Daily American telegraph., 1852-04-23
Prom the Philadelphia Evening Argos.
The Death Penalty.

That there is IN our community deep and in
creasing public sentiment against the sanguinary
punshments that have conc down to us from
the barbarous ages we have no doubt; and we
think that MI facts and experience have demon
strated that where they have been abolished and
more rational and humane code of punishments
established, the cause of justice has been ad-
vanced, and the peace and security of the COM
munity increased. 1t is not the severity of pun
ishment that deers the evil-disposed from the COM
mission of offences; but the absolute and fixed
certainty that the prison stands beside the crime
with its doors open, from which there is no es-
cape when the offence is committed. The pages
of history teach one fact in plain and forcible
manner, and that is, that where the severest and
most bloody laws have been enacted and put in
vigorous and unreenting execution, the result
has been an increase rather than n diminution in
the very offences they hoped to stop.
At every step the student takes in the study of
European history, enough is shown to establish
the ndisputable truth Of this assertion and point
out to him the folly of pursuing the same path
that is stud&ed its whole length with the fatal
monuments of a mistaken policy. The frequency.
of executions have the tendency to familiarize the
minds with such acts of barbarism, and take from
it the salutary dread that punishment should
dffuse throughout the community, if any good
results are TO be expected from the enforcement
OF the law. In other States where executions are
performed in public manner, it is not unfre-
quenty the that fights, resulting in the death
of one of the party, Mt the very foot of the
gallows where n human being is expiating like
offence with his life.
These are facts that entirely disproye the DO
sion taken by the friends of the death penalty
that this particular punishment is absolutely ne
cessary to stop the taking of human life and that
none other will have the desired effect. But
another position is now being taken hold Of by
the Judgments OF the people, and that is the fact
that punishment should be twofold-the protec-
ton of society and the reformation of the crimi-
nal and that while we are bound to take care
of the first, we should do so in manner the most
likely to be productive of the latter. We admit
that society has the right to protect itself from
the attacks Of the vicious and the depraved-to
throw around its members oil the safeguards that
wisdom and prudence dictates as just and proper;
but the question is, cannot these objects be ac-
complished by means that while they effect this
desired end will, Mt the same moment, open up to
the criminal IN avenue by which he can see the
star Of reformation and hope in the future and
he induced to forsake the evil, and cling to that
which is pure and good? If no such thing is pos
sible, and if the only method, in this age of
churches and free schools, to keep the community
from the knife. Of the assassin, Is to perpetuate
the ralows with all its horrors, why, then, we re-
peat let them be perpetuated; but this, we say,
IS not the fact. The best evidence we can give is
the favorable movement made in the legislature
for the amelioraton of the sanguinary part of our
penal code The experience that the past has
afforded joined with the enlightening and hui
manizing influences of the spread of general edu-
cation among the people, has steadily pointed to
This onward movement in our State, and the time
is coming when it viii meet with ultimate success
We are not for the laxity of law, or the uncer-
tainty of its execution; but we do hold the opin-
ion that the necessities of society do not require
the enforcement of this relic of the past and gone
ages, and that the State Of Pennsylvania should
blot it from her statute book.