1924-04-11

HOME BANK DEPOSITORS

Mr. JOHN MILLAR (Qu'Appelle):: I desire to present a petition signed by 225 residents of the town and district of Welwyn, praying that the depositors of the Home Bank be indemnified.



UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA

Mr. STEWART (Hamilton):: I beg to
present the petition of the St. Paul's Presbyterian Church at Hamilton opposing the United Church of Canada Bill.


Mr. KENNEDY (Edmonton):: I beg to present the petition of David G. McQueen and 1324 others, of Edmonton and surrounding district, opposing the United Church of Canada Bill.



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


[Stage Direction]
Hon. GEORGE P. GRAHAM (Minister of
Railways and Canals) moved the second reading of Bill No. 48, respecting the construction of a Canadian National railway line from Turtleford to near Hafford in the province of Saskatchewan.
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, and referred to the Select Standing Committee on Railways, Canals and Telegraph lines.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE (East Calgary) moved the second reading of Bill No. 3 to amend the Criminal Code.
He said: It is perhaps unnecessary to point out to the House that there are four crimes for which the death penalty may be imposed in Canada. These are treason, making war against His Majesty, rape and murder. I do not know whether it ever occurs that the death penalty is inflicted for the commission of the first three mentioned crimes. The bill now before the House deals with all of these crimes, and simply asks that capital punishment be abolished and life imprisonment substituted for the death penalty. The effect of the operation of the bill, if enacted, may be much more profound than that, but it is a very simple matter to understand the alterations in the law which this bill calls for.
On numerous occasions this question has been discussed before the parliament of Canada, and I observe from reading these former debates that the ethical and religious arguments which have been put forward have been considered very thoroughly. I am going, therefore, to confine myself largely to the argument against capital punishment from the historical and scientific point of view. First of all, I desire briefly to point out the basis upon which the present criminal code rests, add that basis is not very difficult to define. It. goes back to the natural animal instinct of self-preservation and retaliation in order to preserve oneself. In the early days we had to kill or be killed; it was a crude, unintelligent struggle for existence. But as time went on the desire for retribution, for revenge, came into play, and there came into existence what was known as the "avenger of blood;" that is to say, one man of a tribe sought to avenge the death of another member of the tribe who had1 been killed. There was no thought of punishing the actual individual who had committed the crime, there was no thought of the circumstances; the only thought was revenge for what had been committed. This is known as the ancient lex talionis.-an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But by and by society took over the position of the avenger of blood, and that is the function which the Dominion of
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[Stage Direction]
Canada fulfils to-day by carrying out our present criminal code. Now, I hold, very strongly, Mr. Speaker, that a criminal code that is based on savage impulses and keeps in view savage aims cannot be expected to produce civilized results. We shall try in vain to achieve the ends of civilization through institutions that were devised for barbaric purposes. As to the basis of our present criminal code, history does not leave us any room for doubt whatever. Primitive man had absolutely no thought of deterrence when he imposed this penalty; but as humanity developed intellectually and morally, we found it incumbent upon us to find some rational sanction for the practice of taking the lives of other people, and so we said: We will take life for life on the ground that this will deter other people from committing crimes. I do not think there is in Canada any person who would advocate the death penalty to-day on the ground of revenge, which is the basis of our criminal code. Why then, we may ask, should we continue to keep in force an institution for the purpose of revenge when we seek some other purpose for carrying it out? I believe we can find a better way of gaining our ends.
Let us move to another point in the historic argument. Civilized man, as I have said, seeking a rational sanction for the imposition of the death penalty, decided that it must be considered as a deterrent. He thought it was less inhuman to kill a man when in doing so he reasoned that he was preventing other men from repeating the crime, than it was to kill on the basis of revenge. That is our civilized interpretation of the death penalty. So, when punishment was regarded as a deterrent from crime, in the early stages of that recognition we find that the death penalty was passed on all offenders, and it was carried out publicly and made as horrible as possible. This was the proper and logical thing to do, of course, for in order that the death penalty might be a deterrent, people would have to see the thing and know that it was carried out;-the more horrible it was made to appear, the more of a deterrent it would be, provided, of course, that it had a deterrent effect at all. So we find human ingenuity was exhausted in devising cruelties to impose on those who had committed crimes. But we have to say briefly that this method has proved a failure. Society has been forced to abandon all these cruelties; society has been forced to abandon the death penalty except in the case of homicide. In an article in the American Journal of Politics, in 1893, we are told that under the old Jewish law every crime save one was punishable by 
death. In England, in the eighteenth century, 160 offences were punishable by death, among those being that of stealing property. A man for stealing five shillings could legally be hanged, and very often in the early history of England people committing such crimes were hanged. Also, if a man held an opinion that was different from that of his church authorities, or different from that of the state authorities, as a heretic he was punishable by death. In the reign of Henry VIII alone, 72,000 people were hanged for crimes and offences of this character. The first relief that came to the people of Great Britain from this kind of punishment came through the colonies. That is to say, a man who had stolen five shillings had the option of going to Canada or some other colony or to be hanged, and sometimes he decided in favour of a new start in the colonies. That was the beginning of relief from this type of punishment in Great Britain.
Mr. McMASTER:: Is the hon. member
serious in suggesting that convicts were ever sent out to Canada?


Mr. IRVINE:: I am merely repeating what is an acknowledged historic fact, that at a certain period of English history, the people of England, who were convicted of petty crimes, were given the option of going to the English colonies.


Mr. LAPOINTE:: I think the House is entitled to hear this little conversation with the hon. member for Brome (Mr. McMaster).


William Irvine: I think it is our turn to have a little conversation in this end of the House, We have been trying to listen to a number that we have not heard throughout the session. The hon. member for Brome (Mr. McMaster) asked me if I was serious in suggesting that Canada ever received any such immigrants. I replied that I did not know whether Canada ever did or not, but I was merely referring to a fact in English history that there was a time when people sentenced for petty crimes were given the option of going to the colonies or of suffering the penalty of death. To-day, however, we find that these tortures and stupid penalties are very largely things of the past. To-day, there is an idea, at least, of seeking to reform criminals rather than simply to kill them; the death penalty has been abolished except for cases of homicide. Therefore the question that I wish to put to the House is this: If tortures and executions failed in the past in deterring criminals from the commission of petty crimes, is it reasonable for us to suppose that, in the major crime of taking the life of another, where this is frequently done

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in the heat of passion, the death penalty would be a deterrent? As a matter of fact, society has abandoned the death penalty in all these other crimes; but for some strange reason society holds on to this penalty in the case of the major crime.
I think you will agree with me that the time is sure to come, if it has not come already, when we shall lay aside this method of dealing with criminals, not so much in the interest of the criminals-indeed, I am not going to plead in the interest of the criminal classes at all,-but in our own interest we ought to abolish this thing because it is degrading and demoralizing to humanity; it is an outrage upon the finest sensibilities; and, in addition, it fails to do that thing for which we impose it, it fails to deter people from the commission of any crime. When the death penalty was in full force for all petty crimes, we found that such crimes were much more frequent than they are to-day when the death penalty has been removed. Of course, I am not going to argue that this result is due solely to the fact that we have removed the death penalty for petty crimes; but I think while much of the advance may be due to improvement in economic conditions and to the development of a moral consciousness, yet the fact remains that these crimes were not stamped out by the imposition of the death penalty. If crimes are fewer to-day than they were in the eighteenth century, that is because intellectually, morally and economically the race has outgrown them, they were not stamped out by the imposition of the death penalty. I am reasonably certain that the same thing will be true of the major crime of homicide if similarly treated.
To sum up my first point, I would say that history leaves no foothold for those who claim the necessity of continuing capital punishment. The motive underlying the Criminal Code, was based on revenge, and we cannot secure a civilized end on a basis of revenge. In seeking a rational sanction for the continuance of the death penalty we have assumed that it is a deterrent, whereas history has proved that it does not deter inasmuch as capital punishment has been abandoned as hopelessly ineffective in relation to all the petty crimes for which it was imposed in Great Britain in the eighteenth century. We find that notwithstanding the death penalty crime prospered and cruelty obtained; so that eventually the death penalty had to be abandoned. Capital punishment has been abandoned in regard to all the crimes for which it formerly was imposed, with the exception of homicide, for which we now contend that it should no longer be executed.
I suppose it was natural that the death penalty should be retained for the major crime a little longer than in the other cases, but it is destined to pass just as it has passed in relation to all other offences. In the minds of those who have not given very much thought to the subject capital punishment is [DOT] still believed to be to some extent a deterrent, and it is on this ground that we tolerate it at all. But keeping in mind the fact I have already pointed out, that history has repudiated it as a preventive of crime in all cases except murder, let us further pursue the argument from the scientific point of view. Let us consult those who have approached the subject from that standpoint. I think we ought in all fairness to call in the criminologists and penologists to help us to formulate our criminal code. I am sure that there are men in Canada who are closely in touch with all our criminal conditions who could give to this parliament some very interesting arguments against capital punishment, and it is a pity that we should not seek the best advice of those who are in contact with criminal life before we draw up any criminal law whatsoever. I believe that if we studied the work of criminologists a little more we should move towards the suppression of crime at its source instead of wreaking revenge upon the poor criminal after he has committed the offence. In order words, what we should be interested in is the prevention of murder and not the killing of some man for having committed murder. Our present method does not step in at all until the murder has been committed, when action is too late. We ought to look for some other way of dealing with the matter before the murder actually takes place, and I do not believe that this is an impossibility. The penal code of Canada, as of all other countries, should reflect knowledge rather than revenge. In this regard let me quote M. Boies, one of the modern criminologists. He says:
It is manifest that criminal law and codes are sporadic growths of past social circumstances and necessities, without any consistent theory or principle; devoid of order, harmony or system. When any particular crime became prevalent or annoying to society a penalty was offset against it in the hope, which has proved vain, of preventing its commission through fear of penalty. Criminal codes as they exist are in the light of the twentieth century intelligence a conglomeration of penalties of various degrees of atrocity, irrationality, absurdity and inutility. They are the relics of blind social struggle against social evils useful chiefly as antiquities, to be collected with thumbscrews, iron boots, racks, and torture wheels in museums.
The cause of crime should have a direct bearing upon our treatment of criminals. If crime is of the nature of disease, as it is held by many criminologists to be, then it
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should surely appear to hon. members an unpardonably stupid thing to punish a man for being diseased. If modern criminologists are correct in their general agreement respecting the causes of crime, then I affirm that it would be just as rational for us to prepare a prospective cancer patient to the graveyard as a means of curing him as it is to point the prospective murderer to the gallows for the purpose of preventing murder. Let us look for a moment into the question as to the causes of crime. According to the best modern authorities, crimes are caused in two ways, through hereditary influences and through environmental influences. The first influence, that of heredity, is like the seed, while the environment is the seed-bed into which that seed is cast. If a man is born with a weakness, mental or moral, and we provide the surroundings that are calculated to develop the inherited tendency, we shall have a criminal. Crime, therefore, is as inevitable a result as any other consequence of natural law, certain conditions being given. Hereditary weakness will lead to crime and the environment that is calculated to develop that weakness will produce the criminal. If that is so, then we have a tremendous responsibility which does not end at the end of the hangman's rope but which goes much deeper and should move in a different direction from that of capital punishment. The general conclusion arrived at by the modern student of this question is the absolute necessity of a comprehensive treatment of the whole body of criminal disease. The opinion is that we should treat criminals as we treat our insane or our diseased. Let me quote in this regard, very briefly, two or three writers upon the subject: Boies says:
It is a penological law that pernicious heredity must be checked and corrupting environment corrected.
Marro, another eminent penologist, found that 52 per cent of all murders examined into by him were directly traceable to ancestors. Others say that from 50 to 72 per cent of crime is due to pre-natal causes, and the remainder to defective education and deleterious youthful environment. Garofolo says:
That hereditary transmission of crime is established by unimpeachable evidence. It is a theorem of penology that crime is a diseased condition.
Suppose we assume, for a moment at least, that these gentlemen know something of what they are talking about, do we not see that when we think that we are preventing crime by means of ;the death penalty we are really in a fool's paradise indeed? There is no connection whatsoever between the crime and the punishment, and there cannot be, because if crime is caused

by inherent weakness developed through environmental conditions, then no amount of so-called deterrence of this character will have any effect whatsoever, any more than it would have against physical disease. Let me give some practical examples which will tend to substantiate my claim from the theoretic standpoint. I would refer the House to the most famous investigation that has ever been made into this subject, that carried out in the case of Jonathan Edwards and of Max, the progenitor of the famous, or infamous, Jukes family.
There were examined 1,594 descendants of Jonathan Edwards. Of these 245 were college graduates, 13 presidents of universities, 65 professor's and principals of schools, 60 physicians, 100 clergymen, 75 officers of the army, 60 prominent authors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 80 held public offices, some being senators, governors and mayors. Now, let us examine the family of Max, the father of the notorious Jukes family. Of the descendants that were examined 1,200 occupied penal and charitable institutions, and not one of them contributed anything to the public welfare. They cost the state about $1000 each, or in all $1,250,000. There were 310 in poorhouses for an aggregate of 2,300 years; 300 died in childhood, 840 viciously diseased, 400 physically wrecked by their own wicked practices, 50 notorious prostitutes, 7 murderers, 60 habitual thieves and 130 convicted of various crimes.
Now, I do not contend, Mr. Speaker, that this case alone is sufficient to establish my point; but it should indicate to hon. members who may not have gone into the matter at all that this is the method by which our criminologists have arrived at their conclusion that crime is largely a matter of inheritance and of conditions of life. Let me substantiate this further by quoting from the Ottawa Journal of last night. In its report of the double hanging at London, Ontario, yesterday there appears the following:
The gaol physician gave the two condemned men a glass of whiskey and morphine early this morning -"to make them cool and collected," he said. He added his previous claim that Topping had the mentality of a four-year-old. Mentally, he said, Murrell was normal, but had the morals of a four-year-old.
If there were other people in London or Ottawa who were simply four years old mentally and morally do you suppose that the hanging of those two criminals would have any particular effect upon them? Not the slightest in the world, because it is the mentally and morally deficient who commit crime. I do not suppose hon. members will consider that the hanging of those two men

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will be a deterrent to any of us, because of course we assume that we are not going to be criminals; we are hanging those men for the benefit of the other fellows. But the other fellows are mentally and morally incapable of being impressed by this retributive justice. Consequently we are perpetuating an institution which does not accomplish what we expect. The hangman with his rope is just like the medicine man of old times with his incantations. We need physicians and psychologists to handle our criminals, not the hangman; we need eugenics rather than the gallows. As I said at the outset, we ought to try to prevent murder, not to hang murderers; and if we are to prevent murder we must start somewhat earlier with our preventive measures.
It will be seen that the conclusions of criminologists are borne out by the facts of everyday life. If crime springs from heredity and environment, then punishment can have no deterrent effect. History has shown hanging to be ineffectual and our daily experience confirms history. We have seen that when capital punishment was abandoned with respect to other crimes, those crimes did not increase. Now, homicide does not differ as to its cause from any other crime- An execution would have the same deterrent effect on a prospective thief as it would on a prospective murderer; in other words, it would have none at all. 1 shall endeavour to prove this from other sources, but for the moment I think we might turn our attention to other countries where capital punishment has been abandoned. Take Holland for example, and I select it because its population is not much smaller than ours. Holland abolished capital punishment in 1870, and homicide has been gradually decreasing, until the latest figures I have show a very marked diminution of this crime. In 1894 twelve were convicted, in 1897 nine, and the figures continue to decrease, until in 1902 only three were convicted. I have figures for only a few years with respect to Canada. Our population of course is a little larger than that of Holland. In 1913 there were twenty-three convictions for murder, in 1914 twenty-seven and in 1915 thirty-four. You see, the death penalty does not diminish murder in this country. On the other hand, in Holland homicide is decreasing. I am not arguing that this decrease is due to the abolition of capital punishment, indeed I should spoil my argument if I drew any such conclusion from the figures. I am arguing that hanging has no deterrent effect whatever. At the same time I give these figures to show that it does not follow that with the abolition of capital
punishment everybody takes on homicidal tendencies. Holland is getting along very well indeed without the death penalty-better in fact than we are. I am seeking to prove that hanging does not deter the prospective murderer. In support of this I would quote from a volume on capital punishment which gives a very striking instance in favour of my argument
On the 21st June, 1877, ten men were hanged in Pennsylvania for murderous conspiracies. The New York Herald predicted the wholesome effect of the terrible lesson. " We may be certain," it proclaimed,
" that the pitiless severity of the law will deter the most wicked from anything like the imitation of these crimes."
Yet on the night following the execution two of the witnesses at the trial had been murdered, and before the 5th July, five of the prosecutors had met the same fate.
Now, however that may impress hon. members, it is very clear to me that capital punishment did not deter the commission of murder in that case. The people who had criminal instincts went ahead with their programme, regardless of capital punishment.
Let us regard for a moment the latest murderer, if you like, that we have in Canada. I do not know for the moment who he is, but let us consider his motives. Do you suppose that before he committed murder he stopped to think of the gallows? Well, if so, it did not deter him, because he committed the crime. Let us suppose he did not stop to think of the gallows. Well, in that case also capital punishment did not deter him, since he did not think of it, There is a fact that stares us in the face. Here is another singular instance. Rev. T. T. Roberts, an English clergyman, consoled 167 murderers, and 161 of these declared to him that they had witnessed executions. Let me give you a short quotation from another and more modern authority. I quote a short passage from the statement of the warden of Sing Sing prison, who has been engaged in that work for twenty years and who knows criminals and knows their psychology pretty thoroughly. In fact, I would like to refer members of this House to our own Superintendent of Penitentiaries, perhaps one of the ablest men we could have holding that position in Canada. I think you will find that he does not believe in capital punishment; he does not believe in it because he understands criminals and crime. It would have been well, perhaps, had we discussed the matter with him before the debate came on. But let me give you what the warden of Sing Sing says:
Social necessity is the only justification for capital punishment. Such social necessity does not exist be-
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cause the figures show that capital punishment does not cut down the ratio of homicides to population.
Therefore, capital punishment should go because in the few cases in which it is carried out it is a futile and a cruel and a brutal thing to do. That term "few cases" is important so far as the U.8.A. is concerned. Warder Lawes shows that out of every eightly-five men who commit homicide in American states where capital punishment is in effect only one is actually executed. The murderer rarely considers-
Here is another thing for us to notice with regard to the psychology of the criminal:
The murderer rarely considers the penalty of his crime. In those rare cases where the future consequences do enter into his calculations he regards himself as almost certain to be one of the 84 who will escape death.
That is the word of the warden of Sing Sing. These facts all prove that the death penalty does not deter, and science shows us, as I have indicated, why it does not deter- because it does not touch the causes of crime at all. These facts suggest also that we are cruel and unscientific to maintain this method of dealing with criminals.
Some have tried to show that the abolition of capital punishment would decrease crime. They argue, of course, that crime flourishes where it is punished most vigorously, and they prove from comparative statistics that in countries where the death penalty has been abolished crime has decreased. They also mention the power of the suggestion on a weak man of taking life. They also emphasize the fact that even for the state to take the life of another destroys the sacredness of life, and some argue that when a certain type of criminal feels that he is fighting for his life, as he has to do when capital punishment is in vogue, he becomes a sort of hero and rather likes it. This is an interesting field of inquiry, but I am not going to follow it, because I am not interested in proving that capital punishment increases crime. As a matter of fact, I do not think it does; I do not think it has any effect at all. It has no more the effect of increasing crime than of decreasing it, and that is the point I am endeavouring to establish: it does not affect the criminal at all, but it does affect us. That, I think, is self-evident.
I want now, in order to prove this a little more clearly, to refer to statistics which I have here and which I collected from the United States. I wrote to the attorney general of every state in the union and to each of them I submitted certain questions.
I will not bother you with going over all this long file, but I will just read the questions to you:
What is the punishment provided by law in your state for murder with malice aforethought?

If the sentence is death, what is the means of execution? If the sentence is death, has this always been the law of your state? If not, when was the change made and do you consider the change made an improvement or otherwise? If the sentence is not death, how long has the present law been in force?
Do you believe that the effect of the present law has been to increase or decrease this crime in your state?
Do you believe that the effect of the present law has been to increase or decrease the probability of conviction in cases where this crime has been committed?
Where the penalty is not death, does the prisoner do sufficient work to earn the cost of his maintenance and detention ?
Is any provision made for the compensation of the injured family of the victim?
I want to quote just one or two replies to these questions, to prove my point that the mode of punishment does not affect the amount of crime. The attorney general of Nebraska says that in his opinion the punishment makes no difference whatsoever to crime, and from the state of Oregon also we are told that it has no effect, so far as the opinion of the attorney general goes. I will quote one more, that from the Secretary of State for Maine. He says:
My personal opinion is that the death penalty or life imprisonment has no material effect upon the increase or decrease of crime. I do not think the murderer takes the penalty for his crime into consideration when committing it. He also invariably plans to escape any penalty.
These are the opinions of people from the various states. Some of these states have capital punishment, some leave it to the option of the jury, some have abolished it, and from all of these the opinion has been given that it does not make any difference to the amount of crime whether you have capital punishment, whether it is left to the option of the jury to give life imprisonment, or whether you have life imprisonment. So I think it is reasonable, in view of the evidence at hand, to conclude that from the facts of history, from the scientific point of view and from the testimony of people living in our own age who have dealings with the criminal class, the mode of punishment has no effect on the criminal.


Mr. MARCIL (Bonaventure):: May I be
allowed to ask my hon. friend two questions? Can he cite the opinion of any attorney general in Canada favourable to the abolition of the death penalty for murder? And will he also give us the statistics of murders committed by foreigners in Canada?


