborative evidence in their brutal

pastimes and in their manners and customs generally. To have restrained

that crowd by the rose-water methods of modern penology--that is

unthinkable.

The death penalty, say the memorialists, "creates blood-thirstiness in

the unthinking masses and defeats its own ends. It is a cause of

murder, not a check." These gentlemen are themselves of "the unthinking

masses"--they do not know how to think. Let them try to trace and

lucidly expound the chain of motives 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 pointed out

to us the several steps in that remarkable mental progress. Obviously,

the thing is absurd; one might as reasonably say that contemplation of

a pitted face will make a man go and catch smallpox, or the spectacle of

an amputated limb on the scrap-heap of a hospital tempt him to cut off

his arm.

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," says the Theosophist, "is

not justice. It is revenge and unworthy of a Christian civilization." It

is exact justice: nobody can think of anything more accurately just

than such punishments 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, service for service. We can not

undertake by such clumsy means as laws and courts to do to the criminal

exactly what he has done to his victim, but to demand a life for a life

is simple, practicable, expedient and (therefore) right.

Here are two of these gentlemen's dicta, between which they inserted the

one just considered, though properly they should go together in frank

inconsistency:

"6. It [the death penalty] punishes the innocent a thousand times more

than the guilty. Death is merciful to the tortures which the living

relatives must undergo. And they have committed no crime."

"8. Death penalties have not the deterring influence which imprisonment

for life carries. Mere death is not dreaded. See the number of suicides.

Hopeless captivity is much more severe."

Merely noting that the "living relatives" whose sorrows so

sympathetically affect these soft-hearted and soft-headed persons are

those of the murderer, not those of his victim, let us 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 punishment indeed Therefore, let us spare

the assassin's family the tortures they will suffer if we inflict

the lighter penalty. Let us make it easier for them by inflicting the

severer one."

There is sense for you!--sense of the sound old fruity Theosophical

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

dark domain of reason into the serene altitudes of inexpressible Thrill!

As to "hopeless captivity," though, there is no such thing.

In legislation, today can not bind tomorrow. By an act of the

Legislature--even by a constitutional prohibition, we may do away with

the pardoning power; but laws can be repealed, constitutions amended.

The public has a short memory, signatures to petitions in the line of

mercy are had for the asking, and tender-hearted Governors are familiar

afflictions. We have life sentences 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.

Hope springs eternal in the human beast, and matters simply can not

be so arranged that in entering the penitentiary he will "leave hope

behind." Hopeless captivity is a dream.