The New Woman is against the death penalty, naturally, for she is
hot and hardy in the conviction that whatever is is wrong. She has
visited this world in order to straighten things about a bit, and is
in distress lest the number of things be insufficient to her need.
The matter is important variously; not least so in its relation to
the new heaven and the new earth that are to be the outcome 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 “equality.” The New Woman will scarcely feel the
seat of power warm beneath her before giving to the assassin’s “unhand
me, villain!” the authority of law. So we shall make again the old
experiment, discredited by a thousand failures, of preventing crime by
tenderness to caught criminals. And the criminal uncaught will treat us
to a quantity and quality of crime notably augmented by the Christian
spirit of the new _régime_.