William Irvine: As to the first question, I
have not consulted the attorneys general of Canada in this matter because I did not suppose their opinions would be readily given if they knew I was going to advocate the

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abolition of capital punishment. As to the other I have no data with regard to the nationality of the people committing crimes in this country, neither do I think that is relevant to the discussion. It does not matter to me who commits the crime, whether he is a Hottentot, an Englishman or a Canadian; that has nothing to do with the argument. It is true that the hereditary influences to which those from some parts of the world are subject may be such as to make them criminals more readily under certain environments, but I do not see that that has anything to do with our discussion.


Charles Marcil: May I put
another question? Would my hon. friend put the hold-up man or the bank robber in the category of those who are suffering from mental disease?
' Mr. IRVINE:	Most decidedly. The
reason we have not robbed banks is that we have not suflered from the disease; if we had the same disease or weaknesses as those fellows who rob banks, we would be there now,
I do not know that we deserve any particular credit for not having the disease. I do not suppose these men selected it; they have had it placed upon them both by hereditary influences and by environment, and now they are the victims both of the past and of the present. If we have no better way of dealing with these men than that of simply slinging a rope around their necks, then we are more miserable than they. That is my honest opinion in that matter.


Charles Marcil: May I ask
one more question and then I am through? If a man serving a life sentence commits murder in the penitentiary, what would the hon. member do in a case like that? That occurred in Montreal after a lapse of twenty years without a single execution.


William Irvine: If my hon. friend will permit me to draft the Code the way I want to do it, I will provide for such a case. At the present time he is only a murderer whether in or out of prison when the act is committed and I think perhaps if the proper thing had been done with him in the first place, he would have been in an insane asylum. But when we get the proper way of handling criminals we shall not simply commit them to gaolers, but have them examined by expert physicians and psychologists, and in every case we would provide a proper place where the man could be taken care of. I think that was not done in the case my hon. friend mentions.
I want to bring a friendly challenge to the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) and to any hon. members who may oppose this argument, and it is this: I think it is due to Canada as well as to this parliament, that if the nation is going to continue to occupy the position of the avenger of blood with regard to criminals, there ought to be no doubt whatsoever about the efficacy of the system in securing the civilized end for which we retain it. I want the Minister of Justice if he opposes this argument to bring the proof-not belief merely, no mere opinion, but I want him to bring the proof-that capital punishment has hindered one single criminal from committing a crime. I want that proof; I am not going to be satisfied *with a mere believe in the efficacy of this old barbaric practice. Nothing short of absolute proof can be accepted as an excuse for Canada maintaining the death penalty and placing our nation in the position of an executioner.


Mr. PUTNAM:: In arriving at what appears like proof, would the hon. member concede that the wiping out of all punishment would increase murder?


William Irvine: I do not think it would. I
do not think that punishment has anything to do with crime, and I have been trying to establish that. But that does not mean that we ought to allow every criminal to run about loose. We must protect society. My point is that we ought to have a different method of treatment for the criminal. There is no necessity for the idea of punishment entering into the situation at all.
Now, what is it that we all seek to arrive at in our criminal code to-day? To put it briefly, what we are trying to do is to protect society. This is what we are aiming at; this is what our criminal code aims at. Now to kill the murderer certainly protects society so far as the murderer is concerned; he will not repeat his crime, at least not in this world. To that extent the present system is effective, but that is the only respect in which it is effective. We have to ask, then: Is there another method that will be equally effective, and that will not outrage our moral sensibilities as the present method does, and that will at the same time tend to deepen the idea of the sacredness of life? I believe there is another method, and that method is life imprisonment. I believe that life imprisonment will protect society better. It will remove the criminal from society just as effectively, in so far as his opportunity to commit murder
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is concerned, as if we hang him;
4 p.m. but it will do more than that. It will protect the individual himself from society. As a matter of fact, society exists for the individual. And yet under this present system it is not infrequently the case that the individual becomes the victim of society by being punished though innocent. I have a number of cases received from reliable sources in which the wrong persons have been convicted in Canada, but I shall mention only one, which I hope will prove my point in this regard. I refer to a trial for murder that took place in my own city of Calgary a short time ago. It is not necessary for me to mention the name of the victim, except it be demanded. The homicide was tried, convicted, sentenced to be hanged, and the date of execution was fixed. He was a poor man, and as the hanging day approached people began to worry about it-they always do when they know that at six o'clock tomorrow morning someone is going to be hanged. Any man and any woman with any imagination is bound to worry as the hanging day approaches. People began to worry about this man in Calgary: they were not sure that he had had a fair trial. The returned soldiers made a speedy collection of money to defray the expenses of an appeal. Appeal proceedings were accordingly instituted, a new trial was granted, and the conviction was set aside. Now, if the first conviction was correct, we have a murderer now running wild throughout the province of Alberta, awaiting the opportunity to kill another man. If, however, he was innocent of that crime, he escaped the gallows not by his innocence but by the activity of the returned soldiers of Alberta. That should be sufficient, I think, to prove to us the possibility of mistakes being made. Undoubtedly a mistake was made in one of those trials; I do not care which you say it is. But I want to point out this: It is the abhorrence which juries, judges, and people alike have for the imposing of the death penaltj' that militates against securing convictions. I think you will agree with me that the public opinion of Canada is not behind this method of punishment, and as a result it is quite possible that men who have committed murder are still at large and that society is not protected. If, on the other hand, we had life imprisonment there would be less difficulty in securing convictions and society would be better protected than under the present system.
I would urge this point. If we had a life imprisonment penalty the individual would be protected to some extent against the

mistakes that are possible under any system. As it is now, the wrong man may be hanged, and at the same time the guilty man may go free. Life imprisonment is a better protection for society, because it will increase the number of convictions and the criminals will not be at large.
I want to give just a brief quotation from the Governor of Wisconsin, not the present Governor, by the way. In a letter to John Bright, he said:
The evil tendency of public executions, the great aversion of many to the taking of life, rendering it almost impossible to obtain jurors from the more intelligent portion of the community, the liability of the innocent to suffer so extreme a penalty, and be placed beyond the reach of pardoning power, and the disposition of courts and jurors not to convict, fearing the innocent might suffer, convinced me that this relic of barbarism should be abolished.
The Governor of Michigan says:
Before the abolition of the death penalty murders were not infrequent, but convictions were rarely or never obtained. It became the common belief that no jury could be found which would convict. There can be no doubt that public opinion sustains the present law and is against the restoration of the death penalty. Conviction and punishment are now much more certain than before the change was made.
Let me give quotations from John Bright and one from Robespierre. John Bright says:
Whenever you hang a man in the face of the public under the circumstances to which we are so accustomed in this country, if you d* in the slightest degree deter from crime by the shocking nature of the punishment, I will undertake to say that you by so much, nay by much more, weaken that other and greater security which arises from the reverence with which human life is regarded.
Then Robespierre says:
The legislator who prefers death and atrocious punishment to such softer methods as are in his power, outrages public delicacy, blunts the moral sentiment of the people he governs, like an unskilled teacher who, by the frequent use of cruel chastisement brutalizes and degrades the soul of his pupil, in that he weakens and exhausts the resources of government, by stretching them with too much force.
So that I contend, Mr. Speaker, that life imprisonment should be substituted for the present penalty of capital punishment, and that such action would be much better for the criminal himself, relieving him from any possible suffering at the hands of society, and it would protect society very much better.
Let me mention in passing a number of countries that have abolished capital punishment. I have pointed out that Holland abolished the death penalty in 1870. "Belgium has had no executions since 1862; Norway no executions since 1870, and I think they abolished capital punishment in 1902; Sweden has almost ceased the practice; Denmark has had no executions for many years;

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Switzerland abolished capital punishment in 1864, Portugal in 1867, Italy in 1899. The state of Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1847, Rhode Island in 1852, Wisconsin in 1853, Maine in 1887 and Kansas in 1907. These countries are just as well protected as we are, and perhaps in some measure better protected, because flie abolition of capital punishment is protecting the best sensibilities of the community as well. My point is fully admitted if we say that these countries are as well protected as we are I believe that it is useless and harmful for us to maintain this irrational and inhuman method as a protection when facts prove that society can be equally well protected by a method less harmful to the morality of the nation. I plead then for a repeal of the present law as it stands, and the substitution of the measure that I have presented. Let me repeat: It is in our own interests that I am making this appeal; it is not in the interests of the criminal alone, but in the interests of the general public. With our present public press and with the imagination developed to a high degree, hanging is really more public to-day than it was in the days of John Bright and Robespierre. I think I should have to apologize to the House for presenting a press report of the hanging which took place in Montreal last week. I think perhaps the writer of this is doing a good service in shocking the public into a recognition of the effects of that law which they are silently endorsing, if not openly endorsing. The heading of this article in large letters is:



GOOD-BYE FOREVER

[Stage Direction]
Were last words of Wilfrid St. Onge on scaffold.
Youthful condemned murderer paid death penalty for his crime at 7.49 this morning at Bordeau jail. When black cap was fitted over his head, he said. " I ask pardon from God for any harm I have done."
Then it goes on:
Wilfrid St. Onge, murderer, paid the extreme penalty for his crime at 7.49 o'clock this morning when at Bordeau jail, Hangman Ellis pulled the lever which hurled the condemned man into eternity. And until sunset to-night there hangs limply from the jail tower a black flag, telling the message to the world that justice has been satisfied.
It was one of the most successful executions ever carried out in the province of Quebec. Not a hitch occurred to mar the smooth movements performed so many times by the officials, that there was little chance of failure. There was an air of solemnity; an atmosphere in the white-walled corridors which reminded those present of the majesty of the law.
And in adjoining cells, only a few feet away from the grim scaffold upon which any man condemned walks only once, are three other condemned prisoners, awaiting their summons to that which lies beyond.
And it goes into a description of all of the hanging and then the article proceeds:
Meantime in the rotunda of the prison there formed up the solemn procession. Two court officials in black robes and flat-crowned hats, draped with crape intertwined with red, carrying the staffs of office, led. Then came Sheriff Lemieux in purple, Governor Seguin in uniform, and the men who later were to render a coroner's verdict.
They marched quietly and quickly up the narrow stairway leading to the death cells. There Father Lessard was praying; there Hangman Ellis wearing a morning coat, saw that all was in order. St. Onge was ready. Preceded by two guards he stepped from his cell, and during the very few seconds it took him to go to the scaffold-only eleven steps-he said in French " Good day. Thank you." And as he raised his hand in salute " Good bye forever."
He stepped on the trap, and while the executioner placed the fateful black cap over his head, said in a firm voice:	I ask pardon from God for any harm
that I have done."
Beginning the Pater Noster as the noose-of three-quarter-inch white manila rope-was being adjusted and the straps placed about hands and feet, a sudden sound of falling, a deep gasp, and Wilfrid St. Onge had gone to meet his Maker.
And then a note to bring out in relief the main points of the hanging:
Father Lessard claimed the body immediately after the- inquest. This means that St. Onge will be buried in the potters' field. The laws of the church forbid . his interment in consecrated ground and if the body had not been claimed it would have found its final resting place in the jail yard.
All the prisoners in the jail were locked in their cells preceding the execution. The first two to be let out were those who had been deputed to carry the body to the mortuary.
A new rope - is always provided for each hanging. This one was of three-quarter-inch white manila, very strong. It was afterwards cut up and distributed to souvenir hunters.
Hangman Ellis said that with a man of St. Onge's weight a drop of more than seven and one-half feet would have torn the head from the body. He figured that the pressure as the rope became taut was equivalent to 1,200 pounds.
The jury was of the usual number for a cproner's inquiry. The evidence included reading of the Court of King's judgment, the declaration by Governor Seguin that the body was that of St. Onge, and the doctor s report that death has been caused by strangu-tetion. The seven men on the jury were John Phillips, Douglas R. Phillips, John B. Phillips, Emile Benoit, Maurice Gendron, Ldliis Francoeur and James R Watson.
Among those present was a man who had previously witnessed twenty executions. The story is told of him that when he went to the first hanging he bought a black tie. He painted a red stripe on it, and has worn it at every similar event since then. This morning, after he returned home he added the twenty-first stripe.
This is from the Montreal Herald of last week. With that kind of publicity, hanging to-day is just about as public, by the aid of our imagination, as it was in the eighteenth century. I am grateful to that scribe for having placed so graphically before the people of Canada that thing we are sanctioning by law by our inactivity, and I trust that those of us who have felt hurt inwardly at the reading of it will to-day take the step which will make it impossible for
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[Stage Direction]
any other reporter to repeat that in the history of Canada.
Let me then just refer to the argument in favour of public opinion. I will not detain the House by going through it all, but I will merely refer to numerous resolutions which I have here from labour unions, theo-sophical societies, from the Society of Friends and women's organizations all of which ask for the abolition of capital punishment. Let me refer to the press also. Such papers as Social Welfare, the Ottawa Citizen, Christian Science Monitor, the New Statesman, and so forth all declare that the time has come for the abolition of capital punishment. Let me just hold before you a petition with thousands of names signed by people throughout Canada asking for the abolition of capital punishment.
In conclusion, let me say that from those who, regardless of a proofless position, still hold that capital punishment is a deterrent, one might anticipate an argument such as was put forward by Lord Ellenborough in 1823 in the House of Lords. They were seeking to abolish hanging for stealing. At that time they could hang a man for stealing five shillings. When the. bill same up, Lord Ellenborough spoke against it and said:
Your Lordships will pause before you assent to a measure pregnant with danger to the security of property. The learned judges are unanimously agreed that the expediency of justice and the public security require that there should not be a remission of capital punishment in this part of the criminal law. My Lords, if we suffer this bill to pass, we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet.
Subsequent history, of course, has proved that the noble lord was then standing on his head. It is to be hoped that no hon. member of this House will stand with him to-day.
May I be permitted to sum up very briefly? History traces the roots of the motive for the death penalty back to the savage instinct of retaliation and revenge; no one will defend the present criminal code on the ground of its undoubted origin; the rational sanction which our humanitarian instincts have compelled us to find as a justification for this barbaric practice of execution, namely, the deterrent theory, we have seen to be, from the evidence of science and from the facts, reductio ad absurdum. We have the proofs that society can be protected better by life imprisonment; that this method would protect as well the public mind from the brutalising influence of taking life, and I have shown that public opinion is prepared for the change proposed in this bill.
Upon these grounds, I rest my argument. The fate of the bill will depend upon whether

the mere momentum of a practice that cannot be defended on historic, scientific, moral or practical grounds, shall carry us, or whether this House reaches a decision through the highly humanized intelligence which it undoubtedly possesses.
Enacted law is the register of nationl progress. What this House decides on this measure will indicate to the world both the moral and intellectual progress of this country. By our vote we are going to say to the civilized world what o'clock it is on the timepiece of our evolutionary process.
Mr. PAUL MERCIER (Westmount-St. Henri):: Mr. Speaker, if, for the purpose of
judging the merits of the question now before this House, one is transported to the sorrowful scene, on the day when a condemned man pays his debt to society, surely one's emotions are moved and one's judgment is greatly affected. Pity, touched to the supreme degree compels one to say: "The death penalty is indeed terrible to undergo. What a dishonour to a man and his family. Life imprisonment should be sufficient, much to be preferred. Our law makers should strike this penalty from our criminal code." On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, on leaving the confines of the prison immediately afterwards, our mind and our judgment are aroused once more to the great aspect of the nation. One then realizes that the country claims to-day from the legislator more even than ever in the past, the true social securities under which it has always been protected.
I submit respectfully, Mr. Speaker, that the death penalty is one of those securities that the legislator still owes to society, and that it must remain in our criminal statute as the penalty for those crimes to which at present it applies. In passing, let me say, Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note that in these times, reformers are more numerous than ever before. Everything under the sun is to be made over. Our constitution, to more than one, seems to give little satisfaction on certain points. Our laws are too severe. Sports and popular recreations become unrestrained and must be continually investigated and regulated. Nevertheless, common sense invites us, in these difficult afterwar days through which we are struggling, to take advantage of every parliamentary and popular liberty which Providence has bestowed upon us. The time has not arrived, in my humble opinion, for any futile reforms of the fundamental principles of the Canadian people, and of the laws which are actu-

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ally in force and which have survived up to this present year 1924.
Mr. Speaker, we must in our capacity as representatives of the Canadian public, do everything in our power in order that these constitutional principles may remain in their existing form and in their probity. After all, the anxious soul in the land demands the continuation of capital punishment, and for the following reasons:	Together with outstanding jurists who have carefully studied this question, this proposition of the right to punish, and of the application of the death penalty, I maintain the death penalty is necessary and legitimate-necessary assuredly in preventing any second offence on the part of the culprit. Does it not strike with terror to the supreme degree anyone who dares to think of it? No other punishment in our criminal code is comparable in this respect.
I understand that proponents of the abolition of capital punishment contend that depraved criminals do not dread mounting the scaffold; that the dishonour of a life continually passed in perpetual imprisonment and hard labour are to them infinitely more terrible. To these claims, Mr. Speaker, I answer: You, partisans of the abolition of capital punishment, go to the first penitentiary which you may find along your way. Propose to the condemned to exchange the fate which they await for any other punishment on the statute. Offer then to these men to exchange for the scaffold any other punishment, whatever it may be. The condemned to deal') will receive you with open arms, and those condemned to life imprisonment will recoil with terror, and cover you with their maledictions, asserting that you have no right to change their sentence. Moreover, I will add, under the cover of humanity, pity and compassion, attempt to send to the scaffold a prisoner condemned to hard labour for life, and immediately public indignation will raise a great agitation against that irony.
The zeal which is displayed by the proposer of this bill and the adversaries of capital punishment, in now demanding its abolition, shows the actual terror with which it inspires them, and if this terror appears so heartfelt in those who are not affected, surely it is ridiculous to pretend that it will be felt less in the minds of criminals who are directly concerned. Therefore, it is necessary to society. Again, any citizen in these days of plunder now disturbing city and country, would await with fear the abolition of the death penalty, and would strongly disapprove of our adopting this bill in this House. Every
member of this House knows that in these times, a man may be murdered for twenty cents; farmers, traders, bank clerks and messengers are robbed, and if they resist, they are murdered without pity. Jealousy and passions unrestrained are the causes of many crimes. The death penalty, ancient and terrible though it may be, is still the strongest check in the hands of the legislator, against serious crimes, to assure to society that protection to which it is entitled. Charles Lucas, a French jurist of the nineteenth century, and an adversary of the death penalty, in his book entitled "Regarding penal system and the repression system in general, and the death penalty in particular" says:
Every political institution has for its end not to invent, neither to create the right to command, for this right pre-exists in its relative superiority; neither to establish the duty of obedience, for this duty preexists in its relative inferiority; but to discover the right where it lies, and to give to it its proper place. It belongs to the highest spirit, to the most lucid mind to understand what are the essential duties for the maintenance of the social order. This being, alone or as a company, it matters not, is called the legislator. The right to command is his and it is his mission.
Is it not true, Mr. Speaker, that the legislator must necessarily protect the society and the individuals who respect his orders, and take proper precaution? The guilty must expect to suffer the consequence of his guilt. It is punishment in perspective. I do not claim, Mr. Speaker, that this punishment should be undergone by the guilty solely for the purpose of reforming him- But, on the other hand, I insist on saying that this punishment is inflicted as an end to maintain public peace, good order and morality, and out of respect to the laws and regulations, which are the corner stones of our social relations. The intervention of the law giver is not only legitimate, but also absolutely necessary. He has the right to command and to exact obedience. He has the right to punish. He punishes to prevent the repetition of misdemeanors like those which have been committed. His acts are beneficial to the country at large and it seems that this is his social mission. After all, a man must* expect to expiate his crimes; this is only just and legitimate. However, I admit that the legislator has a right against the delinquent, only in so far as there is a moral fault on his part, and in direct proportion to that fault. Our passage through life, our relations with our equals, go to show that every individual has certain duties to fulfil to God, to his fellow man and to himself. Only his duty to his equals falls under the protection of the penal code. The commission of crimes and misdemeanors logically demands the infliction of appropriate punish-
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Mr. CARROLL:: They were defended by a good criminal lawyer.


Mr. LOGAN:: Thank you. But there are other objections to hanging. There is that

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sloppy sentimentality which surrounds the criminal who is about to be plunged into eternity, which manifests itself in people sending the condemned man bouquets, and weeping in front of the gaol and in the preaching of sermons deploring the pending execution. In a word, the condemned criminal becomes a hero in the eyes of these sentimentalists. His case would not excite such sympathetic interest were he condemned to imprisonment for life with hard labour. I am not in favour of indiscriminate whipping, but there is no doubt that gunmen are cowardly at heart and have a wholesome fear of whipping and of hard labour. In many cases their crimes are in the main due to their desire to evade honest labour. Lacking the means to indulge themselves in laziness and luxury, they resort to desperate expedients.
My hon. friend (Mr. Irvine) has discussed the matter very thoroughly and quoted many statistics. I confess I am not very much impressed by figures. I am simply speaking as one who desires to see criminals punished- not made heroes of because perchance their life is to be ended by the hangman's rope. I desire to secure a law that will prevent crime and not produce maudlin sentiment. For these reasons I shall support the resolution.


