New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1889-08-24
FOrR AGAINST FOCR.

Uanoinp-day passed at the Tombs without
sorious bunglng of the scaffcld machinery.
Ono Of the four murderers was slowly and
avl,vardy strangled, and another struggled
,.;olaptlv for one or two minutes, the weights
in one of the scaffods apparently not provld-
inc sufficient rebound for instantaneous chok-
ING. hut the mechanism worked exceedingly
we'll in the other gallows and the spectacle was
not more painful and revolving than such eAhi-
bitions usually are. All the arrangements Tor
the execution of the death sentences were
made as decorously and quietly as the circum-
stances permitted. The hour was an early
ono. the audience was small, and the work
was done as expedtiously As possible and
without meretricious sensational effects. -Four
lives were summarily exacted at ropes end
for the four lives that had been taken. AS
matter of arithmetic the law of retaliation was
carried ont 10 the exact figure. 1t was four
against four.
But retaliation i'll accords with Christian
ethics :. and it is necessary to find some CO.
ordinate law of compensation in order to justify
this launching of four souls in the mysterious
sea of eternity. These murderers were all
woman -slayers. They were incorporate leal-
OILS. passionate and brutal. Each in his turn
assaulted the woman for whom he prOfessed to
care. and stamped the life out'of her with the
ferocity of savagery. Their own lives have
been forfeited for the sake Of moral effect
uDon the community at large. The law as
sumes-and that law apparently has the support
of the practical experience of all civilized coun-
tries-that human life will be more secure and
the frenzy of Cain kept under easier and more
constant restraint. if murderers are hanged,
shot or nut to death by electricity. When they
are sentenced they are commended to Divine
mercy But that mercy covers human KIND as
the heavens arch over the earth. 1t is not
necessary to kill them in order to grant them
the protection of divine mercy. 1t is neces-
sary to kill them, by the accepted theory OF
CAPITAL punishment, in ordeg that men may be
brought under the restraints OF the terrors of
the law. and that human life may not be ex-
nosed. at every turn to the sudden caprices,
nremeditated malice and resentful hatred of
eyil-dOerS.
That is the compensation offered by the
CHASTITY horrors of hangman's day at the Iombs.
Il is a meagre one, but there is nothing else.
1t would be mark Of credulity if any one
were to imagine that men will be less brutal
and bestial in their dealings with women in
consequence Ct yesterdays fruit plucked from
the gallows-tree. As civilization has advanced
there has been development of gentle
courtesy and refinement of manners in the re-
IatiOns of men to women but domestic virtues
have not been promoted by the hanging OF
wife-murdelers and woman-beaterS. The class
to which the four condemned men belong will
not in all probability take warning from yes
terdays exhibition, and learn to treat women
with more consideration and humanity. Such
town-shows can have no direct educational
effect in reforming the habits of jealous, dis
sipated, quarrelsome and passionate men. But
il is to be hoped that the law of compensation
comes in somewhere, and. that the community
as a whole profits by the abstract conception
Of life taken for life as a means of indicating
the majesty Of the law, and of surrounding
the conditions of human existence with ade-
quate safeguards