INVERCARGILL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXII, Issue 9, 28 June 1895, Page 15

INVERCARGILL.

(From an occasional Correspondent.)

June 21, 1895. The last act of tbe melancholy drama has ended, the curtain has been rung dowD, the actors have doffed their severely simple attire> the spectators have left the theatre and Btand about conversing in little groups. Minnie Dean stands con vie' ed of murder. Tbe public cannot complain that the newspapers have not kept them well posted in all the particulars of the arrest and trial of the unfortunate woman over whose head bangs the sentence of death. We have had columns of matter, woodcuts of tbe " Larches," of the spot 9 where the bodies were found, of the remaining children, and alleged portraits of Mrs Dean ; anything, everything to pander to the degrading thirst for the sensational. The conrt has daily been crowded to suffocation by persons eager to hear the revolting details of tbe affair in all their originality, Among the spectators also ware many ladies (save the mark 1). Ladies, they call themselves, who crowd in to add, by their prying eyes, to the misery of one of their own sex, who cannot find words bad enough to Bpeak of her, aye, who even wait to hear the fatal death sentence pronounced in that crowded court. ♦ Turning over the pages of the history of two thousand years ago we consider as barbaric the conduct of those Roman matrons who in the amphitheatre, having in their bauds tbe life or death of the gladiator, turned down their thumbs to signify that they wished to see bim die. Are the matrons very much better who frequent tba courts of to-day on such occasions as the one under notice, or is onr civilisation but a ttiu veneer, a mockery and a delusion. But lam forgetting that this is the age in which the " new woman " is asserting her position.

f " '{r She leads tbe way in writing risky novels, in promulgating doctrines/ antagonistic to all onr old fashioned ideas of morality ; why sbonld she not go all *the way, and listen to all the horrible details of a trial for child-murder? The delicacy of feeling, tbe pity and compassion which we were wont to apportion to her sex are out of date, she is now a woman of the world 1 ' 0 tempora, O mores, übinam gentium, sumus."

It is time that capital punishment, that relic of barbarism, was abolished, That it is a relic of barbarism no oae who reads history can: doub*. Not many decades ago a man was readily hanged for stealing, highway robbers were peifectly certain of their doom if they were caught, yet the abolition of capital punishment for these offences has not led to any increase in the number of theftp, and highway robbers are now found only in the pages of romance, 'f he soundness of the logic which leads to the conclusion that is necessary to destroy another life to satisfy for one already taken is very questionable* Indeed it is open to question if the very severity of the sentence does not defeat the end it seeks to gain. For a man who is truly bad enough to deliberately take away the life of a fellow creature knows that his do:>m is death, the highest the law can inflict. Successful in hi ling for a time the traces of his crime, he finds another person Btands in his path ; he knows that death is a fate he can meet only once, and that to that fate he is already doomed as booh as his first crime is discovered, he will have less scruple in removing in the same way the second party wbo crosses his will. Juries, top, when they consider the awful responsibility which attaches to their verdict, are Btrongly tempted to depart from the strict course of justice to stretch a point in favour of the accused. Thus, on the grounds of mora'ifcy, capital punishment should give way to a less severe sentence. The law which condemns to the same fate as the man who deliberately designs and carries out tbe death of victim after victim, the one who, in a moment of provoked passion, takes Vhe life of a fellow man, must surely be considered illogical and uujust. It is said that the worst use you can put a man to is to hang him, and Daniel O'Oonnell once made a remark which is now an axiom, that it is better that ninety-nine guilty should escape than one innocent man should suffer. Does the law which enforces capital punishment give the accused man in all cases a reasonable chance to prove his innocence ? Certainly not. It will not even hear him in hi? own defence. At a moderate computation in the number of those compelled to suffer the extreme penalty of the law, seventy -five per cent are sentenced on circumstantial evidence. Time after time, by after, experience the unreliability lof such evidenca has been strikingly demonstrated. Cases are on record in which at the time of the trial as far a 9 human foresight could penetrate, no probable doubt of guilt exited; yet nnny a death-bad confession, many facts at first bi Iden, have prove 1 the innocence of the one who suffered for a crime of which ha tnd no knowledge. Tha bare possibility of such a catastrophe Bhouli make U3 pause. If a term of imprisonment either for yeara or Ufa were substituted, an opportunity would ba given to prove conclusively the guilt or innocence of an accuse! person and to make some restitution if subsequent events proved innocence. If it ba a meritorious work to carry out the sentence the laws have pronounced why do we lcok with such contempt on the instrument of the law, the common hangman ? It appears to me that capital punishment is repugnant to the highest feelings of our nature. That the State would require to maintain tha prisoner during the course of his natural lifo if capital punishment were abolished is a shallow argument. If followed out to its logical conclusion it means simply thip, that for every off mcc c»pit*l punishment should ba iofl ctei, for, in any case, all prisoners must be maintained by the State. Contemporary history affords us little information ou the subject, but all that can be goes to show that as a preventive of tha crime of murder capital punishment has signally failed. The remedy appears to lie in educating the people to a highsr sense of the duties of citizanship, to cau3e them to feel that their interests are inseparably iatertwined with those of the State, and that he who thus sins againßt society sins against himself, his family, his country and his God.