Mr. ROBERT FORKE (Brandon):: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) has presented a very convincing case, but I do not agree entirely with everything he has so eloquently said. When we come to deal with individual responsibility we enter a very large field of speculation in which it is very difficult to draw any precise line of demarcation. It is perfectly true, as he argued, that people should be punished according to the light which they possess of the right or wrong of their actions. But I am afraid that in this very imperfect world a great many of such cases will have to be left to the final Judge over us all who can do no wrong. In the meantime we must endeavour to mete out justice to the best of our ability.
We sometime hear the phrase, "Sombre as a judge." I ask hon. members, if they were called upon under any circumstances to carry out the death sentence, would they undertake to inflict what they considered to be a just penalty? I have no hesitation in saying that not a member within range of my voice would undertake that duty, no matter how just he might consider the sentence to be. Then why should we depute some other individual to discharge a duty which we ourselves would not perform? Sombre as a judge 1 I remember a little over a year ago sitting beside one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Man-82
itoba. It was a festive gathering, and he was set down for a speech. He had been presiding at the fall assizes where he had tried several cases of murder. He did not discuss with me whether the sentence imposed was right or wrong, but he remarked that "Sombre as a judge" had a terrible meaning for him because of the tremendous responsibility he had to accept in ushering another mortal into eternity.
Punishment for wrong-doing-where do we begin and where do we stop? That is one of the most difficult questions to answer, for the punishment cannot be confined solely to the murderer. When you have punished him, is the punishment concluded? By no means. His wife and family and his other relations and friends are more or less affected by the same sentence. I think that no one premeditating murder ever thinks that he will be brought to justice. If he does, he has also schemed a means by which he expects to escape the gallows. Consequently the fear of hanging will not deter him from carrying out his desperate design.
I am inclined to agree with the hon. member (Mr. Irvine) that most criminals are more to be pitied than blamed. At the same time I do not believe in any sloppy sentimentality that would crown them with garlands and indulge them with an easy life at the expense of hard-working, law-abiding people. I would certainly want to see them punished for their crimes, but in such a way that the punishment, as I said, will have some relation to the measure of their ability to distinguish that which is right from that which is wrong. All students of criminology and of eugenics tell us that the mentality of individuals varies within a very wide range and, as has already been stated, it is quite possible for an adult to have the mentality of a child of four, six or twelve years of age. These things should always be taken into consideration in judging of the guilt of any human being. At the same time society must be protected. As has already been stated, many a criminal might be found to be more fitted for the lunatic asylum than for the jail if the condition of his mentality were properly understood.
Another thing that is noticeable-and I say this with a good deal of hesitation-is that very few people of wealth have ever been hanged. Look over to the United States and think of some of the cases you know of there: If the criminal has wealth and influence behind him he never pays the supreme penalty. Why should it be that justice is meted out to one class of society in one way and to another class in another?

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I have thought seriously upon, this question. Last session was the first time it had been brought to my attention. I had no ideas upon the subject; it was one of those things which I would like to have evaded, upon which I would like not to have been required to make a pronouncement either for or against. But I want to say to hon- members that it is rather cowardly to take that attitude on a question so tremendously important as this. It is no joking matter; it is a matter of life and death, and every one of us ought to make up his mind on the question whether capital punishment ought to prevail or not. By all means let every step be taken to protect society in every possible way.
Hon. GEORGE P. GRAHAM (Minister of Railways and Canals):	Mr. Speaker, I
am not anxious to speak on this question; I do so only because I feel it a duty. During the years that I have been in the House I have never evaded this question when it came up for discussion. I am absolutely opposed to capital punishment. I have yet to learn either from statistics or from argument that it is a deterrent, much less a preventive, of murder. We can only judge by results. If we take the countries in which capital punishment has been abolished and make a comparison in that country between the period when capital punishment was in vogue and a similar period afterwards, it will at least be found that crime has not increased.
Now, I am not a slushy sentimentalist, and I have no pity at all for the murderer. I am not going to discuss the psychology or the eugenics; I am going to take it for granted in my few words that the murderer was fully sane when he committed the deed. I want to ask, what good does it do anybody to kill him? The first answer will be that he is killed to protect society. Could' not society be protected just as well by shutting him up? If he be killed in revenge-and I am afraid that is in a great many people's minds-then we absolutely revert from the Christian era and go back to the time of "eye for eye, tooth for tooth;" we assume to assemble ourselves as a court of justice when in reality we are assembling as a court of barbarians. The treatment of criminals in general is undergoing a change. One of the most cruel things, to my mind, in our daily Christian life, if you call it that, is to find that society with all its embellishments, professed Christianity with all its enlightenment, gives comparatively little or no encouragement to the man who has been guilty

of crime and is trying to make good. I have the honour to be at the head of an association which has as part of its work the reestablishment so far as possible of men and women who have been convicted of crime. When one sees the shrug of the shoulders and the refusal of really pious men and women to give the unfortunate who has fallen down temporarily a chance to recover himself or herself, it makes one doubt the efficacy of what we call Christianity. If Christianity does not mean taking the erring brother or sister by the hand and endeavouring to show him or her a better way, then it is meaningless, and we have been following something that has no tangibility.
I have been asked this question:	"You
have such an apparent sympathy with the murderer; what about the murderer's victim?" Now, will any person tell me again what benefit accrues to the murderer's victim or to his family by taking the life of a murderer? What possible benefit accrues to them? Nothing, except it be that "revenge is sweet," and the state has taken to itself the power to execute that vengeance. Is there not a better way? Would it not be better for society, would it not be better for the family of the victim, if the murderer were placed in a penitentiary and made to labour the rest of his life and contribute the benefit of that labour to the family of whose bereavement he is the cause?


Mr. PELLETIER:: But if he escapes
from the penitentiary?


Mr. GRAHAM:: Then our justice again
is weak, because it will be our fault if we allow him to escape.


François Jean Pelletier: He is apt to do the
same thing over again.


George Perry Graham: True, there are exceptions, but I think my argument holds, that in the main if benefit is to come to the victim's family it can in no wise come by taking the life of the murderer. But on the other hand some return can be made, some recompense-material it is true-can be offered to the family of the victim if the cause of their bereavement is made to labour in their behalf the rest of his life under state supervision.
I do not want to labour this question. I cannot for the life of me, feeling my responsibility, not as a member of the House but as a member of society, get away from the fact that has burned into my soul, that notwithstanding all the laws man can make I still am responsible in a measure and am my brother's keeper. That being true, if

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means can be evolved by which society will be protected-and that is absolutely the only legitimate reason for punishment, the protection of society-if society can be protected as well by life imprisonment as it can by a second killing, then I say let us adopt the life imprisonment.
But there is another thing. Innocent men have been hanged, and they have been hanged in Canada. Now would it not have been better if the innocent man had been imprisoned for life, and was in a position where the state could make restitution so far as possible for the wrong done to him?
Perhaps there is even higher ground than that. Mankind is universally good. There is something good in every one of God's creatures; there is no question about that; and if, society being protected all the time, an opportunity may be given to the criminal to make himself right not only with his Maker but with the rest of humanity, is it not wise and in the interests of the world that that opportunity should be given?
There is anothe? thought that comes to my mind, and it has been very forcibly expressed by the hon. member for Cumberland (Mr. Logan). I have said that innocent men have been hanged. There is no doubt in the world also, that guilty men are abroad in the land to-day. Why? For the reason given by my hon. friend from Cumberland, because jurymen dislike very much to take the responsibility of sending to the gallows a man as to whose guilt there may be the least shadow of a doubt, and they have in consequence erred the other way. I would do it myself if I were on a jury. I say that society is not protected nearly as much by maintaining the death penalty as it would be if the death penalty were abolished. I feel that I am not a sentimentalist at all on this question. It is not a question of sentiment; I am viewing it along the broad lines of endeavouring, first, to protect society to the utmost; that is a duty we owe to society; secondly, to prevent the slightest possibilty of an innocent man being convicted and hanged; and thirdly, to give the man himself, if he has been found guilty, a chance to make himself right in the years that are before him.


Mr. W. D. EULER (North Waterloo):: Mr. Speaker, I have for some years taken some interest in this question. Last year I listened with a good deal of interest to what the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) had to say, and again to-day. I cannot say that I can follow him entirely in all of his opinions; for example, when he regards crime as altogther a manifestation of disease, I 82 i
cannot follow him all the way. At the same time I am in favour of the bill which he presents to-day; I am not in favour of capital punishment.
To my mind there are only three possible reasons that can be advanced for the imposition of capital punishment. The first one, is that of revenge; the second is to prevent a repetition of the crime by the culprit himself; and the third is to deter others from committing murder. That of revenge I think is hardly worthy of consideration in a civilized nation; individuals perhaps may be excused by us for exercising revenge, but surely it is not excusable for a nation or a nation's representatives to take revenge upon one individual.
Then we come to the other reason, to prevent a repetition of the crime by the culprit himself. As has been stated here, repetition can be prevented by other means such as life imprisonment.
Then there is the argument that we should execute the murderer because that will deter others from committing a murder. I am not at all satisfied that that is the case. I have given some attention to statistics; I am not going 'to review them or present them to-day, but I am fairly well convinced that capital punishment does not deter criminals from committing murder. I do not believe in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred that a murderer when he commits the crime is thinking of the death penalty attached to it at all. The greatest preventive of murder is to inculcate in the people themselves a reverence for human life.
If I should summarize the arguments against the infliction of capital punishment, my summary would perhaps be this: One reason has been urged by the Minister of Railways (Mr. Graham), to give the criminal himself a chance. In a Christian country I suppose that is a perfectly proper sentiment. Personally, although I am not going to place myself outside of the category to which I have just referred, I must admit that consideration for the criminal is about the last thought I have in mind. When I am asking for the abolition of capital punishment I am not thinking of that particularly, but I am willing to give that its fair consideration, because, after all, even the worst of criminals should be given some opportunity of retrieving himself. I am willing to say that. Secondly, there is the possibility of irretrievable error, the possibility that an innocent man may be hanged. Third, there is the disgrace that attaches to the family and relatives of the condemned person, and I think that is worthy of consideration.
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But the greatest reason of all to my mind, and the one reason why I oppose capital punishment, is that the whole in-5 p m. stitution is an affront to the community itself. It is not necessary for me to speak of the horrors attending an execution; that has already been done to-day by the hon. member for East Calgary. To condemn a man to a strangling shocking death, and submit his body to the indignity which hanging imposes is, I think, repellent and repugnant to every person. We have had in my home city of Kitchener two hangings, the last one some two or three years ago, and I know from personal experience that for perhaps a week or less prior to the execution itself there was in the subconscious or perhaps the conscious mind of every person in that community, man, woman, and child, a growing horror of what was going to take place upon a certain day and at a certain hour. That horror increased from day to day until the gruesome tragedy was completed at the time appointed. That feeling was not merely because a man was to die, but it was because of the manner of his death. We may know, as we frequently do, that a certain person in the community must die by reason of some fatal illness; we take that in a philosophical way; perhaps we have regrets; we sympathize with the person and with his people, but there is not the horror we experience in connection with a hanging. But we Shrink instinctively, I think, from a practice which outrages in one of our kind the dignity and respect that we have for the human body and for human life.
That briefly, Mr. Speaker, is my argument against capital punishment. I would like to say this, in conclusion: If we must have capital punishment, we surely ought to change the method of inflicting it. The practice of hanging, to my mind, is about as barbarous a one as can be conceived. We ought to adopt some more humane or less barbarous method. I would like to make another suggestion: If capital punishment be continued, let us not only adopt some more humane way, but let us not have these executions take place in the locality in which the murderer or victim has lived. We would then at least escape this condition I have spoken of, this feeling of horror in the minds of everybody who lives near the place of execution. I would suggest a central place of punishment, perhaps the penitentiary, to which all criminals of this kind may be taken and quietly done away with, if it is necessary to continue this barbarous practice- I am in favour of the bill.


Mr. W. C. GOOD (Brant):: About thirty years ago I read an essay by the English novelist Thackeray entitled " On going to see a man hanged," and I think from that time until the present I have never had any real doubts as to the barbarity and cruelty of the antiquated system we are still following. I wonder if the House would bear with me if I read a few sentences from that essay which was written in England eighty-four years ago. Listen to this, a bit of the grimmest satire you can find anywhere:
If a public execution is beneficial-and beneficial it is no doubt, or else the wise laws would not encourage 40,000 people to witness it,-the next useful thing must be a full description of such a ceremony, and all its entourages, and to this end the above pages are offered to the reader. How does an individual man feel under it? In what way does he observe it,-how does he view' all the phenomena connected with it,-what induces him, in the first instance, to go and see it,- and how is he moved by it afterwards? The writer has discarded the magazine "we" altogether, and spoken face to face with the reader, recording every one of the impressions felt by him as honestly as he could.
I may say by way of explanation that this is a paragraph towards th^ end of the essay. Continuing he says:
I must confess, then, (for "I" is the shortest word, and the best in this case), that the sight has left on my mind an extraordinary feeling of terror and shame. It seems to me that I have been abetting an act of frightful wickedness and violence performed by a set of men against one of their fellow's; and I pray God that it may soon be out of the power of any man in England to witness such a hideous and degrading sight. Forty thousand (persons (say the Sheriffs), of all ranks and degrees,-mechanics, gentlemen, pickpockets, members of both Houses of parliament, street-walkers, newspapers-writers, gather together before Newgate at a very early hour; the most part of them give up their natural quiet night's rest, in order to partake of this hideous debauchery, which is more exciting than sleep, or than wine, or the last new ballet, or any other amusement they can have. Pickpocket and peer each is tickled by the sight alike, and has that hidden lust after blood which influences our race. Government, a Christian government, gives us a feast every now and then: it agrees-that is to say- a majority in the two Houses agrees-that for certain crimes it is necessary that a man should be hanged by the neck. Government commits the criminal's soul to the mercy of God, stating that here on earth he is to look for no mercy; keeps him for a fortnight to prepare, provides him with a clergyman to settle his religious matters (if there be time enough, but government can't wait); and on a Monday morning, the bell tolling the clergyman reading out the word of God, "I am the resurrection and the life", "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away",-on a Monday morning, eight o'clock this man is placed under a beam, with a rope connecting it and him; a plank disappears from under him, and those who have paid for good places may see the hands of the government agent, Jack Ketch, coming up from his black hole, and seizing the prisoner's legs, and pulling them, until he is quite dead-strangled.
I shall also read a few lines at the very end of the essay.
This is the 20th July and I may be permitted for my part to declare that, for the last fourteen days, so

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salutary has the impression of the butchery been upon me. I have had the man's face continually before my eyes; that I can see Mr. Ketch at this moment, with an easy air, taking the rope from his pocket; that I feel myself ashamed and degraded at the brutal curiosity which took me to that brutal sight; and that I pray to Almighty God to cause this disgraceful sin to pass from among us, and to cleanse our land of blood.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I desire to refer to a copy of an address delivered on the 18th of October, 1922, by George W . Kirchwey, a former warden of the Sing Sing penitentiary in the United States, at an American Prison Association meeting at Detroit, Michigan. He opens by stating that there are three general arguments that have been advanced on behalf of capital punishment. As those have been already dealt with to-day, I shall not further refer to them. Continuing he says:
The argument for the elimination of the murderer as a menace to society is founded on an assumption which everyone who has an intimate knowledge of men convicted of murder knows to be baseless, namely, that murderers are murderers by nature, prone to kill, and that they constitute a professional class like burglars, pickpockets, robbers and the like. Both these types may be represented among those whom the law has branded as murderers, but they constitute an insignificant fraction of the total number. Among the thirty men whom I knew in the death-house at Sing Sing and the 200 or more who were "doing life", I found only a half dozen who seemed to answer that description- one of them a reputed "gunman" from New York city, who became violently insane a few days before his execution, and the other the only person I ever knew who seemed entirely devoid of any sentiment of pity or sympathy and who was diagnosed by the physicians as a psycopathic personality. Doubtless the execution of these two was no loss to the world, but most of the others seemed to me to be of the type described by Sir Basil Thompson, the head of the British Secret Service (Scotland Yard), in his recent work "You have to be in charge of a prison," he says, "in order to realize that the murderer is rarely a criminal by nature at all. But for the grace of God he is just you and I, only more unlucky. Most murders are committed without any deep laid plot... The murderer is repentant, and is planning only how he can earn an honest living after he is discharged."
If this seems a bit too sweeping, let me assure you that it is far nearer the truth than is the popular conception of the murderer. I made it my business to know every man in the death-house while I was at Sing Sing. The only characteristic that they had in common was that they were sick, tortured souls over whom hung the pall of the awful fate that awaited them. Only a few of them were criminals in the ordinary sense of the term and one, whose death sentence had been commuted to imprisonment for life, complained to me of the fact that he was in a situation where he could get so little decent companionship, there w'ere so many crooks. A few of my murderers were obviously feeble-minded, a few apparently insane or psychopathic, but most were of the kind described by Sir Basil Thompson,-men who, but for the accident of fate-some jam in the wheels of life, some uprush of upsetting emotion, some bewilderment of faculties- might have been even as you and I are this day.
Further on he quotes from Governor Davis as follows:	; x, |[ ji
It is thus easily to be seen that, on the whole, it appears to make little difference in the prevalence or scarcity of homicides whether the punishment is death or life imprisonment. In fact, there would seem to be a slight lessening of homicides where no death penalty exists. At any rate, these figures tend definitely to show that the deterrent of capital punishment is largely mythical and merely an imaginary factor.
Then he proceeds to discuss the question from the point of view expressed in the statement : " Eliminate murder, not the murderer," but I shall quote no further.
I noticed, not many weeks ago, in the Ottawa Citizen, the following letter, which I think, was taken from one of the American papers. It appeared to me to be so pertinent to the question under discussion to-day, which I then thought might come up at some future date, that I clipped it out, and I should like to read to the House one or two paragraphs from it. The letter is entitled "What is prison for?":
I take it that most of us no longer believe in the theory of punishment. We put people in jail because we believe they are dangerous to the community. Accordingly, we should let them out as soon as we have reason to believe that they are no longer dangerous. It may be quite evident that the man who has killed is never going to do it again and that the shoplifter will continue in his usual pursuit as soon as he is released. In that case it seems to me quite silly to keep the murderer in the jail for life and to let the shoplifter go.
If we had judges and wardens wise enough, there might be just one universal sentence for all criminals. Each would be sentenced to remain in prison until cured.
The subject has been so completely covered to-day that I do not think it is necessary for me to speak any further. I trust that the government will leave this matter to be settled by the House after a full and free discussion, and that this House may take the humane and Christian view which, I think, has been so well expressed to-day by the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham). I listened with singular pleasure and satisfaction to his concise and complete statement of the case in favour of the abolition of capital punishment.


Mr. W. K. BALDWIN (Stanstead):: Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to speak on this matter, but as the argument is getting into the sentimental line, much can be said for and against capital punishment. Before I would vote in favour of this bill, I would ask that there be more amendments to our criminal code, guaranteeing that every murderer, every man who is premeditating murder, such as those who are now rampant in the country, engaged in robbing banking institutions particularly, to enrich themselves so that they can live in luxury for the balance
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of their lives, can be kept in chains or caged and compelled to work twelve or fifteen hours a day, so that he may earn enough to cover the expense that it would take to keep him from ever again becoming a prey upon society. It might be possible to make society perfectly secure in this regard by using chains, shackles or cages, but until that safeguard has been effected, I shall have to vote against the bill.


Mr. WOODSWORTH:: Would the hon.
gentleman apply that same rule to those who rob banks from the inside as well as to those who rob them from the outside?


Willis Keith Baldwin: Certainly. If you find
murderers on the inside as well as the outside, I would apply the same rule. I would have them work for the state for at least twelve or fifteen hours in every twenty-four, and have shackles on their feet while they were not working, and possibly even while they were working. But I would have them so that they could never escape and prey upon innocent society again in their lives.


Charles Marcil: Mr. Speaker, if my memory serves me well, I have had an opportunity, on at least three occasions, of listening to a debate on this question during the last twenty-five years or so, and of voting once or twice on this question. I, therefore, consider it my duty to give a word of explanation. In a matter like this, I would be guided, not by sentiment, but by eminent men, legal men who have given up their lives to the study of law, and that is the reason why I asked the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) to give me the authority of any attorney general of any province of Canada or any attorney general of Canada who had ever advocated the abolition of the death penalty. We are not turning our eyes to the United States now for precedents in these matters. Great Britain is good enough for us yet, and I hope she will continue to be for a long time. Great Britain has not abolished the death penalty, for good reasons, no doubt.
The constituency which I have the.honour to represent 'and have represented for a quarter of a century, has not seen an execution in fifty years. When I was a young boy, employed in Montreal in newspaper work, I acted for some years as coroner's clerk. One morning, in fulfilment of my duties, I had to go down to witness the first execution that had taken place in Montreal in twenty years. It was an extraordinary thing to see an

execution in those days. This man had committed his crime while serving a term in the penitentiary, and while he was comparatively a young man, twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, he had spent some fifteen years of his life in jail or penitentiary. Conditions are no better now than they were then. We must admit that since the Great War, things are not much better than they used to be. There is a looseness of morals the world over, a condition of things which is really discouraging.. What happened in Montreal last week is something that is worth while pondering over? At two o"cloek, in broad daylight on Ontario street, one of the most frequented thoroughfares of the city, three or four young men, engaged in the fulfilment of their duties, were held up by half a dozen gunmen and shot at, one, the sole support of his mother, shot like a dog. The other man, Stone, who was shot at the same time, had a penitentiary record of twelve different institutions. He was then unfortunately under bail for a crime which he had committed.
As regards the idea of changing this punishment to life imprisonment, life imprisonment does not always mean what its words contain. The Crown always has the right to revise the sentence passed upon a man serving a sentence of life imprisonment, and I have in mind the case of Morin, of Montmagny, whose name will be familiar to the Minister of Justice. This man was granted a reprieve on the eve of his execution, and he was sentenced to St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary, where, after ten years, on the recommendation of the late Sir John Thompson, he was liberated. Life imprisonment, therefore, may mean a very short term. No man wishes to have capital punishment carried out if that can be avoided. The jury that are called on to try a man charged with murder are told, in effect, in the last words that fall from the judge's mouth:	"If you have a reasonable
doubt, it is your sworn duty to give the benefit of that doubt to the accused." When the verdict is given by the jury and the judge is called upon to pronounce the sentence, he has to write out a full report of his notes and to transmit the evidence to the Department of Justice, where that is scanned carefully by men who are experts in such matters. The minister himself has to examine into the case and the Privy Council has to do likewise. The great majority of capital sentences, or, I should suppose, at least half of them, are never carried out, but they are cases, not for the sake of revenge, because the state is not looking for revenge, but for the sake of preventing repetition, as a deterrent and for the protection of society-

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Mr. SHAW:: Is the hon. gentleman prepared to say that the statement of the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham)) is wrong, that men who are innocent have been hanged in Canada?


