Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1880-02-26

beauty, helplessness, first sacrificed
TO brutal lust and then murdered and
mutilated by fiend to aveDge her
resistance, no punishment, by whom
soever administered, can be too sud-
den or too severe, if the villain is
caught in the act.
But if we find by comparison that
the number of murders in one com.
munity is greater thru in another, we
cannot always be certain that the
difference arises from the mild or Sc
we're punishment that the law in thoss
communities prescribed for this
crime. The habits, business, intelli-
gence and morality of the people of
one section of country may widely
differ from those Of another. Nei-
Their the penitentiary nor the gallows
has succeeded in giving adequate
protection to human life or in pre-
venting those sudden aud frightful
gusts of popular vengeance that hur-
ries the murderer into eternity
There is evidently sgeneral feeling
of anxiety pervading the whole COM
munity in reference to the safety of
human life. 1t is at fearful dis
count if the number of suicides are
to be regarded, but the mawkish
sympathy in favor of the murderer
has vanished. Revolvers are becom-
ing necessary household utensils in
our cities and secluded farm houses.
The Missouri bandits whom open day
cut the throat of banker in North
field, and shot defenceless Norwe-
gian, has restored the gallows in
Minnesota. Frightful and repeated
murders in our State among its best
regulated communities have shocked
and alarmed our people. We may
yet be compelled to give the gallows
q trial.
1t would perhaps be possible to
frame law so as to avoid many of
the evil and demoralizing effects of
capital punishment. The common
law embodied fatal and fearful err
ror. If homicide was premeditated
and designed before hand, the pun.
ishment was death invariably. Yet
some years ago Lloyd shot DIR. Ia
ney in Beetown. He had sought him
for months in Ohio, Canada and else.
where, intending to kill him at sight.
fancy had abducted Lloyd's wife !;
Lloyd found them living together in
Beetown, called him out of his bed
and shot him fatally. Here was pre-.
meditation. at common law Lloyd
would have been hung; he however
was convicted of "a low degree of man
slaughter and was pardoned by the
Governor before he reached Waupun.
The extreme penalty should be in
fiicted only in such cases as present
no possible motive to commit murder
except such as is crimina in ITSELF
But how are such cases to be de-
fined? To kill man for his money
would be such case; and so to kill
woman in or after the violation OF
her person (; to take life to conceal
some other felony would be another
instance. To allow the jury in It's
discretion, to adjudge the death pen.
atty IN specified cases as in Illinois,
would afford the accused the advan.
tage of all mitigating circumstances,
though the homicide might be pre-
meditated. This would rescue the
law from those objections that tend
ed as much as anything else to bring
the death penalty into disrepute.
Again it is a fact proven by all
experience that public executions inn
brute the people and render them
blood-thlrsty and cruel tothe same ex-
tent as the guillotine in France, or the
gladiatorial combats in old Rome. The
sight of human blood infuriates the
multitude as the bleeding of an OK
renders the whole herd frantic with
rage. The hangman's day in our
country should not be a holiday, a
scene that SO stirs up the ferocious
passions as to give countenance to
the Darwinian theory that the hu.
man kind when reduced to its prime.
val, natural condition should be clas-
sified with the brute creation.
Again the mode OF inficting death
if capital punishment is to be restored
hers, ought not to be by the clumsy,
shocking, savage mode of hanging
by the neck. Who would willingly
witness the protruded tongue, the
startled and bursting eye balls, the
quavering limbs, the most horrible
and repulsive of all forms of death !;
an exhibition brutal, barbarous and
wholly at war with the sensibilities
of our present civilization. The more
sensitive and refined Athenian ad-
ministered cup Of poison. The
Anglo Saxon preference for the gal
lows is wholly unaccountable unless
the instinct is inwrought into our
blood, inherited from the cruel prac
tees of our rude and sanguinary an
cestors. The humanity of the pres.
ent age has sought to find the least
painful mode of taking the life of a
hog or stall fed OK. Surely if our
Legislature restores the death pen.
atty the mode of taking life should
be by letting of blood, or the fatal
cup of Socrates. 1t will be impossi.
BILE long to sustain capital punish
ment in our State if reenacted, if the
usual mode of inflicting it is adop.
ted. We must either sink to the
level of this gratnitous savagery in
the mutilatiou and designation of
the human form or we will re-abol-
ish the law. NJ.
or o.