The Ohinemuri Gazette. FRIDAY, DEC. 9, 1910. THE DEATH PENALTY.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXI, Issue 2729, 9 December 1910, Page 2

The Ohinemuri Gazette. FRIDAY, DEC. 9, 1910. THE DEATH PENALTY.

Count Tolstoy's dying effort on behalt of humanity-was a prayer lor the abolition of the death penalty. The grand old Russian is not alone in his opinion that the imposition of the death penalty, even lor the most serious of crimes, is in itself a crime of which the State ought not to be guilty. Even without going so far as this it is possible to question the death penalty as a deterrent, for that, certainly, is the only ground upon which it can be justified. The principle of retributive justice no longer holds good m regard to lawful punishment tor crime. Under ancient systems of punishment imprisonment was but little used. The imposition of fines, mutilation, or death, took its place. Imprisonment as a penalty is an essentially modern practice. In the early

days laws were ferocious. Men were hanged at Tyburn every Monday morning by the dozen. Down to 1830, forty kinds of forgery were punishable by death in England. The hardness of the Greek legislator, who said " Small crimes deserve death, and I know no

heavier punishment for greater ones," found expression in all legislation. But these heavy penalties were accompanied by a flood of criminality. When the

State puts a low estimate upon human life and hangs freely, the individuals within the State will put a similar low estimate on human life and kill freely. It has never yet been satisfactorily shown thai the death penalty has acted as a deterrent. True, the contrary has never been proven either. A capital defect of our criminal codes is the wholly arbitrary character of the penalties imposed. They are supposed to be deterrent and exemplary. But it is impossible to measure the deterrent force of penalties. The punishment, too, is fitted to the offence, not to the offender. Modern penology, while ascribing some deterrent value to the infliction of penalties, considers the prime office of punishment to be the protection of society and the correction of the offender. With retribution society has nothing to do. Modern penology advocates the abolition of cruel punishment, devotes new attention to the study of the crim-

inal, his environment and history; carefully distinguishes between the accidental and habitual criminal. Infanticide and killing the old is not so far back in our history as may be supposed. Among the ancient Teutons the father could expose and sell his children under age. There was no fixed duty of child to parent or of parent to child. A fifteenth century manuscript speaks of the holy mall which hung behind the church door, which, when the father was seventy, the son might fetch to knock his father oh the head as effete and of no more use. This is in W.ales, and in Stockholm national museum is a large collection of flat clubs from all the churches in Sweden,' the use of which is described with discretion. That the clubs were kept in the churches signifies that the act was put under religious sanction. Unfortunately it is only too true, as the St. John Telegraph declares, that our civilised society has not abolished the crime of infanticide. It has been modified and superseded by other methods of accomplishing the same purpose. In Ontario recently the death sentence was imposed upon a woman for infanticide and upon the man because he had suggested that she eclipse the life of this pledge of their lawless love.. What effect it will have

upon society to hang a man and a woman for the monstrous crime in question, no one knows, and it is equally impossible for anyone to say that the execution of Crippen will have the effect of making one other man restrain his hand when the passion to kill is upon him. We do know, however, that murdeT was much more prevalent when hanging was a common penalty for much less serious crimes, and consequently it is not illogical to assume that experience is against the contention that the penalty has ever been effectively deterrent.