Charles Marcil: No doubt
men have been hanged for what we to-day do not regard as offences. I could mention some who were hanged for political crimes and whom nowadays we consider heroes, monuments being erected in memory of them in the public squares of large cities. It depends upon the point of view. But we are proceeding on the old theory that it is better that ninety-nine guilty persons should escape than that one innocent man should be convicted. As the leader of the Progressive party (Mr. Forke) said a moment ago, the great Judge is the judge of all; but I do not think that the Department of Justice in Canada is willing to admit-at least I have not heard that the admission has been made-that any really innocent person has been convicted, or, as it is said in French, that an erreure judiciare has been committed.
I do not recollect anything of that kind. But in view of what is happening now in the Mother Country and in Canada, and in view of the complete absence of any recommendation, for a change in the mode of punishment, from any legal authority in this country, from any judicial mind, or from those who are trained to deal with such cases, I think the time is ill-chosen to bring about a change in this respect. I certainly will vote to sustain the institution as it is.


Andrew Ross McMaster: I want to make a few brief remarks on the subject matter of this bill, though I quite realize that the question has been covered most amply in the very eloquent and learned discourse with which the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) has favoured the House, and also in the very able remarks which have been addressed to us by the Minister of Railways and Canals (Mr. Graham) and the hon. member for North Waterloo (Mr. Euler). There are however a few observations which at this time it may be fitting to make, especially in reply to the hon. gentleman who has just resumed his seat (Mr. Marcil, Bonaventure). The hon. gentleman said that in regard to this matter he would take the views of legal men. Now, I have a high respect for legal men; I feel that there are few classes in the community who deserve so well of their fellow-citizens. But I am sorry to say that in the past legal men, especially when they have mounted the bench, have not been the best authorities for
one to accept as regards the advisability of change or reform. Lord Ellenborough was one who spoke against the abolition of the death penalty for petty theft, as was well explained this afternoon by the member for East Calgary. And I regret to say that in a discussion of this question years ago in the Mother Country John Bright was forced to point out that the elimination of the death penalty on many occasions had been brought about in the Old Country in the face of the opposition, if not of all at least of a great number of the judges, who were anxious that it should be retained for the punishment of crimes which are now considered trifling.
I was somewhat interested in hearing the hon. member (Mr. Marcil, Bonaventure) declare that institutions that existed in Great Britain were institutions which we should unhesitatingly and unquestioningly accept. My mind instantly turned to the hereditary House of Lords in England, and I wondered whether the hon .member would be willing to see such an institution created and perpetuated in this country. My hon. friend's views in regard to the institutions of Great Britain are hot very consistent. When the hon. member for West Calgary (Mr. Shaw) adduced, as an argument in favour of the divorce bill which he had before the House the other day, the fact that his bill was on all fours with legislation that presently existed in Great Britain, the hon. member for Boniaventure opposed it.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: I might be permitted to
point out for the benefit of the member for Bonaventure that there is at present before the British House of Commons an application similar to the one under discussion in this House for the abolition of capital punishment.


Andrew Ross McMaster: That being the case,
if such legislation is passed in Great Britain the hon. member for Bonaventure would consistently support a similar measure in this House. The hon. gentleman is not altogether consistent in his admiration for things Britannic. He said that he would sustain the present institution, in view of the things that were happening in the Motherland. I wonder, does he refer to the coming into power in Great Britain of the Labour government? Does that fill his mind with dread? I trust not; because I think the people in all the nations of the British Commonwealth view that circumstance with a good deal of satisfaction and hope for the future of the British race, and wish that government well. As long as seventy years ago one of the best, the wisest and the most characteristically English
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of British statesmen, the late Right Hon. John Bright, strongly supported the abolition of the death penalty.
The arguments in favour of the principle are, I think, overwhelming. Surely, all civilized people admit that the only sound argument in support of the retention of the extreme penalty is that it is a deterrent; and surely the burden of proof is upon those who urge its retention. My examination of the question leads me to the belief that capital punishment is not a deterrent. Who would be the best judges as to whether the death penalty was or was not a deterrent? Would it not be those men of education and character whose position at the head of penitentiaries would bring them into contact with murderers? The opinion of a judge sitting on the bench that the death penalty is desirable has not the same weight as the opinion of a man who by reason of his duty comes into close contact with homicidal criminals. And I think it is pretty well the view of a very large number of men who have served as wardens in penitentiaries that capital punishment does not deter men from murder. In fact, I remember some years ago hearing a very celebrated American warden of Sing Sing penitentiary-I think his name was Osborne-declare that, far from the death penalty being a deterrent, it had entirely the opposite effect; for whenever a man went to the electric chair to expiate the crime of murder he became a hero to the underworld. And the same thought has been brought out this afternoon by the hon. member for Cumberland (Mr. Logan), who has pointed out that once a man has been condemned to death he is regarded as a martyr rather than a criminal. If, then, capital punishment is not a deterrent there is no other reason for our maintaining this method of punishing human beings. I would respectfully point out to the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) that as a matter of fact the imposition of the death penalty is out of date and is not working well at the present time. It is ineffective for reasons which have been placed before the House and which I beg the House's pardon for insisting upon again. To-day in all parts of the country where "twelve good men and true'' are called upon to "a true presentment make between the prisoner at the bar and our sovereign lord, the king," they have such disinclination to the death penalty that they will seize hold of any shred of evidence, or the want of evidence, in order to be able conscientiously to bring in a verdict of not guilty. As the feelings of our people become more and more attuned to higher civilization, it 
will be more and more difficult to find juries who will bring in a verdict of guilty in capital charges.
And not only has it that effect, but in my experience it has influenced those who would otherwise be ready to become judges. I remember in Montreal, during my brief experience as a practising lawyer, it was expected that one of the ablest men of the Montreal bar would be elevated to the Court of Appeal,, and it was common rumour among the lawyers that this gentleman, who would have made a most distinguished judge, refused to accept the position because he would have to deal with criminal cases. He could have given distinguished service to his country, but he did not feel that he could sentence a fellowbeing to capital punishment.
If there is fair ground for believing that the deterrent nature of the death penalty is not satisfactorily proved, then it would appear to me to be well for Canada to put herself in line with other civilized countries and abolish the death penalty. It is not a deterrent because, as I said a moment ago, more and more will juries fail to convict on capital charges. I do not go all the way with my hon. friend from East Calgary in thinking that punishment has no place as a deterrent against crime. I think it has. But I think he is largely right in his view that criminality is very often more of a disease than an expression of premeditated wrong-doing. I think punishment has its place, but it is not the severity of punishment, it is its certainty which is the real deterrent. And if you make punishment so severe that society draws back and refuses to impose it, so far as its deterrent effect is concerned it would be far better to have punishment which is less severe but more certain.


Ernest Lapointe: Mr. Speaker, last week a delegation interviewed the Home Secretary of Great Britain, the Right Hon. Arthur Henderson, a prominent member of the government of which my hon. friend (Mr. Irvine) has spoken so eloquently. Mr. Henderson is a reformer, he is a progressive in every way. This will be generally admitted. But here is the report of the interview which I find in the Morning Post of the 25th March last:
The following official report was issued from the Home Office:
The Home Secretary received this morning a deputation of members of a number of societies who placed before him various considerations and statistics in support of the abolition of the death penalty in this country. The societies in question were: The Committee for the Abolition of the Death Penalty,

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the Society of Friends, the Women's Co-operative Guild, the Howard League for Penal Reform, the Central Council of Societies Working for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, Manchester Society for Abolition of Capital Punishment, Women's Freedom League, and the British Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Mr. George Lansbury, who introduced the deputation, drew special attention to its representative character as indicating a recent rapid growth of public opinion on the subject.
He was followed by Major Christopher Lowther and Miss Margery Fry, who argued the case in greater detail, and produced various figures.
The Home Secretary, in replying, thanked the deputation for waiting upon him, and for their full statement of their case, and promised that w'hat they had said would be brought before the government in an appropriate form before any decision was reached by the government on the question of abolition. He pointed out, however, that any government must take public opinion into account, and that so far as his long parliamentary experience went there was little evidence of any general public desire for abolition, the subject not having been debated for many years. He also pointed out that before a government could recommend an alteration in that law they would have to consider very carefully what satisfactory alternative punishment they could properly suggest.
As I have stated, Mr. Henderson is the Home Secretary in the British government, and as such he is entrusted with the responsibility of the administration of justice in Great Britain;-perhaps he may have had other views in the past, as I read in a newspaper that the delegates were surprised at his answer, but he has that responsibility. I am in the same position in this country, and I must share the views of Mr. Henderson. As far as my own personal feelings are concerned, by temperament and by instinct I would be inclined to vote for the bill, but from a high sense of duty I feel that I cannot do so, and that for the present we must retain capital punishment. If I were convinced that any other form of punishment would be as effective for the protection of the Canadian people, it would be my duty to recommend its adoption. It is because I do not believe that capital punishment can be replaced by any other form of punishment which would be as effective that I am forced to take this stand.
I have listened with a great deal of interest to the remarks of my hon. friend from East Calgary. He is to be congratulated on the manner in which he has expressed his views. This question has engaged the attention of the students of sociology in all the civilized countries in the world, and there have always been great differences of opinion with regard to it. Arguments of great weight can be adduced on both sides. Statistics can be produced, but statistics in this matter are unsatisfactory and inconclusive. Apart from
the form of punishment we must consider the race, the customs of the people, the climate, the environment generally-all these considerations must be had in mind when you deal with statistics produced in favour of or against capital punishment. The countries which are most similar to ours so far as the mentality or the make-up of the people is concerned are Great Britain and the United States. I happened to lay my hand on a very able article in The English Review of September last, written by Major J. B. Paget on the "Death Penalty in Time of War," in which the w'riter quotes some statistics. Major Paget says that during the war the death penalty was necessary in the army to prevent desertion. He said that the percentage of Australian deserters was about four times that of the English. I quote from the article:
I tried to find out the reason, and came to the conclusion that it was owing to Australia having no death penalty for desertion. In the New Zealand forces, on the other hand, they having the death penalty, the percentage of deserters was even smaller than the English.
He points out that in the beginning there was no death penalty for desertion from the Canadian army and that a rather large number of desertions took place; then they brought in the death penalty and the percentage sank to the same as the English. He found the same situation in the American army. He says that the greatest deterrent against desertion in the army is the death penalty. He points out also that so far as the civil population is concerned, in time of peace the United1 States, with the population of 110,000,000, has some 8,000 murders a year. Of those convicted for murder, Major Paget says,-and this has been stated also by my hon. friend who proposes this bill-only a certain proportion are executed. He goes on to say:
In the British Isles the death penalty has hitherto been inflicted on the great majority of convicted murderers. With a population of some 46,000,000, not more than about 200 murders are committed annually.
And he adds:
The unwritten law and brainstorms cut little ice with a British jury.
Eight thousand murders in the United States with a population of 110,000,000; two hundred murders in the British Isles with a population of 46,000,000. Here in Canada where we have the death penalty and where it is enforced we have had for the last ten years an average of twenty-five murders per year, which is less than three per million of the population. These figures are a decisive answer, it seems to me, to many of the argu-
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ments advanced this afternoon. These are from countries which are similar to ours, and I do not think they can be successfully challenged.
I would not wish anybody to think that capital punishment is carried out in the spirit of retaliation, or revenge, or vengeance- It is not for that purpose, and that is not the consideration which influences me in favouring a continuance of capital punishment. It is as a deterrent; and whatever may bo said I am convinced that it is a deterrent. After all, every human being values life more highly than anything else, and even the dumb animals recoil from death. It is a deterrent, and it is a protection of society. If only one innocent human life is saved through capital punishment, I think it is our duty to maintain it on the statutes of this country.
Canada has an immense territory which is sparsely populated and there are places where women and children live miles away from the nearest neighbour. These women and children must be protected. We have immigration which brings to this country people from many parts of the world, and statistics in the Department of Justice show that 49 per cent of the murders committed in Canada in recent years have been committed by foreigners. I think capital punishment is a protection and that we should keep it. I repeat that if I could convince myself that imprisonment for life would be just as good, just as effective a punishment as the death penalty, I would be in favour of changing the law in that regard. But I am not convinced of that.


William Irvine: Would the minister be good enough to give the House one proof that capital punishment is a deterrent? That is the ground upon which he says he favours it.


Ernest Lapointe: I have given statistics
and I have stated my firm conviction. My hon. friend has given his opinion and I am giving mine- If I were moved only by sentimental and humanitarian feelings I would vote with my hon. friend, but my best judgment and my conscience tell me that I cannot support the proposal embodied in his bill.


Charles Marcil: Can the
minister tell the House that in any case where the death penalty was imposed the victim asked that it be changed to life imprisonment?


Ernest Lapointe: They all ask for a change of sentence to imprisonment for life.
At six o'clock the House took recess.

After Recess
The House resumed at eight o'clock.



PRIVATE BILL


[Stage Direction]
Mr. ROBERT FORKE moved the second reading of Bill No. 47, incorporating The United Church of Canada.
Mr. WILLIAM DUFF:: (Lunenburg):
Mr. Speaker, before the disposition of this bill takes place on its second reading, I should like to make a very few remarks. Speaking for myself personally, I do not think it is necessary to make any lengthy remarks upon the bill at this stage. This is a very serious matter and-


Robert Forke: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member agreed with me that there would be no discussion at this stage of the bill, on condition that I did not speak. The hon. member came across here and agreed with me that there would be no discussion on the second reading.


William Duff: I did say that I did not intend to make a speech, but my recollection was that I was to enter a formal protest so that the opponents of this bill would not be put in the position of adopting the principle. We are quite ready that the bill should go to ithe committee on Miscellaneous Private Bills, and there be discussed clause by clause. The only thing I want to do now, and I thought I had made that clear to the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) is to enter this formal protest before the bill receives its second- reading. I do not think anybody can object to that.


Robert Forke: That is all right.


William Duff: I think that is only fair and
proper. I may say that I also am the victim of a misunderstanding with my hon. friend in one particular, because when I went over to see him the day before yesterday and asked him when he intended to introduce this bill he told me, if my memory serves me aright, that it was not going to be introduced until after Easter. So I too have a grievance.
We who are opposed to this bill have no objection to the hon. member for Brandon or anybody else introducing a bill to incorporate the United Church of Canada. So far as I personally am concerned I am quite willing for one or more persons to come before parliament and ask for the incorporation of the United Church of Canada or any other church, but what we do want to do is to protest against the principle of this

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bill. We are quite satisfied to let the bill receive its second reading and go to the committee on Miscellaneous Private Bills if we can have a free and full discussion there on every phase of the bill from the preamble to the last clause and there protest against any clauses to which we cannot agree. If in addition there is also opportunity for free and full discussion of the bill in Committee of the Whole and again on its third reading, we are ready to let the bill receive its second reading and go to the committee on Miscellaneous Private Bills.


Mr. MURRAY MacLAREN (St. John City and Counties of St. John and Albert):: I have not entered into an arrangement of any kind with the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke), and therefore I feel . perfectly free to speak on the second reading of the bill, but perhaps it may be soothing to my hon. friend to tell him that I do not propose to do so. I do wish, however, to make a few general observations, not by way of discussion.
There is a great deal to be said on this bill, but I consider it more suitable to have the discussion at a later stage, and this is the reason l do not propose to discuss it just now, because as this is a private bill the second reading does not concede the principle of the bill.
One point I wish to mention is this: I do not think that there is objection to the incorporation of the United Church, provided that the church is for those who wish to go into it, and provided further that those who do not so desire may remain in their mother churches.
The other point I wish to mention, because it is a general principle, is this:	There is
objection made, as we know, by Presbyterians that the petitioner for the bill, the Moderator of the General Assembly, has not been authorized by the General Assembly, and even were he so apparently authorized, the General Assembly has no authority to so authorize him. I say this because I wish to draw the attention of the House at once to the fact that this matter is now pending in the Supreme Court of Ontario, and judicial decisions are being sought on the question of the constitutionality of the procedure. The other matter, Mr. Speaker, is that there are many grave complaints made by Presbyterians regarding various other sections of the bill; so much so that I join with the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Forke) in urging that the motion for the second reading of this bill be passed at once, so that the committee may have an opportunity of hearing a full statement of the complaints as they are made by Presbyterians.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the select standing committee on Miscellaneous Private Bills.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Irvine for the second reading of Bill No. 3, to amend the Criminal Code.
Mr. T. W. BIRD (Nelson):: The value of this debate I think has been already assured. It has elicited from two ministers of the Crown very significant and very impressive speeches. Although they came to different conclusions, it was possible to recognize behind their expressions of opinion a common feeling, I might say a delicacy of feeling, a refinement of sentiment, which it does one good to see in men occupying the positions which they occupy. After listening to those speeches I felt as others must have felt, that the doom of capital punishment has been already pronounced. The speech of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) was as cogent in that direction as the remarks of the Minister of Railways (Mr. Graham). He expressed a refinement of sentiment which some of us believe his whole nature is compact with, and I believe that sooner or later that sentiment, which is by no means monopolized by the minister and his colleagues, will see the finish of capital punishment, and of every other summary means of dealing with problems that are really social and not individual in character. I agree with them that sentiment is largely out of place in a discussion of this kind. Nothing can be settled by sentiment, because sentiment beclouds every issue into which it enters, and there is no necessity for bringing sentiment into this argument either on one side or the other. We may appeal to the sentiment of the public, but unfortunately feeling is balanced by fear, and fear is one of those emotions that is just as easily appealed to as sentiment, and if ever you introduce an argument along sentimental lines, another argument is sure to be introduced appealing to fear which overwhelms us immediately, and we do not get anywhere.
I should like to make a few remarks without going over the ground which has already been covered and I desire to base my approach to this question not upon humanitarian grounds, but rather upon, if I may use the word, societarian grounds. I agree with the Minister of Justice that society needs protection, and that it is our duty to protect society, but I disagree with the argument that is implied in his statement.
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What he means by protecting society is protecting certain individuals in society. Strictly speaking it is not society he is thinking of. He is speaking of certain individuals in society and not of society as a whole. He is speaking of protection in exactly the same sense as the party to my right speaks of protection. It is not protection of society at all. Society is not concerned. It is the individual that is concerned. For many, many generations we have been concentrating all our attention in a blind way trying to protect the individual and we jeopardize society. That is what we have been doing and are doing yet. We are trying to save individual souls, and in the process of doing that we have been consigning multitudes to perdition. That is the way we manage to do things in this topsy-turvy world. My hon. friend from Brome (Mr. McMaster) did well to introduce the name of John Bright into this argument. After all the sentiment behind this appeal is liberalism. In order to perpetuate liberalism and to save liberalism, we have to be liberal all round. John Bright was not liberal in parts; he was liberal in every fibre of his being. When he thought about protecting society he was not thinking of certain individuals in it to the exclusion of others. He was thinking of society as a unit in which he himself existed, and of which he was a part, and with which he felt sympathetic.
I think the time has come for all intelligent communities to begin dealing with causes and not with effects. Crime, however you look at it, is a symptom. Crime, wherever it exists, is a token that something is wrong with society, because the criminal arises from society. He does not make himself, and in order to deal with crime you have to get behind the individual and deal with society for its responsibility. There is, Mr. Speaker, a famous saying of a philosopher who belongs to the same race as the Minister of Justice, that if we knew all we would forgive all. When you see the criminal standing at the bar, he is not nearly so guilty as superficially you think he is, and the public against whom he is supposed to have sinned are not so guiltless as you think they are. No, if we knew all, we perhaps, might not forgive all, but we would forgive a great deal. Forgiveness is not a maudlin sentiment. Forgiveness is recognition by men and women that humanity is one. It is a recognition of the solidarity of society. It is a sympathetic understanding of the mesh-work of relationship in which we all exist, and when one sins, 
all sin, all have sinned. The Great Author of mercy on one occasion gave a dramatic illustration of this. He was present when capital punishment was about to be administered and He said to the judge and jury who were also to be the executioners: "He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone." He did not mean that they were sinners in the sense that the criminal was a sinner, but he meant that they as representing society were responsible. I think we have arrived at that stage in the development of humanity when the most benighted of us have some sense of what it means to have a sympathy as wide as humanity itself, which does not exclude even the criminal, but which looks upon the criminal as our own flesh and blood.
As regards the argument of sentiment, I dislike sentiment, as I said before, when we are dealing with rational matters; but what is sentiment and what is not sentiment? When the time comes for the criminal to approach his death, it is almost invariably the case that the public or a large section of it becomes sentimental, and that sentiment is expressed in many ways. It is the habit to speak lightly of that sentiment, but I do not speak lightly of it. It is not a light thing. What are the facts? On the eve of execution there in that lurid light stands a man, or a woman it may be, of our own flesh and blood belonging to our own race, and in the background you have those terrible realities which the society that has made him what he is has painted to our imagination, rightly or wrongly. I think we all recognize the fact to-day, that is, if we think at all, that this sentiment, which we sometimes deride, is profounder than superficially we may consider it to be. There is the condemned man standing against that background which the teachings of society have impressed upon our imagination and mind, whether it be Catholic or Protestant, whether it be Dante or John Milton. There is that man about to be launched into that terrible condition of things which is at the base of all our convictions. Is that not a time for sentiment? I will guarantee that it is not only the sentimental people who send flowers and notes of condolence to the condemned that feel that sentiment, but other people, more reserved, feel that sentiment as well, who do not express it. I think it is a mark of high development in a man's condition when he feels that sentiment. What kind of a person could be unmoved when, by the volition of society a human soul is cast into conditions like that, which society has, through the ages and generations, instilled into our very convictions and sentiments?

