The Patea County Press. With which is incorporated The Patea Mail. “Inherent Justice is Eternal Right." MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1911. Capital Punishnent and the 20th Century.

Patea Mail, Volume XXXIV, 19 June 1911, Page 2

The Patea County Press. With which is incorporated The Patea Mail. “ Inherent Justice is Eternal Right." MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1911. Capital Punishnent and the 20th Century.

In the life of the late Lord Brampton, better known as Mr Justice Hawkins, the story is told that whilst he was a boy at Bedford School, he happened to look out of the window one day into the street, and there he saw a sight that impressed him throughout the rest of his life. What he saw was a melancholy procession consisting of a dilapitated farm cart, followed by an aged couple who were weeping, In the bottom of the cart, lying on some loose straw hastily thrown in, was the body of a boy 17 years of age, the son of the aged couple, who had been hanged that morning for what would be considered by the majority of persons at the present day, a minor offence—the burning of a haystack. Since then the legislation has con. tinued from time to time, to modify the law with regard to punishments to a very great extent, so much so that it is safe to assert that before many years are over, still further alterations will bo effected with regard to capital punishment, if indeed, the latter is not abolished altogether; That this is so issbown by the fact that in England, where some three hundred murders are committed in the course of a year, there are less than’ a score of execu tions annually. Whether the abolition of capital punishment would result in the perpetration of a greater number of murders, is as yet a moot point. One well known authority has laid it down that “Byery instance of the infliction of a punishment is an instance of the failure of that punishment.” This has been exaggerated by another writer into the statement that “ the execution of malefactors is no more to the credit of rulers than the death of patients is to the credit of physicians.” The analogy between the two eases is, however, scarcely a fair one, for, whereas in the one case the death of a patient never helps to euro another, in the other the hanging of a criminal for mu : der may bo the means of deterring others from committing similar crimes. The object of punishment is primarily the prevention of crime, and this may bo effected in various ways. The punishment may, for instance, act on the body of the offender so as to deprive him either temporarily or permanently of the power to repeat the offence. Or it may act on the mind of the offender, ei her by terror of a repetition of the punishment, or by eradicating his criminal habits by careful training whilst in prison. This is the end to which wo understood the Government was striving when the appointment of the Bov. J. A L. Kaylo, a noted ciimiuologist, to the position of visiting adviser to the Justice Department, was made. To our mind the time is ripe for the abolition of the death penalty and the adoption of reformative and more humane measures in its stead. History cannot afford us one single instance of a murderer, possessed of all his faculties who committed another murder after being released from prison. Wo Lave to progress with the times, and if we in this 20th century desire to go one step further than our fathers in the last century, who decided that the hanging of a criminal and the disembowelling of him while yet alive, was contrary to their ideaifs Of civilisation, wo surely cannot be blamed. Many claim that we have advanced to a higher state of civilisa-

tion than that obtaining in England in the last century, which made the hanging, drawing, and quartering of a criminal repulsive to the public at largo, and that as this bai’barous method of punishment became repulsive to them, so has the infliction of the death penalty, by any means whatever, become repulsive to the majority to-day. In any case there is no gainsaying (he fact that the hanging of Tahi Kaka, a boy of 17, whilst it may be right from a stiictly legal aspect, is certainly not in keeping with the average man’s idea of twentieth century humanity.