Part 12

The dying _speech_ of the malefactor arrests our attention; the dead _speaker_ of it is unregarded as a lump of clay. Who that amidst the excitement of a crowded court of justice has turned his thoughts within himself, and divesting the scene of all the panoply of pomp which surrounds him, has reflected on the moral effect to be the result of the sentence of death _if executed_, but has felt his sympathy rather awakened in favour of the culprit, and confessed to himself how inefficient the gibbet is when viewed (according to its intended purpose) as the roadside guidepost, by which other earthly travellers, who might be disposed to stray, should be warned of a pathway to be avoided.

Alas! the body on the gibbet is but like the scarecrow in the field of grain,--little heeded by its brethren in plumage, scarcely noticed by aught save the vacant gape of curiosity; it dangles for a time, and is remembered no more!

But let us take a more serious view of the question,--one which commands our deepest respect and our gravest veneration. Let us consider the question of the assumed right to take human life on the warranty, or, as is sometimes said, on the express command of Scripture.

It has been often urged that it is expressly commanded in the Old Testament that “he who sheddeth man’s blood, by man _shall_ his blood be shed;” and, consequently, that the punishment of death for murder is sanctioned by the high and holy God who inhabiteth eternity.

How cautious should we be, to ascertain that no fallacy exists in this our opinion! I grant that, according to our translation, the above isolated text, if taken alone, may be so construed; but what are the acts of the Creator recorded as following upon this text? What was his first judgment on the first of murderers, Cain? Not only did he not inflict death, but by a special providence protected him from its infliction by his fellow-man. Behold again the case of David, guilty of at least imagining the death of Uriah. Was David struck dead for the crime?

Whatever an isolated chapter (much less, then, a single verse) may amount to of itself, if we take the context of the same part of Genesis and behold the first murderer even especially guarded, by God’s mark, from the effect of “every man’s hand being against him;” and again if we search the New Testament, where we find no passage, under the new dispensation, that can be construed to call for the infliction of death for murder,--from these results I submit that the question must be left solely to mundane argument, to stand or fall by its own efficacy as a preventive of murder, and that the isolated phrase of Scripture should not be construed into a command as to what ought to be done, but rather as the probable result of human revenge, a feeling at variance with God’s holy ordinance; for we read, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,”--expressly and clearly withholding the power over human life from mere mortal judgment.

Let me here give a short extract from the “Morning Herald,”--a paper which has always so consistently and ably advocated the sacredness of human life:--

“On the motion of Mr. Ewart, some important returns connected with the subject of CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS have been made to the House of Commons, and ordered to be printed.

“_First Class._--A return of the number of persons _sentenced to death_ for MURDER in the year 1834, whose punishment was _commuted_,--specifying the counties in which their crimes occurred, and stating the number of _commitments_ for murder in the same counties during the _same_ year and in the _following_ year, together with the _increase_ or _diminution of commitments_ for murder in the same counties in the year following the commutation of the sentences; similar returns for 1835, 1836, 1837, and 1838.

“_Second Class._--A return of the number of EXECUTIONS which took place in England and Wales during the three years ending the 31st day of December, 1836, and also during the three years ending the 31st day of December, 1839, together with the number of _commitments_ in each of those periods respectively for offences _capital_, on the 2d day of January, 1834. Also, the total number of _convictions_ for the same offences, together with the _centesimal proportions of convictions to commitments_ in each of those periods respectively.

“The facts set forth upon the face of these returns furnish very strong evidence, indeed, to prove the utter _inutility of_ CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS as a means of preventing or repressing crime.

“What are the facts?

“We find that in one county (Stafford) in the year 1834 the sentence of one convict for _murder_ was _commuted_. In that year the commitments for murder were six, and in the following year the commitments for that crime were also six. Thus the commutation of the sentence in that instance was followed by neither a _diminution_ nor an _increase_ of commitments for murder.

“It is sufficient for the argument of the advocates of abolition of capital punishment to show that the suppression of the barbarous exhibitions of the scaffold would _not_ necessarily cause an _increase_ of heinous offences; for if the amount of crime were to remain the _same_ under laws _non-capital_ as under those which are _capital_, to prefer the latter to the former would evince a passion for the wanton and unavailing destruction of human life, unspeakably disgraceful to the Government or Legislature of any civilized country.