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Then there is the sentiment in regard to degradation. We all revolt at the thought of delegating one of our fellow citizens to kill another, and rightly so, although I do not agree that under all conditions hanging is degrading. I know plenty of people whom I would like to hang myself. I would like to be on the end of the rope-I mean the other end.


Mr. PARENT:: Is that sentiment?


Thomas William Bird: I think my self respect would be in no wise injured by the deed. It is no use arguing that under all circumstances the violence of society is degrading- I am not one of those who believes that stern measures introduced by society, in the interest, not of individuals, but of society for its own protection, not for the protection of any part of it, are wrong. I believe sometimes they are right. I do not think hanging in the days of Walpole, Pitt and Newcastle degraded them in the sense that it degrades us to-day. At any rate, it ought not to be so. If it degraded them then, if they hanged men for stealing sheep or a 25 cent piece or its equivalent, I can see quite clearly that its reaction upon them would probably be trivial as regards its moral significance; but for us in the twentieth century, this is a different matter. People in those times, when hanging became part of the British constitution, believed in political corruption. I cannot conceive of our believing in political corruption in the twentieth century. We are growing out of those things. All history is a proof of that.
There is the argument as to the deterrent value of hanging, and I want to part company here again in a sense from some of the advocates of this bill, because I believe that punishment, even hanging, is a deterrent. All history is very clear proof of that. Unfortunately, sometimes it has deterred the wrong things. Sometimes it deters right things as well as evil things. Sometimes it deters other kinds of criminals than the homicidal criminal. Sometimes it has deterred people who would obtrude themselves into places where they had no right and claim for themselves powers which they had no right to claim. Hanging has had very salutary influences throughout all history; but as I said before, we are getting on. When hanging became part of the British constitution, as some people seemed to think it did, the medical science of that time believed that phlebotomy was the deterrent for influenza and headache- They believed in bloodletting for trivial ailments of all kinds, we have outlived that age. There was a sense in which it was true that bloodletting
cured those ailments; it was a deterrent; but a great deal of water has run under the bridge since those times ,and we have been enlightened in many respects. Surely the time has come when we, civilized people as we are, should be able to adopt better expedients than those. As an expedient I say it has had its day. It has ceased to be effective, and it is a wrong expedient for the age in which we live.
More than that, it is a stultifying expedient. I believe that a condition of society that pins its faith upon curing the criminal by killing him will always have criminals to kill. It is the point of view that is wrong, and so long as you have that crass, unenlightened individualism that blinds you to your social obligations and makes you feel that you stand apart from your fellow men, you will always have a society in which there are criminals. That is the soil out of which criminals spring, the lack of social obligation and the lack of social sympathy, these are the things that create criminals. Unless therefore you get rid of these conditions you will never get anywhere at all. I think it would be well if this country or any other civilized nation would make an experiment in abolishing this outworn expedient, not with the hope that things will be immediately improved.
Unfortunately I cannot entirely share the view of those who are arguing in support of the bill, that the abolition of capital punishment will not involve greater responsibilities on the state than heretofore. The moment capital punishment was abolished" there would devolve a tremendous responsibility upon society, and society would be exposed to a new situation. I will go thus far with the opponents of the bill. But what does that signify to a civilized and enlightened community? It would simply steel people up and put them upon their mettle. I argue for the bill therefore because I think it will help the Canadian people to recognize their social responsibilities and would induce us to remove those conditions that create the criminal. I do not believe in tampering with the constitution or in doing away with institutions if there is nothing of a constructive character to substitute in place of what is rejected. The fault of this individualistic age is that the virtuous men go forth shouting, " down with this and down with the other," and are too individualistic to see that when they have cast out one devil seven others are likely to take its place. I believe that in Canada at the present time there is a sufficiently strong social sentiment and sense of oneness, a sufficiently
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developed sense of economic justice, for us to be able to dispense with this outworn expedient which is a disgrace to any highly civilized people, and to usher in instead a regime of social improvement and of educative effort that will in time largely eradicate criminal conditions and render criminals just as impossible as the present antiquated method of dealng with them is out of date.
Miss AGNES C. MACPHAIL (Southeast Grey):	Just twice in my life have I come
closely in contact with capital punishment. The first time was the day that I wrote my entrance to normal examination. I will never forget that day; it was in Stratford, Ontario, and as we passed the jail on the way to the collegiate institute the black flag was at half mast and I knew of course that this meant that capital punishment had been executed, that the extreme penalty of the law had been enforced that morning. I have not forgotten the feeling I had then. I felt that society as a whole had deliberately contemplated and taken the life of this man, who it is true had taken the life of another. The second time I came closely in contact with capital punishment was last week and I am not likely to have forgotten the fact so quickly. I was reading about a week ago that they used to hang people in England at one time for picking pockets. They had public executions and the picking of pockets at these public executions became so prevalent that they had to abandon the public execution of pickpockets. When we are trying to teach children to be truthful do we lie to them? I think not. Or if we want to teach people to be honest, do we steal? If we want to teach the hater to love do we hate him? Well, then, if we want to teach people to respect and revere human life, that which we can take away but cannot give, can we do so by taking human life? It seems to me that if we are going to really reverence human life we must as a society refuse to take i't; we must come to the view that punishment should be of a reforming character rather than revengeful. It is true that the taking of life is wrong, but two wrongs do not make a right. To me life is sacred, and because it is such a sacred thing that I personally could not take the life of any one, even though that one had taken the life of another, I support whole heartedly the bill that is before the House.


Mr. H. C. HOCKEN (West Toronto):: I am not at all a sanguinary individual; I never had any desire to see the rope around any one's neck. But I do not think there TMr. Bird.)
ever was a more inappropriate time than the present for parliament to take up such a question as that which is under consideration to-day. There are men going around this country shooting anybody who gets in their way, sometimes merely for the purpose of taking money from some individual; and for fear that that individual will defeat their attempt to rob some one else they shoot him, as has happened within the last few days.


Hance James Logan: And we have capital punishment.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Yes.


William Irvine: Why did it not stop it?
Mr^HOCKEN:	You will not stop it by
making the penalty less than it is to-day, and any one who argues thus is, in my judgment, talking in a perfectly futile way.


Joseph Tweed Shaw: Will the hon. member prove
his Statement?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I am going to let it go
with my assertion. There is nothing a man values so much as his own life, whether he be a murderer or not. There is nothing that will deter a man from murdering another so much as the fear of losing his own life. That is the one thing above all others that he desires to protect and preserve, and I cannot agree with those who argue that by removing the penalty of capital punishment we are going to reduce the frequency of murder. Those who argue that capital punishment has not curtailed murder might as well argue that in providing a very excellent home for drunkards and thieves, a place that is very much more a home than a prison, you are creating the very best conditions that can make for the discontinuance of thieving. There is a gaol farm near Thornhill in the province of Ontario where drunkards, thieves and other petty criminals are given every advantage that accrues from living under wholesome conditions and engaging in farm work. They are as well fed as if they were living at the Queen's Hotel; I do not mean to say that the bill of fare is as varied, but it is as wholesome. These men are not overworked, but they are given sufficient exercise to keep them in sound health. But we still have drunkeness and other vices in the province. I would have hon. members understand that I am in favour of dealing with petty criminals in a tender way if there is any hope of reforming them; I would not treat them with unnecessary harshness. But I want to see those who break the laws restrained; they must be restrained. However, those who commit what might be called

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petty offences, as compared with murder, are well treated all over this country. But that does not stop their criminal career. Men go out of the gaol fawn I am referring to and commit the same offences for which they were first put under restraint. Now, if the application of the golden rule which my hon. friend speaks of were effective, these men should not commit similar offences within a week or two of regaining their freedom.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Has the hon. gentleman studied any statistics showing the proportion of those who after being given their parole do not offend again?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Yes, I believe a great many of these petty criminals do not come back, and on the whole I think the system works out fairly well. I do not mean to say that every criminal on leaving the jail farm resorts immediately to a life of crime. I do not think my hon. friend will argue that every man sent to jail for close confinement goes back to a career of crime immediately on regaining his freedom. Many men have been reformed during the course of their imprisonment. But I am arguing that if, as is claimed by some speakers, gentle treatment is going to reform criminals, such treatment has not so far proved to be a specific in restraining such men from further crime. They have criminal instincts and appear to be incorrigible.


William Charles Good: Does the hon. member contend that there is a smaller proportion of real reforms effected under the present so-called lenient system than under the previous system?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: No, I do not so contend. I do not know, but I hope that a larger number are reformed under the present system. That is the reason why municipalities in my province spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to support such institutions. Every effort is being made to reform the criminally inclined, but crime is still committed. It is all very well to talk about the sacredness of the life of a murderer, but I think we should have some regard for the sacredness of the life of his victim. The man who has no more regard for society and for the sacredness of the life of anyone who stands between him and the possession of a few dollars is, in my opinion, getting no more than just punishment when he is called upon to give up his own life for having committed a cold-blooded murder. Those who argue there is anything cruel about such a sentence I think fail to see the real measure of justice that is behind it. Capital punishment is not applied in a spirit of revenge. Who is there to revenge? The family of the victim have no power to
revenge the death of their relative. Society must protect itself against the murderer and must, by using certain methods, render it impossible for that man to commit a second murder.
Now, if we are to follow out some of the social programmes of reformers, we shall have to begin with every child and see that it is trained in such a way that it will not become a criminal. That is what I assume our schools and churches are trying to do to-day with the children of all classes-teaching them to be moral, to obey the law, to be good citizens. But in spite of all these beneficent agencies, men and women coming from What might be considered good homes fall into evil ways and commit various crimes leading up to murder. Who is to determine whether this child or that is defective until it has done something which demonstrates that it is sub-normal? I do argue that nothing should be done in a collective way to improve our social life, I am ready to support any agency to that end, but I submit that if you remove all the penalties and punishments for crime you remove every deterrent against wrong-doing, and if you remove capital punishment, my judgment is that you will have many more murders, because if a man is inclined to commit murder-and I am speaking of deliberate cold-blooded murder, not of an act arising out of passion-and he is conscious that he will not have to surrender his life but will be committed to the penitentiary, he knows that inside of a few years by submitting to the prison discipline and building up a record for good behaviour he will regain his freedom, that man I say will not be deterred so much in his actions as if he knows that upon conviction for murder he will forfeit his life. There can be no deterrent equal to the forfeiture of a man's life, and any person who argues differently has, I submit, lost sight of one of the fundamental characteristics of human nature. A man will give everything to preserve his life, and if capital punishment does not deter him his case is hopeless.
Since the war closed we have had a series of the most unprovoked, deliberate, coldblooded murders that have ever disgraced civilization.


Miss MACPHAIL:: Does not the hon.
member think that the reason for such murders is that the war itself was simply an utter disregard for human life on a large scale?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: I tthink there may be a great deal in what the hon. member says.
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We looked upon the taking of human life during the war with a good deal of indifference as compared with our attitude in peace, and it may be that a good many of these bandits were closer up to the fighting line and have carried into civil life the practices of war. But take the cities of this continent, you find men organized in gangs who for a few paltry dollars do not hesitate to shoot down people. Such men are simply mankilling tigers, and it is not safe to allow them to be at large.


William Irvine: Does the hon. member
think that I am proposing that the mankilling tiger shall run loose?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: No, but I am pointing
out that the resolution means that he would ultimately get out.


William Irvine: What	resolution?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: The	resolution before us,
I am pointing out that if you do away with capital punishment-


William Irvine: There	is no resolution before the House. There is a bill before the House.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: Well, call it a bill.


William Irvine: There is no such proposal.


Horatio Clarence Hocken: All right; I stand corrected-it is a bill that is before the House- not a resolution; and the bill is to abolish capital punishment and give the murderer a chance to go into the penitentiary for a few years and get out again.


William Irvine: Who says that? Do you
say that?


Horatio Clarence Hocken: My hon. friend knows very well that while the penalty may be life imprisonment there is hardly a case where a man remains in the penitentiary until his death. The clemency of the Crown is sought by his relatives and by societies such as my hon. friend speaks for, which will get up petitions signed by the yard, asking for clemency for this man and for that. So that after a few years in the penitentiary, with reasonably good conduct-that is, if he does not run amuck and kill somebody else-the convicted man is released. Has the time spent in penitentiary reformed him? Has it made him a good citizen? Is he likely to be a saner and better man when he comes out than when he went in? I do not think so. If he has criminal instincts, inherited, as my hon. friend suggests, and developed by environment, they are certainly not removed by life in the penitentiary, where he is herded entirely with [Mr. Hocken.l
criminals and (is not subject to the beneficent influence of decent society around him as he is when he is out of prison.
I think it is a very great mistake for us even to discuss a question of this kind in the House at this time, for if ever in the history of Canada it was necessary to bring before the criminal population of the country the fact that there is a real penalty and that for murder the penalty is forfeiture of life, that time is now. If this thing is a disease, do you not think steps should be taken to discover it before it breaks out in that murderous form? And if every man who is a criminal or betrays criminal instincts is to be treated as a subject for hospital, then we had better get to work and build hospitals in every county. If you are going to house under detention every defective and every feeble-minded person-because you will have to do that if you want to guard against the development of the criminal instinct in those who are .defective or feebleminded-then you must have institutions in practically every county in the Dominion of Canada.
I believe, Sir, in doing everything that can possibly be done to instruct the youth of this country in the penalties for offences as well as' in the satisfaction of doing right. I am not altogether satisfied that our universities and our whole educational system are upon the right basis. I think a good deal more might be done in the way of educating the children to-day so that they will grow up not only to know that it is wrong to com-
9 p.m. mit crime, but also to understand that if you want to live a decent, a good, a happy life, they must do right. The thing to do is not to tell boys and girls that they must not do this and must not do that. The thing to do is to teach them what they ought to do because it is right and keep them busy doing right. I am not sure that our schools are doing that as effectively as they might. At all events you will not make any progress in the elimination of murder within this country by removing the one penalty that is best calculated to deter the criminal from that offence.
Mr. JOS. T. SHAW (West Calgary): Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) is to be congratulated on having presented to the House in a very definite and clear-cut way the argument against capital punishment. I think he is further to be congratulated on having eliminated from his consideration the question of sentimentality: he has endeavoured, and,
I think, successfully, to present the argument in the light of cold and calculated reason.

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I agree with the hon. member for Brandon <Mr. Forke)) that if any member of this House were asked to draw the bolt which might drop some unfortunate individual into eternity, he would hesitate to undertake the task. But we must not forget that as a parliament, we constitute the hangman of the nation. Upon us rests the responsibility; we cannot shelve it off on some mortal whom we may delegate to draw the bolt on a particular individual. The responsibility rests collectively and individually upon this parliament, upon every preceding parliament, and upon every parliament, for continuing in existence this method-I think this barbarous method-of extinguishing life. So I say it is a solemn and a serious matter and one which should engage our very earnest consideration.
It cannot be denied that punishment by the state has, generally speaking, two objects to serve: First, to punish the individual, and, in cases other than those in which the capital sentence is pronounced and carried out, to reform that individual, and, secondly, to deter those under temptation from committing similar offences. Now, in examining this question I think it is well for us to determine on whom the onus lies of establishing whether or not this system should be continued. I venture to say, and I do not believe there is a single member of this House who will contradict me, that the onus rests upon the advocates of capital punishment to establish beyond a doubt that that is the system which will deter the commission of similar offences. Let there be no mistake about that, because I want definitely to charge the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) and those who think with him that the responsibility is theirs to establish to the satisfaction of this House the necessity for the continuance of this system of punishment.
What are the essentials that must be established? It must be established, first of all, whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent; secondly, whether it is the sole deterrent, and, thirdly, whether it is indispensable. Those are the three factors that must be established before this parliament can be justified in continuing to act as the hangman of the nation. When we commence to discuss the deterrent value of capital punishment-because so far as the person who is executed is concerned that is the only substantial question with which we are concerned -we enter at once into a field of surmise and of conjecture. I venture to say that no one can distinctly state what the deterrent value of capital punishment is. If you take a look at the figures you will find, for example, in the United States, where in some states they 83
have capital punishment and in other life imprisonment, and where they have gone from one variety to the other and back-that there is substantially no difference in the figures. I believe that if the figures prove anything they prove that there is little difference in the result, whether life imprisonment or the supreme penalty of the law is exacted.
Realizing his responsibility in this matter, the Minister of Justice has given us certain figures with which to establish the contention that capital punishment is essential,, and, I suppose, to prove that it is a deterrent. Well, now, let us take his figures. He compares the three Anglo-Saxon countries, the United States, England and Canada. He shows that the number of murders committed in the United States is much larger proportionately than those committed in Canada and that in Canada the number is proportionately smaller than it is even in England. We have capital punishment in all these places. Does it prove what the Minister sets out to prove? Not at all. What it does prove is that if we are to believe reports that come to us from time to time from the United States, it is not the severity of punishment that counts as the deterrent factor; it is the certainty of punishment that counts; and so I venture to say that the figures given in that connection by the minister do not in any sense at all establish the object for which I presume he gave them.
Then he gave us certain other figures. He found himself under the necessity of going into the field of war for the purpose of producing some figures. He tells us that the Australian troops were not subject to the death penalty in the ease of desertion, that at the outset of the war no such rule prevailed in the Canadian corps, but that among the English troops the death penalty was always exacted for desertion. He produced no figures in that connection but gave the statement of some writer, and we do not know whether that gentleman produced any figures or not. But the situation is altogether different. That was not a society of men organized for purposes of peace. That was a society of men organized for purposes of war-a most unusual and most unlikely situation from which to extract figures to prove that capital punishment was ' desirable. In the next place I venture to put before the House the situation with regard to a young soldier who has been charged with desertion. Just imagine his situation. Here he is, on the one hand, facing danger and the possibility of death. We know nothing with regard to his physical condition, we know nothing with regard to his mental condition, and under these circumstances, fac-

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ing an unknown future and perhaps overcome and losing control of himself, he deserts the army and goes into the back areas. Now surely the minister, if there is anything in his argument at all, could have gathered from some other course some arguments that would have justified him in saying that capital punishment is in deed and in fact a deterrent to the commission of murder by other people. I want in this connection to read just a short statement made by the same gentleman from whom the hon. member for Brant (Mr. Good) quoted this afternoon:
Here, on the bare plane of justice and expediency we might let our argument rest, in the full confidence that a system which violated those canons of civilized living cannot much longer be endured. But the problem has a deeper aspect. The whole upward struggle of humanity is an effort to realize and consecrate new human values, a nobler range of feeling. It is not enough to "let the ape and tiger die"-the one must be supplanted by the man, "looking before and after;" the other by the finer feelings which are embodied in the humanitarian sentiment to which I have previously referred. What, then, can be said for a system of punishment which keeps reviving in us the sentiments of hatred and cruelty which are our worst inheritance from our animal forbears? We aim to inculcate a respect for human life by ourselves showing our contempt for human life. Some of the most tragic effects of this procedure have been noticed in an earlier part of this paper. But there is no way of estimating the more general and subtle demoralization which it produces. It is probably no exaggeration to say that every execution is accompanied by a distinct lowering of the moral tone of the entire community. Its only redeeming feature is the horror it excites in the more sensitive natures. To the much larger number, to whom it presents itself as an act of vengeance, a gratification of primitive blood-lust, it is an unmixed moral evil.
May I commend this further statement to the hon. member for North Waterloo (Mr. Euler) ?
From this point of view, there is little to choose between the various methods that are mercifully employed to inflict the death penalty. The guillotine, the hangman's rope, the electric chair, the lethal chamber-all are equally revolting to humane feeling; all become equally sensational, all are equally cruel. Indeed, the cold blooded, deliberate killing of the criminal by the state, by whatever method,, is the refinement of cruelty, and the victim dies a hundred deaths before he is mercifully relieved by the actual extinction of life and feeling.
Further on he stages:
It is an over-simplified view of a complex social phenomenon that makes it possible for us to believe that a grave menace can be seriously modified by the processes of legal justice. I am sure that many who seem to favour capital punishment will agree that such a phenomenon as the persistence and increase of the murder rate in our civilization has a profounder cause than the inefficiency of our system of criminal justice and that if we are to eradicate or even appreciably modify the evil, we must go to the roo(t of the matter, find the deep-lying causes, and deal with them. It is not the murderer, but murder, that is our enemy. The primitive method of striking blindly, in impotent rage, at the life of the offender has had its day, but it still obscures our vision as to the real nature of our problem.

I say that in this matter we. cannot rest our vote upon a matter of mere sentiment. We cannot rest it upon a mere matter of conscientious feeling, however sincere that may be, and so I ask each and every member of the House: Are we to leave this House to-night with this parliament continuing as the hangman of the nation, placing our judgment only upon mere sentiment or upon a mere conscientious conviction, however sincere it may be, when in fact and in reason we should usher in a day when justice shall become humane and when humanitarianism shall become wise.


Right Hon. ARTHUR MEIGHEN (Leader of the Opposition):: This subject has been up almost every session since I have entered the House. It has always been received by hon. members with interest, carefully treated and disposed of. One cannot help taking an interest in it no matter how frequently it is presented, but I stand to confess I would take infinitely more interest if I felt that our present practice of inflicting the death penalty were in any real danger of being abandoned. If I felt that we were at all near any imminent peril in that regard my interest in the subject would be quickened in the extreme. I am opposed, resolutely opposed, to the motion.	[DOT]
One needs to examine first, what is the present law and practice. Under the law of Canada, as of Britain, as of many other countries the most advanced in the world, the death penalty is inflictable for murder, inflictable here also for treason, and as well for the crime of rape. I do not propose to discuss the wisdom of the law in relation to the latter two, because the whole principle at stake is more simply discussed when referred merely to the first.
In practice the death penalty is actually inflicted when murder is first proven to have taken place, and murder under our Code has so narrow and clear a definition that it must be atrocious and cold-blooded to come within the terms of the law.
But after the jury's verdict and the sentence there is vested in the Department of Justice a power of review, and it is only a fair statement of the practice to say that any circumstances that go to show the lack of apprecia-' tion, the mental inferiority of the accused, even far removed from actual insanity, or other circumstances of a strongly mitigating character, operate to relieve the victim from the extreme penalty. So that we are left in the position, in the actual practice of. our law, that the most atrocious cold-blooded instances alone are followed through to capital punishment.

