The Sun. — 1847-01-13 (London, England)

ALFRED STEVENS. t Our Contemporary asserts, that if punishment does not prevent crime, it should not be sanctioned. But the fact, that murder is still committed does not make good the truth of his assertion ; because no punishment, hitherto invented, secondary or justly, proportioned as it may have been to the offence perpetrated, has had the desirable effect of extinguishing that or any other particular species of crime ; whereas, if our opponents' proposition be sound, it would, when pushed to its legitimate results, lead to the abrogation of all punishment whatsoever. Let us try our Contemporary a little further. He contends life ought not to be taken away under any circumstances. Suppose a man to enter his room, and threaten his life with a loaded pistol at his breast, and the alternative to be that he must either kill his assailant, or be killed himself. We apprehend the answer to be, that he would be justified in taking the life of the assassin in selfdefence. Precisely upon the same principle does society act, in its collective capacity, as he would do in his individual. If' it be rejoined that it is not a necessary act on the part of the State to take life, when the prisoner in safe custody, we answer that the purpose of the law (which is never one of vengeance) is not only adequately to punish the criminals, but so to punish as to act as a warning to others, and thus to defend society at large, as far as it can, from the inhuman sacrifice of innocent blood.  Again, we are challenged " to account for the decrease of some kinds of crime since the substitution of secondary for capital punishments." In the first place, we would observe that executions are comparatively rare to what the—y were, and so far we have a reasonable presumption that the present law is working favourably. In the next, we might deny that crimes, to which secondary punishments are attached, have decreased. And here we would remark the complete absence of all statistics in the numerous speeches that have of late been made upon this momentous topic. Our adversaries are bound to furnish their statistics. We could then analyse them, and discover what they are worth. However, crimes may have been lessened on account of secondary punishments being more justly proportioned to the respective gravity of offences, and that, as a consequence of this, parties have been more willing to prosecute, whereby a prompt and certain punishment now overtakes offenders, who formerly escaped with  impunity from the severity of the law. Another reason may be, that by the enactment of better law 3, incentives to different crimes have been removed. Such was the case with respect to forgery, when the ore-pound notes were done away with. Such has likewise been the case by better understood laws of revenue leading to the extinction of smuggling, formerly the prolific source of so much shedding of human blood. These are suggestive reasons which we advance to convince our opponents that they ought to produce their statistics. We do not yield to them in sentiments of humanity, but we feel we best appreciate this sentiment when we evince a disinclination to the extinction of a law, framed for the protection of our lives, being carried by unsupported dicta, and reasonings, which, however specious, are nevertheless feeble and inconclusive.  The memorial from the noblemen, gentlemen, and landed proprietors of the county of Kilkenny, which has recently been presented to the Lord-Lieutenant