The Portland daily press., 1872-12-12
Murder and Capital Punishment

Murder and Capital Punishment
There is loud call for the enforcement of
the death penalty in many States where
murder is SO much on the increase as to Gre
ate just alarm. States that have abolished
capital punishment are urged to restore it,
aud those that have allowed it to fall into
disuse are exhorted to revive it. Ii TINS
clamor arises from the mistaken notion tnat
the abolition of capital punishment Is Oh
piece with general laxty in the aominlstfa-
ton of criminal law and is the outgrowth
of tendency to accord impunity to crime.
The reverse is the case. The abandonment
of the death penalty is an act in the direction
of more uniform and certain enforcement
of the laws and their penalties. Instead of
being complement of the existing system of
indscriminate pardons and juries packed to
&C Iuit, it is measure that removes some OF
the most serious obstacles in the way of pun
ishing the higher order OF offenses. An in
adequate penalty for crime is always rec
ognized as an inducement to commit it, but
an exaggerated penalty, though not so easily
recognized in its true character, is greater
encouragement. When in England simple lar
cency was punished capitally, the result was
that it either went unpublished, or was accom-
panied by murder, since the commission Of
the latter crime lessened the probability OF
the detection of the theft without exposing
the criminal to an additional or more dread
full punishment In this country at the pres
ent time juries have at least sufficient practi-
cal aversion to hanging to lead them to give
the person accused of murder the benefit 4
the smallest palliatlng circumstances, no mat
ter how Inadequate the excuse to lessen the
blackness of the crime. Jealousy OF wife
o. mistress, anger, intoxication and mo
m4ntary insanity all serve to deliver the &C
cused not only from the gallows but from any
punishment whatever. The thing that fills
the jails of New ork with murderers who are
in daily expectation of release, is not the
want of more executions, but of less. The
capital punishment law is in full effect in
that State. Once in a great while, alternat-
ing with the usual system of general Jail de-
livery of murderers, comes an execution by
hanging Last Friday the Brooklyn roughs
were treated to a great moral spectacle of this
kind. There was the usual bungling. The
sight of a man suspended in mid air by rope
around his neck, his heart beating and his
lungs making convulsive efforts to breathe
during the space of fifteen minutes, would
fill ordinary people with horror; but the
drunken crowd in attendance at Brooklyn
rather liked it, They applauded the first
time Rogers was jerked into the air. When
it was evident that his neck was not broken
and he was taken down and jerked up twice
more, their delight knew no bounds. Brutal
before, their natures could certainly receive
brutalizing scene. The sacredness of hui
man life cannot be inculcated in hard, bru-
tai and ignorant souls by the exhibition OF
tortures from which Torquemada might have
received a suggestion.
Not only is one execution pretty sure to
prove the seed of half dozen homici,ies, but
it is quite certain to secure impunity for the
next crop of murderers. Your juryman who
has been kept awake several nights by the
recollection of the account he has read Of
Rogers hanging-of hfs writing, squirming,
fainting and repeated elevations, is not in
mood to find anybody guilty of crime that
may subject him to like barbarous treatment.
The scene that hardens a rough softens
juryman. Thus we get from every execution
at least two homicides committed with inn
punity.
To say nothing, then, of the barbarity and
cruelty Of strangling man who can bysother
means be kept from wrong doing, capital pun
ishment is Oh the whole, unfavorable to the
to be punitive instead of remedial when the
idea OF revenge has long since been eliminated
from all theories of punishment. DR.. Wines
and his associates in prison reform have a
great and good work in hand. They have so
good a case that the world must listen to
them while they demand that punishment
shall be made reformatory in fact as well as
in theory. But the present laws and their
sanctions are better than none. Capital pun
shment makes some of them null and void.
The hanging of the negro boy Harris was fol-
owed by more murders in one year than
Maine usually has in five, and we believe that
one or two more executions would have de-
veloped public sentiment which would have
secured to the large number of murderers
who are now expiating their offenses il our
State prison as complete immunity from all
punishment as such criminals enjoy in States
where strangulation is not practically obso-
ete.
THE Washington papers are publishing nu-
nerous communications from the department
clerks advocating an increase of salary. There |
S, however, one exception in the person of a
$1,000 clerk who says:
''When reflect on the position fill, the
1esk put in my charge, and the very light
lulies imposed, with the slight demand made
on my time to properly discharge those du-
ties, together with the very handsome remu-
leration for the time given, | cannot, with
honor to myself, extend my open palm to an
already overburdened country, and beg tor
more wages"
For writing this, the clerks associates wax
wroth and call him "free lunch clerk"
very light clerk" a marrow gauge man."
and like uncomplimentary terms. 1t is a
matter of congratulation that there is one of
the several thousand there who is contented
with his condition. But in this connection
it should not be forgotten that there are hun
1reds and thousands of deserving and COM
petent young men willing and anxious to do
the work at the present salaries. Indeed we
believe the average salaries of the department
employees are greater than those paid for
similar work by private business firms
throughout the country.
TIE Christian Era offers to each new SUBJ
scriber fine chrome, ''Eventide, or Crossing
tle Ford at Shutdown" This chrome would
Il doubtedly sell In the market for at least Sc
per copy, while the price subscription to tie
Era ia e. IN nd rho piotura is sent for caufs