TEE HEATH PENALTY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12588, 24 August 1901, Page 5

TEE HEATH PENALTY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,' —I had hoped that an abler pen than mine -would have written in reply to the statements of, Air O’Bryen Hoare regarding capital punishment, whose letter, under the heading of “Human Refuse,” appearedl last Wednesday v _Ho speaks of “a blind and stupid vehgeanoC'- bolstered up by a superstititious reverence, without even the mollifying shelter of a City of Refuge.” If he-will read his Bible he will learn that God ordained that the Cities of Refuge should afford no asylum in the case of murder, whether premeditated or from the rage of passion, hut only to him who was so unfortunate as to kill anyone by accident. ■There is no word either in the Old or New Testament inhibiting capital punishment, nor a single intimation that this statute has. ever been revoked. On the contrary, reasons are given as the basis of the requisition of life for life which can never be set aside, which are as forcible at this hour as they were .ip, the days of Cain, Noah, Moses, and Jesus Christ. “ Thou shaft take (no ransom) no satisfaction for the life of the murderer.” “He that shedd'eth man’s blood, by main shall hi® blood be shed, for in the - image of God made he man.” And the weightiest of all, “The land cannot be cleansed from blood but by the blood of him that shed it.” For this purpose the magistrate is “ God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil,” and he rightfully wears a sword not hia own, hut God’s. Public opinion has for nearly two centuries been vacillating between two extreme systems of punishment, one which punishes more than a hundred varieties of crime with death, while the other inflicts death on no transgressor for any crime whatever. During the reign of sanguinary law dn England, Blackstone very correctly observes, “It is a melancholy truth, that among the variety of actions which men axe daily liable to commit, no less than a hundred and sixty lave been declared, by act of Parliament, to be felonies without benefit of clergy, or in other words, to be worthy of instant death.” “So dreadful a list,” adds the learned jurist, “instead of diminishing increases the number of offenders.” There ought to be a correspondence between offences and their punishment, and where this is lacking will account on the one hand fox the increase of smaller crimes, and on the other for the application -of lynch law now so common in the United •States. If the death penalty be repealed as my learned friend contends it should, the main bulwark against .this perpretation of murder falls to the ground. Who could feel himself safe under a government where there is no protection of his life, or what safeguard would a woman have against the furious passions which not infrequently display themselves in the most appalling forms, in some of those terrible and coldblooded monsters like Al’Lean? Exile, confinement in prisons, reformatories, are to snob demons like, an Act of Parliament to a Bengal tiger. As for quoting .Voltaire and others of his school, who have theorised against capital punishment, history affords a notorious case in Robespierre. He published in early life a treatise against capital punishment, but when he rose to power, he became the presiding genius of the guillotine. Like Franco; which theorised against the Bible, and rite justice, which declaimed against capital punishment, all other States, I°venture to say, will he signally punished by an increase of murderers.—l am, etc., Lin wood, August 22, 1901G. AIANIFOLD.