offence deserving of the same penalty. Be sides this, there is no conclusive evidence to prove that persons who commit murders or other crimes are always restrained from so doing by fear of the consequences of their acts upon themselves. There is little, if any reason to believe that murderers, as a class, ever think of the fate to which they subject themselves on account of their crimes, until after these have been perpetrated by them. As an illustration of the truth of this remark, it is only necessary to call the attention of the reader to the fact that im mediately following the executions of Durrant in California, and of O'Neil in this Commonwealth, the public were horrified by the triple murder at Brookfield, Mass.; and several others have occurred in various parts of the country since that day. Capital punishment, therefore, instead of preventing people from committing murder, appears to have precisely the opposite effect upon them; for when the State deliberately takes the life of one of its citizens, it thereby sets a bad example to all who are by Nature inclined to do likewise. The Government desires to impress upon the minds of the people, the sacredness of human life, and the atrocity of murder; and this it does, or endeavors to do, by taking human life itself, thereby commit ting the very crime which it condemns on the part of its citizens; for every execution is neither more nor less than a judicial murder; and if every murderer were to be executed, that fact would only double the number of murders committed among us. What can be more inconsistent and irrational than is this practice? It can have no other effect upon the characters of men and women than to brutalize and to degrade them; for nothing which is absolutely repulsive to a refined and noble nature can be right or just. That these observations are in accordance with the experience of mankind wherever this mode of punishment has prevailed is evident to all who are familiar with criminal statistics, and with the literature bearing
upon this subject. For instance, a writer in the Christian Examiner for November, 1847, on page 336 thereof, says: — "At the time when the mother country punished capitally one hundred and sixty crimes, life was far less safe than it is at present. Under Henry the Eighth, seventytwo thousand thieves were hanged; and yet robbery upon the highways prevailed; and the suburbs of the principal cities were in fested by mercenary assassins." Similar assertions are made concerning other countries, by many writers on this subject, all of which have a decided ten dency to prove that capital punishment is not an effectual barrier against the commis sion of the crime of murder. This being the truth, it would appear to be displaying wisdom on the part of our legislators for them to learn something from the experi ence of their fellow-men in this and in other parts of the world, and to inquire whether or not, a more rational and effectual means of suppressing this awful crime may be de vised, than is the one now in force and in operation in most of the States of the Union. That the abolition of the death penalty does not increase the number of murders is most conclusively demonstrated wherever that experiment has been tried. The great empire of Russia dispenses with it; and there are no more murders committed there in than there are in any other nation in proportion to its population; and the num ber thereof is much less than it is in some other countries in proportion to their popu lations where this barbarous practice pre vails. Capital punishment was abolished by the State of Michigan in the year 1846, by the State of Rhode Island in the year 1851, by the State of Wisconsin in the year 1853, and by the State of Maine in 1887; and according to the official reports of the secretaries of each of those States, there has been no increase, but rather a decrease in the number of murders com