“In Derbyshire, in the year 1835, we find a similar result following a commutation of sentence for murder to that which followed a similar commutation in the county of Stafford in the preceding year; namely, the same number of _commitments for murder_ in the year following the commutation as in that in which it occurred,--being two in each; thus, also, in this instance, there was neither increase nor diminution of the crime of murder in the year following that of the commutation, judging from the number of commitments.

“In Warwickshire, in the year 1835, the sentence of a convict for murder was commuted, the number of commitments for the crime in that year being five, whereas in the year following there was but one commitment. In this instance, then, we have not only _no increase_ of the crime of murder, but an actual _diminution_ amounting to four.

“In Westmoreland, in the year 1835, there was one commutation; and the commitments in the year following showed neither an _increase_ nor _diminution_, being two in each.

“In Cheshire, in the year 1836, the sentences of _two_ convicts for _murder_ were _commuted_, the commitments for the crime in that year being two; the commitments for the year following were also two, showing _neither an increase nor diminution_.

“Here we have an instance where the sentences of _all_ convicted were commuted, and no _increase_ of the crime followed.

“In Devonshire, in the year 1836, there was one commutation of sentence for _murder_, the commitments being four. In the year following there were _no_ commitments, making a _decrease_ of four.

“In Lancashire, in the year 1836, the sentences of _four_ convicts for _murder_ were commuted, the number of commitments in the same year being seven. In the year following the number of commitments was one, making a _decrease_ of six.

“In the county of Norfolk, in the year 1836, the sentences of _five_ convicts for _murder_ were commuted, the number of commitments for the same year being eight. In the following year the number of commitments for murder were but five, giving a _decrease_ of three.

“In the counties of Norfolk, Nottingham, and Stafford, in the year 1837, there was one commutation of the sentence of murder for each respectively. The result was a fall in the committals of the following year from five to two in the first county,--giving a decrease of three; in the second county a fall from one to _none_; in the third county _neither_ an increase nor diminution,--the number of committals having been three in each year.

“In the counties of Lincoln, Stafford, and Denbigh, in the year 1838, there was respectively _one_ commutation of the sentence for _murder_. The result was that in the following year the commitments fell from two to one in the first county, from three to one in the second, and from one to _none_ in the third, thus giving respectively a decrease of one-half, two-thirds, and of the whole. The last is more correctly called an extinction than a decrease.

“In Cheshire, Middlesex, Somersetshire, and Surrey, in the year 1838, there were, respectively, _two_ commutations of the sentence for murder. The result was that in the first county the commitments, as between that year and the year following, fell from two to one; in the second county they fell from seven to three; in the third, from three to one; and in the fourth, from three to two; thus giving a diminution, respectively, of one-half, four-sevenths, two-thirds, and one-third.

“In Kent, in the year 1838, the sentences of _nine_ convicts for murder were commuted, the commitments for that crime in the same year being seventeen. In the following year the commitments for murder were only two, showing a decrease of fifteen. In this last case, however, we cannot in fairness press the argument in favour of the _salutary_ effect of discontinuing capital punishments to the extent that the arithmetical table would show. That year, if we recollect right, was the year of the extraordinary outbreak headed by the madman Courtenay or Thom. That event swelled the commitments for murder to an unprecedented height. The fall in the commitments from seventeen, in that year, to two in the year following, is not a fall under _equal_ circumstances, and it would be illogical to make it an argument for more than this: that society received _no detriment_ because the deluded followers of the frantic Courtenay _were sent to a penal settlement, instead of being strangled on the scaffold_.

“Looking to the table of EXECUTIONS, we find that in the _three_ years ending the 31st of December, 1836, the number _executed_ was 85, while during the _three_ years ending the 31st of December, 1839, the number was only twenty-five. The _commitments_ in the former period were 3,104, in the latter 2,989, showing a _decrease_, though a small one, in the number of _commitments_, while there is exhibited an _increase_ in the number of _convictions_; namely, from 1,536 to 1,788, showing the _centesimal_ proportion of convictions to commitments in the two periods, to be represented by the figures 49·48 and 59·48 respectively.

“These returns, as far as they go, are highly satisfactory as the testimony of experience to the _safe_ policy of ABOLISHING CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS ALTOGETHER, and thus getting rid of the barbarous and brutalizing exhibitions of cold-blooded cruelty and deliberate slaughter which they present to the people.”

_Morning Herald_, 1840.

