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Since I wrote the foregoing lines, the following evidence of the inefficacy of death punishment for securing the safety of society has been placed in my hands; it is taken from the charge of Judge Wightman to the Grand Jury at Liverpool, on the 10th of December last, in which he stated as follows:—
"It is not above four calendar months since the assizes was held, and there was a general goal delivery in this county; and there is now an accumulation, in that comparatively short period, of no less than eighty-seven prisoners for trial, rendering the special commission under which we are now assembled absolutely necessary, although it imposes on you, and the county generally, an additional duty. I am sorry to find, that not only is the calendar in point of numbers great, but that the crimes with which many of the prisoners are charged are of a very serious character. There are no fewer than seven distinct cases in which the crime of wilful murder is charged, and seven in which the charge is manslaughter, making fourteen distinct cases of homicide."
Is it not clear, from the foregoing statement, that death punishment is not a deterrent from the crime of murder, and that it affords no adequate safety to society? The scaffold has reeked with blood in these lands during the past year, and yet we find that murder is rife amongst us notwithstanding. To what cause does Judge Wightman attribute this recklessness of human life on the part of the people? Here are his own words, and to a great extent they give us a true solution of the question:—"In almost all the cases, (the Judge refers to the entire eighty-seven cases, almost all of which were cases of violence) the violence exhibited appears to be the result of mere intemperance, operating on minds wholly unaccustomed to forbearance or moral restraint, yielding to every impulse of their wicked feelings when exasperated."
Of these eighty-seven prisoners, 25 could neither read nor write; 31 can read and write imperfectly; 15 can only read, &c.; 3 can read and write in a superior manner; 13, not given any account of.
Gentlemen, intemperance and ignorance are the great promoters of crime. So long as these predisposing causes are allowed to exist, so long will the statistics of murder fearfully attest the inefficacy of the scaffold as a deterrent from crime.
