The record-union., 1899-03-22
COLONEL INGERsoLL's HEART.


Colonel Ingersoll, whose heart is
very large, and beats to the SYM
pathetic tune of human right and
OF mercy to humanity, frail and
fallible, in lugubrious sighs deplores
the taking off of Mrs. Place in
the electrical chair, by order of the law.
He speaks in most moving terms OF this
poor woman, murdered by the law" as
''the victim of savagery," of that rem
nant of the savage prompting which
remains In mans heart.
He draws a woeful picture of the 'un-
happy woman, strapped in chair and
deliberately killed to satisfy the laws
demand, and depicts the cruelty and
misery of it all. Which is tender senti-
msnt, but a bit harsh upon civilization.
For the soft hearted Colonel appears to
have lost sight of that other scene when
Mrs. Place, inspired by fendish hate
and jealousy, as we'll as by a furious
temper, strangled her step-daughter to
the death. choking out her life remorse-
lessly and with malice aforethought,
and after a cunningly devised plan.
She followed up her doing to death of
one Of her own sex, and whom in duty
she was bound to protect and comfort,
by an effort to brain her husband with
an ak, and in her frenzy of failure
sought to evade punishment for her
crimes by suicide.
True, Colonel Ingersoll admits that
the murderess should not have been set
free. His idea is that she should have
been imprisoned for life 1t is ques-
tion whether his remedy for capital
punishment is the more mercifui. But
the error of the great freethinker is in
assuming that the law, the people, the
State, in savage anger or delight killed
Mrs. Place; that they did so out of re-
venge, or to avenge the death Of the
poor creature Mrs. Place choked to
death and them poured vitriol upon her
dead face.
The law does not contemplate re-
-venge. 1t harbors no anger It de-
crees penalties that the commission of
crime may be prevented. Ii seeks not
only to protect society from those who
would prey upon the lives of it's mem
bers, by throwing guards about COM
munities and citizens in the form Of
officers, watchmen and laws defining
when they may lawfully defend them
selves by taking life, but it seeks to
prevent crime against the members of
society by the warning the death pen
atty involves. It declares the life of the
murderer forfeited to the State, that he
or she may be removed from possibility
of doing further murder, and that the
fate of the guilty may serve as re-
straint upon others who else might al
low their passions, their hate or their
greed to ifnpel them to commission Of
capital crimes.
Mrs. Place was not killed savagely
nor after the manner of sayages. nor
in anger, nor in retaliation. These are
not contemplated by the law. She was
executed for precisely the same reason
that Colonel Ingersou would have had
her imprisoned for life. He insists,
however, that executions do not serve
as warnings. and do not check criminal
impulses. Just how he can establish
that assertion as fact is not clear. Civ
ilized society believes that capital pun
ishment is deterrent. That crime still
continues. land that murder is done de-
spite the threats of the law, does not
prove that without this deterrent influ-
ence no greater number Of murders
would be committed.