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The question before us is, should this penalty be done away with in such cases? First of all,
I will seek to remove, if I can, some of the, what seems to me, mere confusion that has been advanced by way of argument in support of the motion. It is said that after all crime is latent, that it is a social growth. Crime is not, we are told, so much the actual positive, wilful wtong-doing blamable on the perpetrator as it is the outgrowth of bad, social conditions, inborn sin, wrong social relations, or perhaps the result of some blood legacy in the offender, for all of which he personally is not responsible- I am ready to give some weight to these allegations. I am ready to assume, for the sake of argument, if for nothing else, that crime is pretty much the outgrowth of imperfect social relations and conditions. I am ready to admit, for the sake of argument if for no other reason, that the man of criminal instinct is pretty much the victim of heredity. I do not know how far those contentions are true; I believe they are true to some extent. But wherein do these things affect the case? They go to show that we certainly should seek to improve our social conditions, that the first object of legislation should be the amelioration of our social relations- It goes to show as well that we should do what we perhaps are not doing, that we should take more practical steps-to improve the conditions of heredity under which the child is born. I am ready to agree that those conclusions follow from the hypothesis laid down by certain hon. members whom I have heard.
But do any other conclusions follow? After we have done our best in these regards, criminals still remain. The problem of the criminal is still with us. The obligation to protect society is still here. What are we going to do? Are we bound to say that because underlying causes are there, perhaps far more powerful than the wilful, responsible inclinations of the accused, on that account we should not follow through the most atrocious crimes to capital punishment? It is just as logical to say that we should do away with the whole system of punishment altogether. It is just as logical to say that no offence against society should be punished at all, that our whole penal code should be swept away. When one states the case in that form, it removes altogether, at least from my mind, what is sought to be erected on this theory of unsound social conditions as an argument against the application of the extreme penalty to the perpetrator of capital crime. Punishment is a practical necessity. The history of all ages shows that we 83i
must inflict it. It has to be done, or we cannot hold organized society together.
Let us come therefore to what is the appropriate, or I had better say, the effective, punishment for the true purposes of all punishment, as applicable to that class of crime which I first of all described. What are the true purposes of punishment? One of them was stated by the hon. gentleman who has just spoken to be vengeance against the accused. I disagree with him. I do not think that is any object of legal penalty at all. The real object is, as he says, two-fold. It is first to provide a deterrent against crime, to the perpetrator, and to others; and secondly the object is reformative as regards the accused. Both are sought to be served by the whole philosophy of our penal system. In the minor grades of crime, the second takes a very important place. As the grades of crime become more gross, more abhorrent, more heinous, more atrocious, then the first must become more and more important. The blacker the crime, the more perilous it is to society, the more overwhelming must be the weight given the deterrent effect of the punishment in deciding what the punishment, shall be. The blackest of all crimes of course are those for which the capital penalty is allotted. It is undoubtedly therefore true that in those cases the consideration which we must keep mostly before us is the deterrent effect of any punishment we apply. I am free to admit that punishment should be no greater than is sufficient to bring about the maximum of deterrent effect, no matter how heinous the crime. It may be that in earlier centuries for offences of a minor, or what one might call a medium character, punishments unnecessary for deterrent effect, and inappropriate in every respect were imposed. But before I would castigate too freely our ancestors in this respect, I would desire to understand just what were all the circumstances of those times. I fancy if all their conditions were understood we would conclude that they were, perhaps, not in mental stature or in political judgment very far our inferiors. But we are judging now of the times in which we live, and before we conclude to apply, in place of the punishment of death, the punishment of imprisonment, or any other punishment for the offence of him, who, in cold blood and for the motives that virtually always animate a murderer slaughters his fellow-man, we want to know what that punishment is going to prove by way of a deterrent, because if we are not sure of its efficacy to this paramount end, we
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shall probably be merely submitting the innocent to a fate from which the guilty have been relieved.
I have heard some figures presented by the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe), for the purpose of establishing that the experience of civilization had shown-and he spoke, of course, of the civilization of to-day-that these crimes of the blackest enormity, were deterred best by capital punishment. He advanced two classes of statistics. First he showed that the death penalty had proven the best deterrent in the case of the crime of desertion. His illustrations, are disputed as to their application by the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine). I really could not follow the argument of the hon. member. I know the offence of desertion differs from the offence of murder; but what has that fact to do with the question as to the relative merits of capital and other punishment as deterrents? It has been proven in actual practice that stern necessity compelled the application of one punishment and one alone as effective against the offence of desertion. The deduction from those statistics is plain; it is that that punishment is feared the most, which proves the most effective to prevent-namely the capital penalty.
But the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) brought figures as well to show that, as applied to the offence of murder, the death penalty had proved there also the most effective. He compared the results in the United States, in Canada and in England, and he showed that in Canada and England murders were much the less frequent, in Canada the least frequent of all. The hon. member to my left, says: "Oh, but in all those countries they have capital punishment, and the only difference is that in the United States the certainty . of the penalty is not so great as it is in Canada and in England." But the United States has experimented with other penalties for many years. The United States to-day have some states, I do not know7 exactly how many-


Ernest Lapointe: Eleven.


Arthur Meighen: -eleven states to-day where capital punishment is not applied, and in some others-I could name one or two now-they suspended the application of this punishment and tried other experiments for a time, but the awful results showed that they had to return to the sterner penalty. No, the United States is not in the position that Canada is in. There, they have asylums for murderers, which we do not have, and because they have those asylums, murder there is more 
rampant than it is here. It is quite true that the certainty of the penalty is even more important than its adequacy; and the conclusion is that, no matter what the penalty, w'e should not relax our efforts to make its imposition certain, and it is to the glory of this Dominion that we have not so relaxed. To this circumstance we attribute in considerable degree the paucity of capital crime which we enjoy. But we cannot deny that it is due also in very great degree to the fact that rigidly and sternly we have adhered consistently to the death penalty, that we can boast of our comparisons as against the United States.
On other occasions, I have investigated these statistics myself, and I believe many more could be adduced to support the contention of the Minister of Justice, that when one places the death penalty against other punishments and compares them as deterrents, the death penalty has a place all by itself. Life is sweet to everyone, and there is something, I suppose, of the coward in us all. But there is no man who so values his life, and who feels so poignantly the coward's fear of death as the fiend who goes out, for his owm gain or to appease some selfish animosity or lust, to slaughter his fellow man. Such a creature fears death himself infinitely more than does his manly brother who holds sacred human life.
But if we did not have statistics, and if we did not have some experience with the criminal, surely our knowledge of human nature in general would teach us that nothing will stay the hand of the man with murder in his soul like the fear of death. One has to put oneself in the position of the intended victim or one close and dear to that victim to know just what the situation is. We are all inclined to have some sympathy for the unfortunate creature who has to face the ghastly tragedy of the hangman's noose, and as time passes from the murderous event, we are likely to become more and more sentimental or sympathetic. But let every hon. member place himself in the position, say, of the father of the home who finds that a fiend in the form of man, to appease his lust or his love of gold, has broken into his home and slaughtered wife or child. Would he feel that any sufficient deterrent would be held out to others if it were the law of Canada, that such a fiend should be kept for the rest of his life at the expense of the state, and the public taxed to reform him? No, the hope of reform, that element or phase of the purpose of punishment does not take any very important place when we come to deal with

those who take the life of their fellows. There, the deterrent element must he held supreme. All other elements amount to little. I for one am profoundly convinced, so profoundly that, J am sure nothing, even infinitely stronger in the way of argument than anything J have heard to-day. could move me, that the very security of society, all that we hold dear, depends upon maintaining strong and stern the death penalty against the most vicious *of all crimes.


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to associate myself with the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) in the remarks which he has just made with reference to the bill that is before the Plouse. I think every hon. member of the House feels the great responsibility which rests upon him in even pronouncing an opinion with reference to a matter affecting human life. I am sure all of us are viewing this question from the point of view of the value of human life, and what will make most for the preservation of human life, and, may I add, of innocent human life. If I believed that the bill which the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) has introduced, would make for the preservation of innocent human life, would make in the end for a greater saving of human life, as is his object in proposing to substitute a sentence for life instead of the death penalty, I would vote with him. But I believe to the contrary; I believe that the deterrent effect of the death penalty, having regard to human society as it is constituted and to human character as we know it, is in the end to protect innocent people from the murderous assaults that may be made upon them by some of the individuals who compose our human society.
If I had had occasion to address the House on this subject some years ago, perhaps, I might have spoken a little more in the vein in which my hon. friend from East Calgary has spoken to-day. Since that time, in the short period within which my colleagues and I have been entrusted with the added responsibility of having to advise His Excellency whether or not the law shall take its course in cases of murder, I have had to consider, as my colleagues have also had to consider, and as my right hon. friend opposite and his colleagues when in office had very carefully to consider, in the case of every murder that has come before the cabinet for consideration, whether or not human society would be better protected in the long run by a sentence for life than by enforcement of the death penalty in case of murder.
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There is no graver, there is no more serious, there is no more trying duty imposed upon a minister of the Crown than that which he has to exercise in being obliged to advise His Excellency, with respect to every capital case, whether or not the law shall take its course.
There is one factor in our country of which I think account should be taken in passing upon this question. Were capital punishment lightly inflicted, were it a matter of lynching where murder has taken place, we might well pause before consenting to such a course being permissible. But under British law every man, and no man more than one accused of crime, is protected by all the safeguards which human ingenuity has been able to devise for the purpose of ensuring a fair trial. The murderer is brought before a court of justice and there he or his counsel has the right to challenge those selected to serve on the jury until he secures to try him, twelve men whom he believes to be fair and impartial, twelve of his fellow men. Judges have no more desire to see human life ended than have other individuals in the community. There is no judge who in a matter affecting life and death addresses a jury lightly; nor are there any twelve men who compose a jury who view lightly the verdict which they give. But that is not all. After a court has had the facts before it, and after the jury have considered every circumstance very carefully, where they find the circumstances justify the imposition of the death penalty upon a man or woman who has committed murder and the penalty is imposed, the case then comes before His Excellency in Council for consideration. There the facts relevant to every case are reviewed by the cabinet as a whole. The Minister of Justice has the grave responsibility of reviewing the entire evidence; in presenting the matter to his colleagues for consideration he invariably takes into account every extenuating circumstance. Mention has been made to-day of possible mental infirmity and other circumstances of a like nature,-


Robert Forke: May I point out to the Prime Minister that neither the judge nor the jury has anything to do with the death penalty. Their business is to find out whether the accused is guilty of the crime. This parliament, how'ever, has to do with the penalty.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think I
understand the force of what my hon. friend is saying. Certainly the judge and jury do not execute the death penalty; but they realize that the result of their actions may determine whether or not a particular individual may have to suffer the penalty of death. They are the judges of the facts, and if
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they find that the act is one of premeditated murder, the taking of a human life, they know that the result of such a verdict will be that the murderer will be hanged.


Robert Forke: It would be a miscarriage
of justice if they did not render a verdict according to the evidence. The judge has no responsibility in the matter; in imposing the death penalty he simply carries out the law of the country- Consequently the responsibility rests upon the people who make the law.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I appreciate
that fact. The same kind of responsibility rests upon every member of the government in advising His Excellency whether or not the law must take its course. What I am trying to point out is that it is not a matter of quick judgment, it is not a matter of hasty decision, it is not a matter of chance as to whether an individual under British law will be hanged or not. One charged with the crime of murder is likely to be hanged only after a large number of conscientious men, feeling gravely the responsibility which they are called upon to exercise, sincerely believe that the act which has been committed was a premeditated murder of some innocent human being. If I believed that in the long run, more innocent human lives would be saved by permitting those who are guilty of murder to serve a life sentence than is the case under executions, I would support my hon. friend. I view the whole question from the standpoint of the preservation of human life in our society. What course will most effectively save innocent human lives? I believe that the death penalty does have a deterrent effect, and I feel that more strongly because of the knowledge I have of the number of capital cases that have come before the cabinet in the short time in which this government has been in office, where we have had before us the circumstances of every individual case of murder that has taken place. These cases have revealed clearly the fact that the men who have been found guilty of murder have premeditated the crime for the most part from motives of lust or avarice Were they and others like them to suffer only life imprisonment for their crimes, knowing the psychological effect exercised upon . other minds and natures when such crimes are committed, I believe that the number of murders would vastly increase once the death penalty were abolished. For that reason I am opposed to the principle of the bill.


William Irvine: Has the Prime Minister
examined the figures in this regard in relation to other countries that have abolished

the death penalty? Upon what ground rests his belief that the abolition of capital punishment would lead to an increase in the number of murders that are being committed?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: So far as
figures are concerned, it has often been said that statistics can be made to prove anything, and I believe that to be largely true. Only last evening I was speaking regarding this very matter with a gentleman who represents a large number of religious organizations. He mentioned to me the fact, which has been cited this evening, that in some of the American states where the death penalty was removed the number of murders considerably increased. In one state where / referendum was held the people themselves because of the increased number of murders that were being committed, repealed the law which had removed the death penalty.


William Irvine: That is the only one
known.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No, I would
not say it was the only one. However, I judge this matter, as one is obliged to judge everything, in the light of our knowledge of human nature and in the light of all known facts and circumstances,. I can assure my hon. friend that if he had the responsibility which I have where a criminal is to be hanged, of being obliged as President of the Council to sign the recommendation to His Excellency to allow the law to take its course, he would doubly feel the solemnity of standing in this House and advising that hanging should be continued as the penalty for murder. Because I have that responsibility I am the more anxious to exercise it in the light only of what I honestly believe will make most for the preservation of human life in this Dominion. I do believe that the retention of the death penalty, surrounded as it is in Canada by all the safeguards which British justice affords, will serve more effectively to afford protection to members of our human society, than any change in the law which would substitute the' life sentence for capital punishment.


Robert Forke: One word of explanation.
The question I asked the Prime Minister had nothing to do with any argument for or against the death penalty. I did not ask the question from that angle. I asked it to point out the fact that neither the judge, nor the jury, nor the minister who afterwards considers the petition for a reprieve is responsible for the death penalty; they are simply carrying out the law as enacted by parliament. That was the idea behind my question.

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William Lyon Mackenzie King: I quite understand my hon. friend. I would add to what he says,-that they are also responsible for the possible consequences of removing the death penalty and substituting some other penalty therefor.


Robert Forke: Certainly.


Hon. E. J. McMURRAY (Solicitor General) :: Mr. Speaker, with a full sense of
my responsibility as a member of the government and with a full appreciation of the position taken by my chief (Mr. Mackenzie King) and by the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe), and of the particularly able argument of the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen), I still feel bound to adhere to the opinions which I have formed upon the question of capital punishment after long years of practice in the criminal courts defending men charged with murder.
The question has been ably canvassed today, without any sentimentality. I think we need offer no apology for supporting the bill now before us. Some of the ablest men in the world have been in favour of the abolition of the death penalty: statesmen, such as Bright and Gladstone; jurists such as Grotius and Bentham; reformers such as Osborne, and Robespierre immortalized himself and practically overcame the evils of a life time by his eloquent address in opposition to the death penalty. Highly civilized nations both past and present have abolished capital punishment; for instance, the people of Athens, and of Holland,-nations that rank high in the history of the world. So that to-day the abolition of the death penalty is an appropriate subject for debate.
I agree entirely with the right hon. leader of the opposition that there can be only two grounds for inflicting punishment on criminals: first, the protection of society; second, the reformation of the individual. I believe that punishment plays but a very minor part in the prevention of crime. The scientific study of crime is exceedingly interesting. As the Minister of Justice pointed out, crime varies in different localities and among different people, and at different seasons of the year and under differing economic conditions. In our country we find that crime increases during migration and diminishes when people are tied to home and kindred.
In olden times the criminal code of England was as bloody as is the code of Japan to-day, but although the death penalty applied to 147 crimes, such as highway robbery and sheep stealing, and thousands of people were executed
every year, still capital punishment did not have the effect intended and crime continued. Making allowance for the advance of civilization which the right hon. gentleman in his closely reasoned argument referred to, it has been shown that capital punishment does not prevent crime. Hon. gentlemen have pointed out that after the war murder and other crimes of violence increased in this country, clearly demonstrating that the death penalty is not a preventive. I believe that those who commit murder are not deterred by any penalty, however severe.
The sources of crime are manifold. Many murders are committed under the influence of drink or of narcotics, and when men become angry and lose control of themselves they act regardless of the consequences. Then again some murderers are mentally incompetent. Take the case of the recent bank robbery in Montreal to which my hon. friend from Bonaventure (Mr. Marcil) referred. Those men probably knew what the penalty would be, but still they did not hesitate to commit murder. So I do not think that hon. members have succeeded in proving that capital punishment prevents crime. There is no doubt that it is a deterrent. But the question is: Is it a greater deterrent than life imprisonment?
In many states of the union, particulary in the state of Michigan, homicide is punished with life imprisonment. The man who assassinated President McKinley could have done so in Detroit, and would have been subject to life imprisonment; but he followed his victim to Buffalo, and suffered the death penalty for his crime. But what appears to me to be the strongest argument against capital punishment is this. The state demands from the murderer an absolute, definite price-his life. Before the state is entitled to demand that penalty it should prove beyond all peradventure that the accused is guilty. Law is not an exact science-criminal law least of all. Take a trial for murder, the chances are that knowing the lawyer for the defence you may be fairly certain what the verdict of the jury will be. There are differences in human nature. An inexperienced lawyer may select his jury carelessly and the chances are that the man he is defending will go to the gallows, whereas if the same prisoner had been defended by a lawyer of wider experience who had a better knowledge of the law and of human nature, with perhaps a different judge presiding, the accused man might have been acquitted. That is exactly the practical working of it.


Paul Mercier: There is a judge and
jury, but there must also be witnesses.
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Mr.   M@: Oh yes, there must be witnesses, and there is one of the great difficulties. Evidence is not always reliable. Circumstantial evidence is not reliable, direct evidence probably less so. We have had a number of cases where men have been wrongfully convicted. I happen to hold in my hand a clipping I took from the Ottawa Journal last year just about the time this question came up; it is typical of What is occurring and has been occurring in various parts of the world. It says, referring to a United States case:	'
Innocent man was serving a life sentence. Youth confesses to murder of policeman for which other man sent down. Prisoner always held that he was innocent. When told he would be freed, McKinney said he always believed he would get out.
Had that taken place in a state where capital punishment was provided for, the innocent man would have been hanged; as it was, he had been sentenced to life imprisonment. I have here also, cut out about the same time, a picture of a young Greek who had been convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in the state of New York. He maintained his innocence, and after a long hunt over the United States, away in distant California they located a man who confessed that it was he who had committed the crime. There was a ease like that in England, which every lawyer in this House is no doubt familiar with, the case of Adolf Beck. Adolf Beck was a Swedish engineer, and one night when he went out to buy a newspaper he was accused by a woman of having swindled her. He protested and said, "I will hand you over to the police if you do not leave me alone." He was taken to jail, tried, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for five or seven years ,all the time protesting his innocence. He applied repeatedly to the Home Secretary for consideration of his case, and finally after serving, I think, four years of his term, was released. Shortly afterwards he was again arrested, charged with practically the same crime, and again sent to prison.


François Jean Pelletier: It showed that he was not a good boy. .


Edward James McMurray: 
An hon. MEMBER:: What about his
victim and what about the victim's family?



II, 1924

[Stage Direction]
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Edward James McMurray: Well, the suffering of the family is nothing to what this man suffers But in any case, why should we bring the state down to the same
10 p m. plane; why should we impose torture upon the man in the cell because the family of the victim suffer? Will it. relieve the family of their suffering to know that another man is day by day going through hell waiting for the gallows? In many states of the United States the death penalty has been abolished. In some it has been reinstated; that is a matter of opinion. I do believe that the death penalty was instituted because it seemed to be an appropriate penalty. The idea was not altogether the protection of society; it was more in accordance with the theory of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"; that if a man takes life it is appropriate that he should lose his own. The code carrying that provision, however, seems not to go the full distance.
If you are going to execute the murderer, are you going to execute the man who attempts murder? Our code says no. Why not? If the man who attempted murder had the determination to kill, and was prevented from doing it, if it is necessary to protect, society why do you not execute the man who attempts murder? No; that is on the statute book; it has dragged down behind the old appeal of retribution and revenge.
I still hold the opinion I held some years ago, that capital punishment is not a deterrent, that it has within it that which might inflict a terrible wrong that could never be repaired. I do not think the state should leave itself in that position where there is a danger of that awful wrong being inflicted. If society is not protected more by capital punishment than by some other system, if we can prevent these odious executions that are taking place in our land and that are not necessary, then I think Canada will be marching forward, and will have struck down one more of the barbaric institutions that have come down to us from the past. I have no hesitation in voting whole-heartedly for the resolution brought in by my hon. friend.
Mr. A. M. CARMICHAEL (Kindersley). I have listened to many hon. members from this quarter of the House advance their views in reference to this bill, and I think without exception they have all followed along the same line of thought. I do not know whether I am of a very perverse nature or not, but I find I am not in agreement with my compatriots in this comer. I do not find my mind running along the same line of thought as theirs.
Listening to the debate I have been wondering where we get our authority for capital punishment. We have had references made by different members to Canadian custom; we have had statistics quoted from American practices; we have had some take us across the water and quote the British traditions and practice; but I have been led to ask myself the question: Are any of these countries really authoritative in their practices? Can we base our custom on what any one of these countries do? And I have been led to run my mind back to the written record we have of the first murder that happened some six thousand years ago. At that time Cain slew Abel-the first murder we have record of. Now the only punishment that was meted out to Cain was a mark placed upon his forehead. I do not think he was given life imprisonment; he was allowed to run at large. Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not think that was a deterrent to crime, because we find that as civilization rolled on century after century for some six thousand or more years, there was a law instituted against murder. That law came to us not through a person that was revengeful, not through a person that was barbaric in nature; that law came to us through that great leader Moses who, the record tells us, was the meekest man in all the earth; and it did not seem to just fit in with my ideas to hear this practice of capital punishment classified as being barbaric and as something that, was so hideous when it was handed out to civilization by a man of the character of Moses. And, Mr. Speaker, he did not originate the practice. The capital punishment idea was given to man by the One who created mankind. On Mount Sinai the Divine decree was: Thou shalt not kill. Now if any man or any woman dares to take upon himself or herself the right to violate that Divine decree and go out and kill, it is right that they should be subject to the penalty that was instituted at the time that decree was given.


