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tosh, who says, in a charge delivered at Bombay in 1811, "Two hundred thousand men have been governed for the last seven years without capital punishment, and without any increase of crime." "Add to these," says Mr. Pyne,"the well-known facts, that delinquencies in the army and navy were of much more frequent occurrences when death was the award of each breach of duty, than they are now, when a milder system prevails."
For the foregoing statistics I am indebted to an admirable pamphlet, by Frederick Rowton, Esq., entitled, "The Punishment of Death Reviewed," which I would strongly recommend to all who hear me. It treats the subject in a masterly manner, and proves to demonstration that the "safety of society" would be best secured by the entire abandonment of capital punishment. Without at all referring to the moral and religious aspects of the question, it does seem to me extraordinary that, in the face of the most incontestible evidence in proof of the fallacy of a resort to violence for the prevention of murder, intelligent men are yet to be found who advocate its necessity. The solid reasoning, sustained by statistics and experience, is all on the side of mercy, and yet men still advocate and pursue the vengeful course. It is true, they endeavour to conceal from themselves that revenge forms any part of their feeling towards the criminal. When pressed on the subject, they repudiate this idea most strongly; and yet it seems to me that the system rests altogether on that feeling.
It will be said that the act is done by government, and that government can feel no revenge. But government is made up of individual men, and however these may delude themselves into the belief that, in their collective capacity, they only take into consideration the good of the community, the facts of the case prove that other feelings must operate in their minds; as, if they judged intelligently and dispassionately, they would be forced to the conclusion, that the course pursued hitherto has been a wrong one, and they would move in a better direction.
It is clear to the apprehension of all, that death punishment has not secured society from the crime—the most horrible crime—of deliberate murder. This, our opponents all admit; but they support the law of capital punishment on the negative argument, that but for it, that crime would be much more frequent; rejecting altogether the positive evidence of its hurtful tendencies,brought forward by the friends of the abolition of the death penalty.
I find in the "Transactions of the Dublin Philosophical Society for 1843," an abstract from an essay on capital punishment by Professor Hancock, in which he urges the importance of an examination into the propriety of inflicting capital punishment; since, as Blackstone remarks, vol. iv., page 3:—"Criminal law should be founded on principles that are permanent, universal, always conformable to the dictates of truth and justice, the feelings of humanity and the indelible rights of mankind."
It requires no argument to prove that death punishment is not