From this statement of facts, and indeed from all that has taken place regarding crimes where capital punishment has been remitted, there can be little doubt that it is inexpedient; there can be none that it is unnecessary. But if any still persist that the Divine sanction is given by “He who sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” then the tyrant who engages in a war of aggression, the general who sanctions one effective shot being fired, should alike bear the penalty with the midnight assassin. Nay, does not the man who accidentally “sheds the blood” of him who is “made in the likeness of God,” literally come within the pale of the command, if _command_ it be?

The Chinese but seek to carry out this principle: they merely say, and with juster pretension to consistency, “we cannot remit it; there must be blood for blood.”

Yet we would dispute their right to have _always_ blood for blood; why then may we not question the right _ever_ to have blood shed, under Bible sanction at least? God makes no mention of motives or comparative reasonings as to guilt; in this His supposed command there is no discretionary option to soften its asserted force. By whatever means or under whatever circumstances one man kills another, _blood is shed_; and if blood for blood should hold good, then under this reasoning the slayer must die. If it be argued, that _wilful_ shedding of blood is meant, I point to the words of the text; they refer to “life for life,” they give no exceptions: “Who then, oh man! made thee a judge to tell the signs of the times?”

Once grant an exception to execution, once admit the doctrine of reprieve, and the authority, as a command, in the Bible ceases altogether.

Those who argue in favour of executions say, “But as an earthly punishment, we _may_ hang;” _may_, indeed! There are fifty things we _may_ do that are better avoided. Why need we hang, when other punishments will suffice, and have been proved to have succeeded in other cases? A very few years back, and the advances we have recently made in the civilization of our laws would have been scouted as equally Utopian, as is now considered the attempt to abolish the punishment of death altogether. Let us reflect too that in a case of murder, the prisoner (from a feeling which imperceptibly affects the minds of all) is looked on with a degree of suspicious anxiety to convict that almost watches to make out a case against him sufficient to condemn. The very fact of his being put on his trial for murder prejudges him in our eyes; and a slight variation in reporting a conversation has marvellously increased many a poor man’s danger of the gallows.

There is no recalling the erroneously condemned from the grave; a wrong judgment cannot there be reversed! Let us bear in mind, also, that the wisest judges may sometimes decide wrongfully. They were considered by myself and others to have erred in respect to the privileges of the House of Commons; why might they not commit a similar error in the case of a prisoner?

But enough; let errors in judgment speak for themselves. They contain matter for deep reflection and self-examination for us all.

If the average number of executions be reduced, even by one, I shall have the satisfaction of feeling at least that I have been an humble labourer in the great cause of mercy, which could not have a more zealous advocate, though it may have many more powerful and successful supporters.

Happy are we if, in all we do during the course of our career, we have not to answer for one death; for the bitter word, the cruel neglect, the light injurious observation, may be the cause of death, as well as the bludgeon or the steel.

I would here desire to make a few observations as to the medium through which I have introduced to the public my opinions in favour of the abolition of Capital Punishment, and the advantages to the cause obtained from its appearing in the form of a translation, the reflections being those of a foreigner who looked not to England when he penned his work. In all this there is a beneficial distraction of ideas created, for we look, as it were, at a foreign scene when we read the interesting paper of the narrative,--the sentiments conveyed, the idioms transcribed, are foreign, and the reader appropriates alone the portion he feels is applicable to the circumstances of his own country; in fact, he examines the context, not as he would an original treatise, but as one who would apply the problems found advantageous in one region to another. He cavils not at words or similes; his criticism is reserved for the object at which the translator aims,--no matter even if the phraseology be too flowery, the expressions too strong. There may be strange similes, strained amplifications; he studies but a translation, and cares comparatively little for them. True, he may have some curiosity awakened as to what the original author was in feeling and ideas; but these thoughts are light and evanescent compared with the anxiety, or more properly the curiosity, he has to ascertain what could be the translator’s ideas in thus “wasting the midnight oil” by reducing into the phraseology of his vernacular (English) tongue, the varied thoughts, the acute observations, the (to English ears) novel ideas of that clever, eccentric, single-minded writer, Victor Hugo. “What was the aim of the copyist?” methinks I hear repeated by many; and as my object is one of serious importance to the realities of life, and to arrest the attention of the reader beyond the mere passing hour, I reply: The object for which I plead is the priceless value of human life. Well and truly may the reading public,--and happy for this my dear native land is it that its public is a reading one,--well may this public exclaim, “Who is he, or what his view, who has thus dared to scatter these additional leaves on the pathway of a nation’s thoughts? Why has he done so, what motives urged him, what end did he seek?”