Edward James McMurray: Will the hon. member allow me a question. He has referred to the first murderer, Cain. Does he know why the law put a mark on Cain, as set forth in the Scriptures? I may be questioning the hon. member too closely. If I remember aright, it was that nobody should slay him.


Mr. CARMICHAEL:: I am prepared to
accept the interpretation of the hon. member.


Edward James McMurray: Not the interpretation, the fact.
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Archibald M. Carmichael: I am dealing now some fifteen hundred years this side of that mark. We find that that mark did not deter murders, and that was the reason why a different method was given by the Creator. As I stated, the penalty for taking life was that life should be taken. If a man or a woman took the life of a human being the Creator said that he or she should pay the penalty with his or her life, and that law was given to us by the meek man, Moses. Now, generally speaking, we can say that our Canadian law is based upon Bible law, at least in a great many respects. For instance, in reference to our marriage custom, if we wish to define the relationships in marriage we go back to Bible law and base our practice on what is said there. I am rather sorry to state that in reference to divorce we also go back to the Mosaic law. We jump over the New Testament teaching and the prohibitory legislation enacted in the New Testament, and go back to the Mosaic law in respect to divorce, and we in parliament sanction many cases of divorce that we should not. Now in reference to the taking of life, are we going to leave behind the Mosaic practice and follow the New Testament teaching, which, of course, we know prohibits the taking of life. The New Testament teaching I realize is entirely different from the old Mosaic law. The New Testament teaching is one of loving your enemies, it is one of turning the other cheek, it is one of resisting not evil; but, Mr. Speaker, I wish to state right here that there is no nation that is Christian in the full sense of the word. Christian means Christ-like, and there is no nation that is Christ-like in every detail. Nations are not wholly and completely Christian, while individuals in them may be and are. Therefore if our nations are not Christian or Christ-like we must revert to the Mosaic law to govern ourselves in regard to crime and its punishment.
Now what do we find present conditions to be? We find murders prevailing, bank robberies, forgeries, conspiracies, wars and such like. If we had in our country such conditions as New Testament teaching outlines we would not have these things existing, and there would be no need for capital punishment. But we do not find these conditions prevailing; we find that man will go out and take the life of his fellow man. I recall that the mover of the bill advocates a term of imprisonment as punishment for the crime of taking life. I was led to think, Mr. Speaker, of an instance that happened about a year ago over in England. I remember the

case quite well. It was about the time this bill was on our order paper last year, but it did not come up for discussion, so that no argument was advanced pro or con. The particular case I refer to was that of a young married couple in England. The wife was about 25 years of age, and her husband was probably five or six years older. Another man entered upon the scene and had covetous desires towards this particular wife, and he and the wife plotted together to get rid of the legitimate husband. It was a premeditated cold-blooded plan. They arranged that on a particular night, when the husband and wife would be returning from the theatre, this second man should murder the husband. The plan was carried out and the husband was murdered. The wife professed great sorrow for the death of her husband and he was buried. But evidence was adduced to show who the real murderers were. They were brought to the bar of justice. They were given a fair and just trial and were condemned to death. Both were hanged. I was led to ask myself the question if, instead of the capital penalty being imposed, these people had been imprisoned for life, what would have been the effect on society?
In addition to that, I would like to point out the fact that our prison life to-day is something that is not to be dreaded. I listened to a lecture in this city last year by General Hughes, outlining to us the conditions of prison life as it is experienced at Kingston. He told us the size of the cell and stated that they had clean linen there if not every day, every other day. They had running water in their rooms. In fact I was led to think, when he was outlining the conditions of the prisoner in the cell, that the conditions were much more enviable than the conditions of our homesteaders on the prairies. Now, realizing that the conditions were such, if this particular man and the wife, these murderers, were placed under such conditions, would that be sufficient punishment for them? Would that act as a deterrent to others and prevent them from planning and hatching similar crimes. Indeed it would not. These people would remain in prison for perhaps ten years, possibly only five; then public sympathy would be worked up in their favour and they would be given their liberty. The chances are that they would then get married, and their example would be a great incentive to the commission of similar crimes. If I were to look at the case from a sentimental point of view I would feel like abolishing the death penalty; but when I consider it from the viewpoint of my duty towards mankind and towards

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society in general, I do not feel that, under present conditions, we would be wise in abolishing the death penalty.


Hon. T. A. CRERAR (Marquette):: The
subject matter of the motion of my hon. friend from East Calgary (Mr. Irvine) is of very much greater importance than many of the matters that are considered by this House. It is inevitable that sentiment should very largely enter into the consideration of a question of this character. I regret very much, Mr. Speaker, that I have only heard a portion of the addresses given by hon. members on this question. I was not aware that the matter was coming up to-day and was absent for a time from the House. But after listening to the arguments presented so far as I have heard them, I think the only substantial argument advanced against the proposal of the hon. member for East Calgary is that it is a deterrent to the commission of the crime of murder-that by the imposition of the death penalty an influence is exercised upon some to deter them from the perpetration of the crime of murder. I cannot agree with the soundness of that argument. I doubt if there are any people who have committed the heinous crime of murder who have calculated for a second before the act, the consequences of the crime they were about to commit. It is a curious thing how psychological influences operate upon the minds of men. It is a fact, I think acknowledged beyond dispute, that a crime committed, even the crime of murder, may in itself be an incentive to other crimes. We know for instance that we have such things as epidemics of suicide. I recall several instances of that, where the mere fact of a person jumping over a bridge into a river had the effect psychologically of inducing other people to do the same thing. The same holds true in respect to murder, and that is one of the factors that operate, and no sentence of hanging, or the death penalty in any form, will be a deterrent in that case.


Ernest Lapointe: The hon. member states that a man who commits murder does not consider the consequence of his act. Does he not think that men sometimes do not commit murder because they' calculate what the consequences of their act will be?


Thomas Alexander Crerar: While the argument of my hon. friend might have some weight, I do not think it has a great deal of weight. But my support of my hon. friend from East Calgary rests upon other grounds mainly. I think it is a dreadful thing, Mr. Speaker, to have a miscarriage of justice. My hon.
friend the Solicitor General (Mr. McMurray) gave some very illuminating evidence in his * address to-night on this question-perhaps the most pertinent evidence that has been presented in the discussion of the whole matter in the House this afternoon. There is not only a possibility of a miscarriage of justice through an innocent man being condemned, but there is also the possibility of a guilty man getting off scot free, because the penalty of death would be imposed if he were convicted. And how does that arise? It arises mainly through appeals to the emotions of the jury, and through appeals to the sensibilities of the public; which also re-act on a jury when the case comes to trial, after the crime is committed, the person charged with it is incarcerated. The case is one of public discussion, and preconceived notions often exist in the minds of juries before they go into the jury box, which notions, notwithstanding their oath when they enter that box, notwithstanding how honest they may be, are bound to influence their judgment when they come to the question of rendering their verdict. I recall an eminent criminal lawyer telling me on one occasion that he had defended more than thirty men charged with murder and that only one of them had been convicted.


An hon. MEMBER:: A good lawyer.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: He was a good lawyer in that line. I know of cases where an appropriate place in the court room was selected for the accused'^ wife, or his children, or his mother, or his relatives, and an appeal made to the sentiments and emotions of the jurymen under these circumstances, a plea that the accused should not be sent to the galloVs. Men sitting in the box, charged with the grave responsibility of deciding whether one of their fellow men should be sent to the gallows or not, give their verdict for acquittal, sometimes when the weight of evidence is strongly against the accused.
That, however, is not the most serious part of the whole matter. There is the possibility that an innocent man may be sent to the gallows. There is the certainty that, in many cases, innocent men have- been sent to the gallows. The Solicitor General (Mr. McMurray) to-night cited cases, not one, but several, where innocent men charged with the crime of murder were convicted and paid the supreme penalty of the law, and it was later discovered that they were innocent. We know of many cases where men have maintained their innocence of the crime when standing upon the very trap that was to send them to
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eternity. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen), and also the hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael) have dwelt, I think, in rather an exaggerated way, upon the tremendous suffering, the loss, the feelings of the friends of a person who has been murdered. But there is the reverse side of the picture. I would rather that one hundred men convicted of murder-guilty, if you like- were sent to the penitentiary to expiate their crimes there instead of expiating them on the gallows, than that one innocent man should suffer death through maintenance of the death penalty. That, to my mind, is one of the strongest arguments in favour of a reconsideration of this question. No matter how honestly, how impartially we endeavour to administer justice in respect of, not only this matter, but others, we know that justice sometimes miscarries, and I can imagine nothing that is more to be deplored than this very fact that an innocent man might suffer the supreme penalty of the law for this crime. For those reasons I propose to support the motion of the hon. member for East Calgary.


Mr. C. H. DICKIE (Nanaimo):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to say just a few words on this question. I have no expectation but that the motion will be defeated, otherwise I would have prepared myself to speak at greater length than I intend. I am not such a desperate character as the hon. member for Nelson (Mr. Bird), who would take one end of the rope and hang a man on the other end, although I may say that, listening to this discussion, there are times when I would feel almost in favour of widening the scope of hanging. I have heard the argument advanced that hanging has no deterrent. effect. Let me explain lucidly to the House where it has a deterrent effect. I knew well a young man who murdered a man in cold blood in British Columbia. He was imprisoned. He escaped from prison and after escaping he murdered another man. He was recaptured and escaped again, but fortunately he was recaptured immediately after. That man deserved to be hanged; he was what we knew as a "killer", and if he had been hanged, he certainly would not have murdered the other man. That would have had a deterrent effect, I am sure.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Charles Herbert Dickie: Hon. gentlemen will say
that if the young man had been kept in prison, the second murder would not have occurred. It is quite a common occurrence

in the West for men to escape from prison, but I never knew a man to escape after he had been hanged. In the early days of British Columbia, before we had so many theorists abroad in the land, we had a judge named Begbie, a man pretty well known throughout America. He was a man of magnificent physique, wonderful mental qualities and absolutely fearless. In those days we had bad men coming into British Columbia from Arizona, ' California anc Mexico. Judge Begbie would go north by himself, and if he could not find a man tc hang a murderer whom he had found guilty, I believe he would have hanged him himself. He may have done so on one occasion. He sentenced a number of people to be hanged, and the name of Judge Begbie was known through the whole of the Northwest. When bad men would come to Victoria, or Vancouver, which was a hamlet in those days, people would say to them:	"Watch
cut or Begbie will get you". His name was known throughout the whole Pacific coast. I cannot say whether Judge Begbie considered that the hangings were a deterrent for murder, but every man in British Columbia would agree with me in saying that they had a deterrent effect. We had law and order throughout British Columbia when we had a turbulent population there, and it was due to the fear of that judge that we had law and order at that time.


Mr. T. H. McCONICA (Battleford):: Mr. Speaker, I had not thought to discuss this question, but I have had some experience with condemned criminals. I was, for a part of my early life, one of the managers of a large penitentiary, and I came into contact with a number of men who were under the death penalty. I feel the responsibility that rests upon us as members of this parliament in casting our vote upon this question, our responsibility to the criminal and our responsibility to the men, women and children of Canada. We are told that sometimes innocent men are found guilty. That is very rare in these days, it is so rare that no such thing can be found, or, at least, in no such case is capital punishment inflicted. We are told that some mentally deficient people commit murder. True, but they are not subject to the law which we are discussing.
The question for us to determine to-night is whether we shall permit any criminal, no matter how fully matured he may be, no matter how dastardly may be his crime, no matter how long he may have premeditated it, to offend against society with impunity in the total absence of the death penalty? I

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am not prepared to advocate any such thing. It is said that capital punishment is not a deterrent. Well, let a man be convicted of murder and sentenced to execution and immediately he and all his friends bestir themselves to have that sentence commuted to life imprisonment- Why? The penitentiary looks like a paradise to that man. Is capital punishment a deterrent? Ask yourselves the question. Which would you rather take a chance on-the penitentiary or the gallows? That is the question. What criminal finds it difficult to secure an associate? It is the criminal who has the reputation of being a killer. His fellow associates steer clear of him because they know that, if he does kill, his crime will bring down the extreme penalty of the law upon himself and his accomplices. The death penalty is a deterrent because as soon as men are aware that it faces them they begin to do everything in their power to have the sentence commuted. Take the case of a man who with gun in hand enters your house, steals your property and shoots down any man, woman or child that happens to be in his path to thwart him. He has that, deliberate, well-formed purpose in his heart, and he goes from your house to another man's, and possibly another's and kills three or four, being finally arrested and convicted. Now, our Minister of Railways (Mr. Graham) says he ought to have a chance to reform. I say, that kind of a man has put himself beyond any state of that kind. He is given an ample opportunity to square himself with his Maker if he wants to improve his time, but generally such men do not do this; they forfeit all claims upon humanity. Such a man is an outcast, an outlaw. Cain it is said was not hanged. Well, Cain did not know what the effect of hitting a man on the head -with a club would be because he was the first fellow that tried it; they could not convict a man of premeditated murder in those days when a man did not know anything about murder. But where a man deliberately and premeditatedly goes out to kill he puts himself beyond the pale of human sympathy, and we should exercise ourselves not in sympathy with the criminal but in sympathy with the thousands of men, women and children throughout the country whose lives are in our keeping-Human life is too cheap in Canada to-day. Look at such incidents as have occurred in Montreal. The thing for us to do at this time is to maintain the supreme punishment. It may not deter everybody, because what will deter one man will not deter, another, and vice versa; and I think that everything we can do to prevent crime we should do today.


Mr. C. G. POWER (Quebec South):: I had not intended taking part in the debate, but within the last few minutes an argument in favour of the retention of the death penalty has struck me and I think perhaps hon. members may feel its force as I do. There is in this matter the element of protection to society. We are all aware of that natural instinct of the human heart to resent as strongly and as energetically as possible any injury which has been done to us or to those who are near and dear to us. We know the old biblical law, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Every one of us, I think, has that desire, in some degree, to avenge himself on those who have done him a wrong. This feeling, as we can see throughout the pages of history, has been inherent in man from time immemorial. In times before law and order was enforced, when the savage, barbaric instincts held full sway in the heart of man, it was the generally recognized thing, when the member of a family had been killed who himself was guiltless, for those who belonged to him to take the life of the slayer. That, as the Solicitor General (Mr. McMur-ray) observes, is the avenge of blood. Now, whatever we may say to the contrary, this feeling still animates mankind; and in order to obviate the taking of justice by private individuals into their own hands society has decreed that the law shall avenge crime and see to it that retribution shall overtake the criminal. The surest evidence that this feeling still prevails is to be found in what is happening in the United States. There, as has been pointed out, law enforcement has fallen into disrepute. It has been found that murderers are not punished, so that men are taking the law into their own hands and applying the principles of lynch law while the state has neither the power nor the energy to intervene to protect the rights of private citizens from violators of the law. Unless therefore some measures are taken, cruel though they may appear, barbaric as they may seem to some hon. gentlemen, but necessary for the protection of society, we shall have private citizens, without the sanction of the law, and without giving to the murderer a fair trial, executing vengeance upon those who take life.
My hon. friend from East Calgary stated, with that sincerity and conviction which we all admire, that the onus of proving that the death penalty should be maintained is on those who urge its retention. Let me call his attention to the fact that the verdict of history is in favour of those who wish to retain capital
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punishment, and that throughout the ages it has been found to be the only means of deterring people from committing this crime. He is on safer ground when he argues that we cannot produce statistics, for not every man who feels like committing murder goes about telling his neighbours that he does not do so because he is afraid of the hangman's rope. If we could collect statistics of such people who were deterred by reason of their fear of the death penalty, I think the figures would prove overwhelmingly the contention of . those who are opposed to the bill.
The hon. member also debated with the Minister of Justice the propriety of his referring to certain statistics respecting the death penalty for desertion during the recent war. He stated that the cases were not similar, that in war men's minds were abnormal. In my view his argument only strengthens the position of the Minister of Justice. After all, the soldier who did not desert because he feared the death penalty had been taught-with all due respect to the hon. member who says we are as guilty as the hangman-to be a killer; that was his job. If he was a well-trained soldier he should have had no respect for human life, yet when he was told he would be shot if he was found deserting in face of the enemy he remained at the post of duty.
The hon. member also stated, with some degree of warmth, that the members of this and preceding parliaments were individually and collectively in the position of the common hangman. The answer it seems to me is very simple. It is true we are responsible for the death penalty, but as yet we have not asked anybody to commit the crime which is punishable by that penalty.


Andrew Ross McMaster: Neither has the hangman.


Charles Gavan Power: That is true, but the hangman comes in after, and he has not had an opportunity of warning the gentleman for whom he performs this final office that he will be hanged if he does a certain thing; whereas we have.
Harrowing stories were related by the Solicitor General which to my mind went to show the fallibility of our laws rather than their injustice and cruelty. If our institutions were such that no crime could be committed, then I think his argument would be perfectly sound. But he argues that an innocent man may suffer the death penalty. And the hon. member for Marquette (Mr. Crerar) said he would be prepared to abolish capital punishment rather than see one innocent man hanged. I think the argument works both ways. If, as the hon. Minister of Justice says,

the death penalty prevents one single murder, then it has justified its existence. It is true that to take away the life of an innocent, man is regrettable, but, after all, as has been well said, he has had ample time to arrange matters with his Maker, he has been surrounded with all the consolations which religion can afford him, he has had all the sympathy which sickly sentimentalists may give him. and in many cases he has had every opportunity of having his case fully placed before the public and even of going to his death in a fashion which, to his mind, deserves glorification. Under the circumstances I cannot help but feel that in the present state of our civilization, until such time as we all become so perfect that there will be no possibility of anyone committing murder, and there is no longer in the heart and mind of the human race any fear of death, we must retain the death penalty.


Mr. T. G. McBRIDE (Cariboo):: It seems
to me, Mr. Speaker, that law is the mother of liberty, but liberty so guarded that it guarantees the freedom of all. Are we to preserve that liberty in Canada by allowing criminals at large or by dealing lightly with them? I do not think that it is in the best interests of this country that we should do so. A good deal has been said by the supporters of this bill in sympathy with the criminal, but very little sympathy has been extended to their victims. A few evenings ago I read in the paper that a man hired another to kill his wife, and while she was engaged in prayer the assassin took her life, the callous husband standing by. Are men of that type entitled to any consideration? Is the supreme penalty not good enough for them? I do not think anything is too severe for such people.
Now, one hon. member here mentioned the returned soldier, and suggested that as the men had been accustomed when at the front to take life, that had an influence on their conduct in this country. I take that insinuation as an insult to our returned men. It is not the returned soldier who is committing murder, it is rather the slacker who remained at home who is doing it. I do not think that any insinuation of that kind should be made in this House against our returned men.


Mr. D. W. WARNER (Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, I would not like to let this occasion pass without stating my position in the matter.
I have listened to the discussion with a great deal of interest, and we must all admit that there is a great deal of argument on both sides. It is very easy to present a very strong

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case when only one side of it is dealt with.
I do not wish to go into the matter at length, because it has been dealt with in all its phases by others who have taken part in the debate. But there is no doubt that the responsibility in this matter is upon parliament. As the leader of this group (Mr. Forke) says, the responsibility is not with the jury, it is not with the judge, it is with parliament that makes the laws for Canada. I am willing to take that responsibility, but I must vote what I consider to be the right way in the matter.
We must deal with people as they are, not as we would like them to be, and we must take the necessary action to-day, not at some time in the future. If we pass this bill abolishing capital punishment, we
11 p.m. must take the responsibility. I do not say that hon. gentlemen arguing in favour of the bill are not perfectly willing to assume that responsibility, but I want to tell the House that I am not ready to assume it, because I am not convinced that it is a safe proposition. It would seem to me that more sympathy has been evidenced in this discussion for the criminal than has been evidenced for the public. We owe protection to the public, and I am afraid that there would not be as much protection if we abolished capital punishment, and that is my reason for voting against this bill. I want to feel while I live in Canada that I have the very best protection that human effort can give me. I do not say that any law can control all the factors in the situation. I believe that murders have been committed when no thought was taken by the offender as to whether he would be hanged or would go to the penitentiary. Where premeditated murder is committed I contend that it is not fair to show greater sympathy to the offender than is shown to the public. If I thought that imprisonment for life would be as effective as the death penalty in the case of murder I certainly would feel like supporting this bill, but I do not believe that life imprisonment is a sufficient deterrent. I do not believe that the public would get the same protection from the life imprisonment sentence that they would get from the continuance and enforcement of the capital punishment system.
Of course, in common with every other hon. member of the House, I must follw my. judgment in a matter of this kind. I have had my mind made up on the subject for a good many years. There was a time when I rather felt I would like to see capital punishment abolished) That was a good many years ago, and just about that time one of the states in the Union abolished capital punishment. I watched the effects of that
change, and I became convinced from the results shown that capital punishment was a greater deterrent, because more murders were committed in that state when capital punishment was abolished. Subsequently the death penalty was restored in that state, and crime then decreased. I do not know about many of the other . states, but that was the result in one case which I myself observed. Since then I have watched the matter very closely.


