The Death Penalty.

Thames Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 6863, 23 April 1891, Page 2

The Death Penalty.

In a lecture delivered at the SirkVeck Literary Institute, by M. Antoine, a proposal was made for the formavioQ of a society to agitate for the abolition of the death penalty and forth.? establishment of a Court of Oiiminal Appeal. Speaking of the existiojf state of the Uw m foseign oountriea, the lectorer said that in Holland there had been no execution for 30 years, and capital punishment had boon formally abolished in 1870; Boumania had abolished it as early ao 1864 ; aod In jevsral great co^R' tries, while the. death pan^ty. wa gtiil uomiaally enforced, ifaeie were few in* stanpji.B of execution in vecent years. In Austria, out of 806 prisoner* condemned to death betwaeu 1870 and 1879/ poly 1$ were egteaied ; dfld in P«n-

mark only one convict out of 94 condemned to death was executed. In Sweden the proportion was 3 in every 32, and in Bavaria 7 in every 249. In North Germany, in the years from 1869 to 1878, there was one execution—that of Hoedel, who attempted the life of the late Emperor William. In England the number of executions was higher than in any of these cases. Between 1861 and 1881 the number of death sentences was 504, snd the number of executions 276; so that the reprieves were 46 per oent. of the total. The lecturer quoted other facts and figures in support of his argument that capital punishment is not really deterrent, and that it only continues to hold its ground as a survival of the ancient doctrine of "an eye for an eye."