The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-13
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
The Charleston Nous and Courier prints
list Of fifty-two murders committed in
South Carolina from January to July 30.
Other homicides occurred of which no
record was made. The larger number of
these murders were committed by white
men. although four-sevenths Of the whole
population are colored.
What is wanted in South Carolina is the
iniexible execution of the law which pro-
vidss hanging for murder. The rude,
passionate violence of lynch law carries no
moral weight with 1t. It lacks the sane
ton as well as the solemnity and delibera-
ton of regular court proceedings, and as .
matter of experience lynch law only serves
to increase the disregard for law and order
and the contempt for human life.
Men are today in South Carolina very
much as they were In France when under
Cardinal Richelieu duelling was made
capital offense. The young nobility all
laughed at the edict until Richelieu sent
two young noblemen of the first rank to
the scaffold, and then duelling came to an
end. The young daredevils were not
afraid to die fighting each other. but they
hated to die by the hands of the execu-
toner. Just so in South Carolina, the
desperate men who murder each other in
street ARRAYS hold life cheap, but they
wouldn't hold life cheap if they knew that
they were sure to be hunted down, ar
rested, tried and if convicted promptly
hung.
In South Carolina the negro who COM
mits a crime is lynched forthwith, but a
white homicide is seldom lynched, and if
arrested for murder seldom suffers
death on the scaffold. Sometimes, as in
the case of the famous Colonel Cash and his
ruffian son the community will turn out
and help the sheriff hunt these despera-
does to death, but seldom are white MUIR
derers to the manor born tried by the regu-
lar courts, and when convicted made to
walk the scaffold. There is nothing like
prompt arrests, fair trials and swift execu-
tons on conviction to restrain men from
committing murder.
Few men, perhaps, fear to die, but very
many men hate to die on the scaffold by
the hands of the hangman. When hang.
ing was substituted for shooting to death
as the penalty for desertion fewer men de-
serted. The soldier. might be shot any
day; it was q soldiers death, but hanging
was a dogs death, and assertions de-
creased when ''the Sixth Corps scales"
was set up in the Army Of the Potomac
before Petersburg.
In Switzerland life imprisonment has
been tried with such disastrous conse-
restored in most of the cantons. The
greatest living English jurists, as a rule.
oppose the abolition Of capital punish
ment upon the philosophic ground that
of the vast mass of persons who are likely
to commit murder, few would fear life inn
prisonment compared with the many who
would recoil from the gallows. Even q
high bred, intellectual man, like Colonel
King. OF Memphis, prefers the living
death of prison life to death on the gallows
tree. while the average murderer would
accept any form of life rather than death.
He does not banker after cellular exist
ence in penitentiary, but he infinitely
prefers it to death and deposit in the mar.
row cell Of the silent grave. Claudio in
Measure for Measure" says:
The weariest aud most loathed worldly life
That age. ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
TO what We fear OF death.
This sentiment is placed by Shakespeare.
who knew human nature we'll. III the
mouth of a gallant, high-bred young gen.
tleman, who nevertheless shoulders so at
the prospect Of death that he absolutely
begs his sister to surrender her honor to
his executioner and let him live. If the
love of life is as powerful as that with q
high-bred gallant like Claudio, how strong
must it be in low-bred cutthroat urged
by no sense of honor to choose death
rather than hateful life.
The natures that prefer death to life im-
prisonment are few; high-bred men cling to
life with tenacity, because as long as there
is life there is hope. but death ends all
hope in this world and possibly in the
world to come. So death, repulsive to the
best of US, is doubly so to low-bred
ruifians. who fare as well in prison Is they
ordinarily do out of prison. The energy
with which Colonel King worked to secure
Communication shows how repulsive the
scaifoid was when he drew near to it.
King, when he shot Poston dead, knew
that no gentleman of his standing had
ever been hanged for murder in Tennessee,
and when he slew his victim he reckoned
on escaping the death penalty, but if
Tennessee had hanged King as promptly
as Canada hanged Birchall. who was by
birth and education an English gentle
man. it would have been great day for
Tennessee.
The escape of King will weaken legal
Justice, already dishonored and depraved
by acts of lynch law in Tennessee The
natural result will be that either lynchings
Will increase TO the point of state of gen.
eral anarchy, or capital punishment will
be abolished on the ground that if Ten
nessee can't afford TO hang high intellect,
culture and intelligence for murder after
conviction. then Tennessee ought not to
make it legally possible to hang poor. ig-
norant, friendiess and stupid men for
murder. In states where it is difficult to
secure conviction for murder homicides
are common, but in New Jersey homicides
are few and far between because Jersey
justice is as swift, sharp and memorable as
that of England