William Irvine: Will my hon. friend say
what state he refers to, what were the years in question, and what were the figures?


Daniel Webster Warner: I do not know just the
years; I have no record of it except in my memory. I am not certain whether it was Massachusetts or Connecticut, but it was one of those two. But I do not think it matters what the particular state was or just what the year was; the matter was impressed on my mind at the time and now I am convinced that the same result will follow in any case where capital punishment is abolished. I would like to feel that it would be safe to abolish capital punishment, and I have always felt like giving any criminal a fair chance. But the public must be protected, and to that end I must lay aside my personal feelings and do what I believe is best for the people generally.


Mr. H. E. SPENCER (Battle River):: Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to take part in this debate, but on account of the turn it has taken I feel that I should put myself on record and state the reason for the attitude .1 intend to take when the question comes to a vote. The hon. member for Strathcona (Mr. Warner) has suggested that those supporting this bill seem to be more anxious to protect the murderer than to protect society. From my close attention to the debate, I have not understood the support to this bill, in that way. I feel that the supporters of this bill are just as anxious to safeguard society as any who have expressed an intention of voting against it. The hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. McBride) said that he was not in favour of criminals going at liberty. I do not think any of us are, but the trouble is that there are too many criminals at large all the time. The probability is that there are far more criminals at liberty than are ever caught, and they are not criminals of the type that usually are caught and who eventually get sent to the gallows.
In my opinion there are many murders brought about indirectly. You find crime
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wherever there is great poverty. You find more crime in the larger cities than you do in the country because there is greater poverty there. Wherever there is a large amount of wealth taken from the masses of the people and poverty created thereby, there you are most liable to have crime; but the real murderers in many cases are perpetrators of the schemes by which the people are taxed to the extent of their wealth.
The hon. Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) made mention of the fact that a large percentage of the crimes committed in this country were committed by foreigners. I submit Mr. Speaker, that those foreigners did not come from the northern part of Europe, but probably from the great centres of Europe where the standard of living was very low indeed, and it was because of that standard of living and because of their environment, that after they came to .this country a certain percentage of them have been added to our list of criminals. An instance came to my mind the other day of a death that was caused at a large meeting of the depositors of the Home Bank. A woman overcome with despair at the loss of all she had in the failure of that bank died at that meeting. 'Who will say that the murderer of that woman could not be found among the officials that have been guilty of wrong doing in regard to the Home Bank? I think there has not been sufficient stress laid in regard to those criminals, who are either never caught, or are in such a position that there is very little chance of their ever going to the gallows. Wherever you find poverty, and especially great poverty, you will find crime, and when you do away with poverty you will do away with crime. For that reason I am willing to support the bill before the House because I believe that the great thing for us to do is to pay more attention to our social laws, and try to improve society, so that in the future there will be less and less crime and such laws as we have in the criminal code to-day making it possible to take away life will be unnecessary.


Mr. H. A. FORTIER (Labelle) (Translation) :: I must at the outset, Sir, state that
I am in favour of maintaining capital punishment, and therefore I shall vote against the proposed amendment of the hon. member for East Oalgary (Mr. Irvine). Our laws governing the death penalty are similar to those in force in England, France and the United States. We are therefore keeping good company. These laws have borne the test of time, and I think

we should preserve them such as they are. If I understand rightly the spirit of the law, our legislation as regards the death penalty, makes a distinction between two classes of murderers. There is, first, the man who is a danger to society, the criminal who is no longer in a position to appreciate human life. Such a person is really a social danger, and, it behoves society to do away with him. It is the duty of those in authority to exercise a guardianship, to protect the life of innocent persons by suppressing this degraded man, this human brute. Our legislators like those of other civilized countries have justly maintained the death penalty.
Besides this degraded murderer there exists another class of assassins which is met with in these distressing days when one of our fellow-creatures' life is treacherously cut short. I am referring to the person in whom murder is an event really accidental. Indeed, among those who have committed homicide, we have often noticed that the murderer was a good and respectable person, well thought of by his fellow-citizens. One day, under the influence of anger and passion he strikes one of his fellow-men. In the life of this man murder is purely an accident. We are at a loss to account for it. The public looks upon such a sad event as a regrettable accident. This murderer is not like the one previously mentioned, a degraded citizen, one who may be termed a brigand, a wild beast. He is rather a citizen of high moral standing, who, on the spur of the moment, committed homicide; he is the victim of passing passion which, for the time being, has deprived him of his senses and judgment. I think there should exist some clemency for this man. Our Canadian legislators have made provision for the case of an accidental murder in the life of a good citizen. Indeed, article 1077 of the Criminal Code states that an appeal can be made to the Governor-in-Council and that the death sentence pronounced against such a murderer may be commuted to a life sentence.
I am, therefore, of the opinion owing to all these reasons, that our laws are equitable, because they aim at punishing as it deserves the degraded murderer, and that on the other hand they give, protection to the person who, in a moment of aberration, has caused the death of one of his fellow-citizens. I am, therefore in favour of maintaining our laws and I shall vote against the proposed amendment.


Mr. T. W. CALDWELL (Victoria and Carleton):: At this hour I will not detain the House at any great length. However, on account of the fact that I have repeatedly

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expressed myself as opposed to the imposing of the death penalty, and on account of the fact that I propose to vote against the passing of the bill, I desire to make a brief explanation. As I said before I have repeatedly expressed the opinion that I was not in sympathy with the imposing of the death penalty. However, Mr. Speaker, considering the fact that there is at the present time a wave of crime sweeping over the country, I think it is a very inopportune time to abolish the death penalty. In the case of those who have so actively engaged in crime, and those who are possibly contemplating the carrying on of crime, it would be like handing them a reprieve in. advance. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I feel that I should make this statement before I vote against the bill.


William Irvine: It has been a pleasure to me to listen to this debate. I hope that all hon. members who have spoken on this subject, on whatever side they may have argued, will have said what they may wish they had said twenty years from now; and if they have, then I am not afraid of their happiness in the future. Much has been said about feeling, and if I have any criticism to make of those who have opposed the measure, it will be largely because they have been feeling a great deal more than they have been reasoning. Although I have detected, I think, a slight inclination on the part of one or two hon. members in their minds to creep out after their feelings in a search for any real basis upon which to justify themselves in supporting capital punishment as we now have it. I crave the indulgence of the House for a few minutes in order to go over some of the matters that have been advanced as arguments. The hon. gentleman who has just spoken (Mr. Caldwell) has given us a very strong argument for the abolition of capital punishment. He tells us that under capital punishment crime has been increasing , so rapidly that he would be afraid to try anything else. That is a strong argument.


Thomas Wakem Caldwell: I rise to a question of privilege. I did not make any such statement. I do not wish the hon. member to put words in my mouth.


William Irvine: I did not say he made
sudh a statement. I was simply giving his argument. We have capital punishment now, have we not? The hon. member has always been in favour of abolishing it, he says, but crime is so bad under capital punishment that he is afraid to abolish it. Is that not his argument? I do not think I am misrepresenting him at all. Then the hon. mem-84
ber for Strathcona (Mr. Warner) tells us that he is convinced that if capital punishment were abolished crime would increase, because at one time he was in a state-in Kentucky or Massachusetts, one of those two he is not quite sure-and while he was in that state a great wave of crime swept over the state, and he concluded that it was on account of the abolition of capital punishment. Now,' unfortunately for the hon. gentleman neither of those two states which he was convinced he was in has abolished capital punishment yet. The states which have abolished capital punishment are, Arizona, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee-


Daniel Webster Warner: I would like to refute
what the hon. gentleman has been saying, but he talks so "easy" I hardly think it is worth while.


William Irvine: If I thought the hon. member could refute me I would not talk so "easy," in fact I would talk harder if I thought he would find time to refute my statements. I have given him facts. I cannot help it if they have not abolished capital punishment in these states mentioned by him, but- these are the actual facts.


Daniel Webster Warner: If the hon. gentleman
talked a little louder I could hear him. I could not .hear him, and I could not keep very good track of all he said.


William Irvine: The next hon. gentleman
who attempted to argue against the measure proposed was the hon. member for Quebec West (Mr. Power). I am sorry to see he is not in his seat, but his objection was that if we abolished capital punishment the same thing would happen in Canada as happened in the States, which, according to his argument, was that lynching became very popular. Now my hon. friend said in his opening remarks that he just got that idea while in his seat. I think that if he had got the idea two weeks ago and verified his idea with facts, he would not have made the speech that he made. I must quote facts again with regard to the point he raised. I will quote from a volume which is at the disposal of hon. members of this House in the Parliamentary Library. The quotation is as follows:
But we are told that if the state will not execute the people will; that lynchings which have discredited us in the eyes of the civilized world, are the direct result of our failure to apply the death penalty with promptitude and celerity. Even so distinguished a publicist as Dr. Andrew D. White, if the newspapers quote him aright, is inclined to this opinion, and under certain conditions

Capital Punishment

is disposed to regard lynching with favour as an abridgment of the law's delay. If this opinion be correct, as numerous writers aver, we shall of course, find the majority of lynchings in the states that have abolished the death penalty. What are the facts? In the last fifteen years two of these states have had not a single lynching. Of the others one has had two lynchings and the other four, while Georgia, the state that leads all others, with 172 executions, also stands second, with 237 lynchings. Texas follows with 140 executions and 183 lynchings. Alabama almost duplicates the record, with 119 executions ancj 206 lynchings; while Mississippi, which falls a little behind with 97 executions, leads all the states with 249 lynchings. Of 1,900 executions and 2,240 lynchings in the United States in the last fifteen years, twelve states, with less than one-third of the total population, performed, 1.090 executions and 1,747. of the lynchings. Almost without exception executions and lynchings go hand in hand. This fact that "he who runs may read" should dispose forever of the excuse that the state must execute to prevent the people from taking the law into their own hands.
My hon. friend ran so fast that he evidently did not read at all.


Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):: What is
the title of the book that the hon. gentleman is reading from?


William Irvine: It is the Debaters' Handbook on Capital Punishment.


Charles Gavan Power: Written many years ago.


William Irvine: My hon. friend also advanced another argument before he took his seat. I think we must give him the credit of putting capital punishment on its proper basis, namely, revenge. He found, that there is revenge in all human life; that out of revenge, capital punishment had developed, and by revenge, capital punishment had been sustained. We must give him cedit for being absolutely honest in his utterance; but he said that if we can prove one single case of murder that capital punishment has prevented, that would justify the continuation of capital punishment. I agree with him; but does my hon. friend mean to say that a single case has been proven by any hon. member of this House to-day? Not at all. In fact, I do not recall any hon. member having made an attempt to prove that. Those who have expressed their opinions in opposition to this measure have said with great firmness that they believe capital punishment is a deterrent; that they have a feeling it would restrain criminals; that they are afraid to alter the present law lest crime would increase, or some such statement; but no one has made an attempt to prove the deterring influence of the death penalty.
The next hon. member that I want to comment briefly upon is the hon. member for Battleford (Mr. McConica). He thinks capital punishment is a deterrent, He has no proof

except himself. He says-I am paraphrasing his argument now; I am not quoting it- hon. members of this Housce should ask themselves: What stops you from committing murder? Is it not the gallows you see rising up in your imagination? What am I to infer from the argument of my hon. friend? Am I to suppose that the only reason why he does not make an attempt on the life of the Prime Minister is that after he has figured out all the ways in which he might do that, the gallows come right in front of him, cowardly fear turns him aside and he refuses to commit the murder? Is that the argument that he has put forward?


Charles Gavan Power: I suggest that the victim that he looks for is more likely to be the hon. member for East Calgary (Mr. Irvine).


William Irvine: In that case I am profoundly glad that there is something that stays the hand of the hon. member for Battleford.
I come to the hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael), who had never heard that Moses was a barbarian, and who had discovered that the New Testament taught something much more noble as a standard of living than that of the Old Testament. But he shakes hands, good-bye, to the New Testament, and he says that we must go back to Moses, back to the "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," back to the law of the jungle. We must despair of anything like Christianity becoming a practicability in this world. But what that has to do with the abolition of capital punishment, I am afraid I did not catch.
I come to the argument of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe). If I recall aright, he opened his argument by putting himself and the Right Hon. Arthur Henderson in the same position, and he said that the Right Hon. Arthur Henderson was considering this matter very carefully. I hope that when the Right Hon. Arthur Henderson has concluded his consideration and given the result of his deliberations to the world, he will give us more reasons for maintaining capital punishment than the Minister of Justice has done. I say that, will all respect to the undoubted ability of the Minister of Justice. I think the House will agree with me; if they do not now, I would ask them again to read his arguments to-morrow, and I think they will agree with me that he did not give us a real argument, He spoke of a high sense of duty, which no doubt he has. He gave us his convictions. I believe he was sincere, and as such, I respect his sincerity and I hope he will mine. But that is not an argument. I cannot accept the sincerity, or conviction, or

Capital Punishment
mere belief of the Minister of Justice. I have assumed that we are living in a reasoning age, and also that this parliament is a place of reason, although the hon. member for Strathcona (Mr. Warner) says that he made up his mind a number of years ago, so that all the arguments to-day have been wasted as regards himself. I have, however, assumed that this is a place where we listen to reason, and I look for reasons. I tried to base my arguments on reason; I carefully avoided making an appeal to passion. I or any other hon. member could stand up in this House and make an appeal on the basis of emotion that would make you cry for the sake of the prisoner. You could also make a man cry in thinking of the victim, as the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen) attempted to make us do. So I avoided studiously making this argument on the basis of emotion and mere superstitious belief; I placed it on the basis of reason, brought up the facts of science as put forward by modern criminologists and penologists, and I have challenged the Minister of Justice or anyone else to give us a single instance, a single proof in favour of the argument that capital punishment deters crime, but instead of argument we are given belief. No mere belief is sufficient. This is far too important a question for us to settle upon a mere single belief of any man, I do not care how sincerely he holds that belief. So I looked to the Minister of Justice in the hope that he would be able to convince me if I were wrong, because I want to change if I am wrong. I hoped that he would show me the errors in my reasoning if there were any but he did not do so. He said that he did not wish us to think that revenge was the basis; but revenge is the basis whether we think it is or not. There is the fact. Then he insists that capital punishment is a deterrent; but the amount of energy that a man puts into his fist when he insists that it is a deterrent, does not make it a deterrent. The sound of his voice does not make it a deterrent. Even an emphatic rap on the desk does not make it a deterrent. Only facts make a deterrent, and those facts have not been given to the House.	.
Even the hon. member for West' Toronto (Mr. Hocken) follows the line of reasoning of the Minister of Justice, and he wishes us to accept his ipse dixit without any further argument. He is assured that capital punishment deters. That assurance is not enough.
I come to the leader of the opposition (Mr. Meighen). It was left for him to' make the boldest attempt of all and he told us that if he had the slightest notion that we were in S4i
danger of losing the protection of the gallows, he would have come to this argument with more fire, witli more enthusiasm and better -I do not know whether I should say, informed-at least with better arguments; but inasmuch as he felt that the gallows were perfectly safe and that this method of meting out punishment would last for a long time yet, he did not put forth his largest guns. Then he proceeded to examine the law, and he pointed out to us that the law was very narrow in its application to murder. I am not a lawyer, of course; but I should like to read to the House just how loose, or narrow rather, this application is. I am reading from sections 259 and 260 of the Criminal Code at page 77:
Culpable homicide is murder,-
(a)	if the offender means to cause the death of the person killed;
(b)	if the offender means to cause to the person killed any bodily injury which is known to the offender to be likely to cause death, and is reckless whether death ensues or not;
(c)	if the offender means to cause death, or being so reckless as aforesaid, means to cause such bodily injury as aforesaid to one person, and by accident or mistake kills another person, though he does not mean to hurt the person killed;
(d)	if the offender, for any unlawful object, does an act which he knows or ought to have known to be likely to cause death, and thereby kills any person, though he may have desired that his object should be effected without hurting any one. 55-56 V., c. 29, s. 227.
260. In case of treason and the other offences against the King's authority and person mentioned in Part II, piracy and offences deemed to be piracy, escape or rescue from prison or lawful custody, resisting lawful apprehension, murder, rape, forcible abduction, robbery, burglary or arson, culpable homicide is also murder, whether the offender means or not, death to ensue, or knows or not that death is likely to ensue,-
It would appear therefore that there is nothing narrow about the application in so far as the criminal code is concerned. The leader of the opposition was rather careful to emphasize the coldJblooded murders. But had he known a little more about the subject he would have realized that the cold-blooded murder, although it is perhaps the more culpable in the eyes of the law, is really the less culpable from the scientific standpoint; for only a man who is lacking in some fundamental human trait could actually sit down and in cold blood calculate the means whereby to take the life of a fellow man. And that is one of the outstanding arguments in favour of the abolition of capital punishment. The man who is so lacking either in mentality or in morality as to figure a murder cold-blooded is * the kind of man who should not be punished by the kind of death which he has visited upon some one else. He is the man that ought to be protected against himself while we protect society from him.

Capital Punishment
The leader of the opposition does not consider that there is much in my argument in regard to the causes of crime; he does not regard it as sufficient to say that crime is caused by hereditary influences aggravated by the influences of environment- But he accepts the hypothesis for the sake of argument. Well, he should have followed it to its logical conclusion. Had he done so he would have realized that thex-e should be no place for punishment, on that assumption. And yet he speaks of punishment. But in this respect he misrepresented what I said. I said that there was no place for punishment, but I did not mean that thei'e was no place for prisons. I rather insisted that our attitude with respect to the prisoner should not be influenced by any considei-ation of punishment; but that does not mean that the criminal should roam ai'ound the country committing crime. The member for Kindersley (Mr. Carmichael) was of the opinion that some prisons were quite attractive, so attractive indeed that he would almost like to go there himself. He rather indicated that they were better 'than home. Well, that is the sort of prison that I should like to see established. That however is not to be interpreted as a suggestion that we should put a px'emium upon crime. The fact is that we recognize the importance of treating criminals in the way we treat our insane and diseased people. Concluding his speech the right hon. gentleman emphasized the necessity of protecting society, - failing to realize that capital punishment does not serve this end. Let me point out the difference between capital punishment and life imprisonment from the standpoint of the actual protection which is afforded human life- To-morrow moi'ning some man commits a murder. Well now, the offence has been perpetrated, and whatever steps may be taken to protect society thereafter, society certainly had not been protected before. The leader of the opposition would put this man upon the gallows and let him hang on a rope; I on .the other hand would put him in gaol or confine him in an insane asylum, according to the diagnosis of a competent person. I would not take his life. But in each case he would be pi-evented from killing any one else. My system would equally protect society, because my right hon. friend's method undoubtedly did not protect the life of the man that was killed. As an hon. gentleman observed, the man could not kill anybody else after he had been hanged, nor under my system would he be able to commit the crime again. So that there is no argument left my right hon. friend. The leader of the opposition made a pathetic appeal to senti-

ment. Let me assure him that there is something wrong with legislators who have to fall back upon the gallows as a protection to society, and I hope that he will discover where the weakness is.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), accepting the arguments of the leader of the opposition, deplores the onerous task that devolves upon him under the present law; and on being asked to give a reason for the- perpetuation of the thing that gives him such an unpleasant duty he replies that statistics can prove anything, and on this ground refuses to give any. Unfortunately there is a great deal of truth in that. But surely the Prime Minister would not like hon. members on this side of the House to test the merits of his budget by that principle. Figures can prove anything, certainly; and no doubt it can prove a surplus where a deficit actually exists. The Pi-ime Minister, I say, would not like to have his budget analyzed in that fashion. We must stop somewhere with that kind of criticism, and while I know that figures may be misleading, at the same time the leader of the government might have favoured the House with one citation, let us twist it as we might, to prove our justification in maintaining capital punishment. I agree that his task is a difficult one under the present law. He tells us that he feels the solemnity of the matter; I hope we all feel it. But the Prime Minister might feel more solemn if next week he sanctioned the regular course of the law, and the execution therdby of an innocent man. In order to save him some of that awful anxiety and to free him from the solemn responsibility of that onerous duty I would urge him to vote for this measure and at least give it a trial. Let us try it for one year, and we can keep our eye on the hon. member for Battleford (Mr. McConica) for that length of time. Then, if we have not all killed one another in the interval, we might extend the period of trial to two years. That is the only way we can prove the efficacy of such a new law; and I have so much faith in humanity, and in Canadians particularly, that I do not believe that the number of murders would be increased in any degree whatever by the enactment of this bill.


George Perry Graham: I was paired with the hon. member for East Toronto (Mr. Ryekman). Had I voted I would have voted for the motion.


Mr. MARTELL:: I was paired with the
hon. member for East York (Mr. Harris). Had I voted I would have voted for the motion.


Mr. MORRISON:: I was paired with the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Charters). Had I voted I would have voted for the motion.


Archibald M. Carmichael: I was paired with
the hon. member for Centre Winnipeg (Mr. Woodsworth). Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. EVANS:: I was paired with the hon. member for Fort William and Rainy River (Mr. Manion). Had I voted it would have been for the bill.


Andrew Ross McMaster: I was paired with the hon. member for West Peterborough (Mr. Gordon). Had I voted I would have voted for the bill.



SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE


William Lyon Mackenzie King: With the permission of
the House I would move, seconded by Mr. Lapointe, that the name of Mr. Woodsworth be added to the select standing committee on Industrial and International Relations.


Mr. SPEAKER:: By unanimous consent.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie King the House adjourned at twelve o'clock (midnight).
Monday, April 14, 1924