Such are the surmises that may flit across the reader’s brain, and the translator humbly hopes that the lightning scowl, or the thunder of maledictive criticism, will be directed alone against the oaken plank of a hundred years’ growth, and that this his nautilus bark will feel no breeze beyond the _aura populi_. Probably to the English public many of the observations in this translation will be original. Haply to the gay and frivolous the thoughts may appear exaggerated; but, alas! with too many they will come home to the heart. Numbers there are, who, steeped in misery before they were steeped in crime, had as little inclination to sin as their more fortunate fellow-men, but whose first transgressions were the offsprings of their misery, the necessitous urgings of their poverty. Yes, gentle reader,--for among the fair and young I hope to have many readers; readers whose hearts yet know how to feel,--ye would I address, and exclaim, for the startling fact is but too true, that though,--

“we who in lavish lap have rolled And every year with new delight have told; We who recumbent on the lacquered barge Have dropped down life’s gay stream of pleasant marge; We may extol life’s calm untroubled sea,”

well may the miserable, the guilty answer,--

“The storms of misery never burst on thee.”

“YOU NEVER FELT POVERTY. You never were comparatively tempted to crime.” “A noble,” say they, and truly, “a noble is tried, is judged by his peers, as being those who alone are considered to know, to be able to appreciate his case. Let poverty have her peers also.” “My poverty and not my will consented” is a phrase to which too little consideration is given when we discuss the question of crime and punishment; for though poverty cannot be pleaded by the criminal in justification of his offence (nor should such justification be permitted in the legal view), Society, whose interests are represented by the tribunal which adjudges, should be careful that any circumstances or defects in its conformation which may have had a tendency even to induce the criminality of the culprit, should go in mitigation of his punishment. It would be a startling observation in the present day, and one for which Society is not yet prepared, to hear the assertion made that _punishment_ for crime is more often unjust than just; but after much reflection on the origin of crime, humanly speaking, I am constrained to come to this conclusion: that the criminality of individuals is more frequently traceable to the evils incidental to an imperfect social system than to the greater propensity towards crime, as affecting others, that exists in the heart of one person if compared with another. Had the judge or the prosecutor entered life under the same circumstances as the prisoner, been early initiated into the same habits, been taught to view society through the same distorted glass, and had their feelings blunted by the same cold blasts of adversity, who shall say what their respective positions might have been?

In the phrase “My poverty but not my will consented,” let me not be understood to speak of poverty merely in the light of want of money; that is a very narrow view, and very confined as to what forms the real pains of poverty. Poverty is the want of means, intellectual and moral as well as pecuniary, to feed the being who is placed on the area of the world; with mind active as well as body, sustenance is necessary to its existence. If the poor man cannot obtain bread, he takes to gin to assuage cravings of the stomach. No less, if the mind cannot obtain light to guide it in the onward path, the visual organs become habituated to the dark and murky gloom of almost darkness; and through these confused gleamings, no wonder if the being fall into the pits and whirlpools which beset with danger the pathway of man, even when blessed with the clear light of day; how much more, therefore, when he has not light to discern good from evil, nor an intellectual poor-law to supply him with food, when a beggar by the way-side of knowledge! How strange it is that we can incarcerate the _bodies_ of the poor because they are poor, objecting to let them be dependent on casual charity for bodily sustenance, and yet cannot be equally strict in legislating for the mind.

Surely if, as members of one common society, we contend it is necessary for the well-being of the community at large that each person should be provided with work to enable him to procure food, and that if persons be unable to obtain work, or purchase food, then that the State shall provide for them,--should we not equally be provident for the mental as well as we are for the corporeal wants of those who hold a less fortunate position in the scale of society; more particularly when we reflect on the effect mind has on matter, and that did we sufficiently provide for the former, each individual would probably find little difficulty in procuring a supply for his bodily wants.

The poverty of the mind, if relieved, will probably be a permanent good; whereas bodily relief is at best but temporary. How vast, too, is the effect of knowledge, on the creation of food. Knowledge teaches industry; knowledge and industry multiply an hundred fold the product of labour. Comfort and security are thus increased; idleness, and consequently crime, is diminished,--for a man of information is seldom idle, and one surrounded with comforts is rarely inclined to commit crimes against society.