Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1880-06-12 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

IIT AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.  IT is not to be expected that a gentleman of Mr. JOHN BRIGHT'S active and independent character should confine himself to the mere Insinese of official routine, or should confine his public political advocacy to Ministerial projects oh legislation. In his position as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he has no very severe duties to perforce, and we must expect him to travel beyond them in finding subjects for the exercise of his mind and of his oratory. In taking up the question of capital punishment, in his recent speech at University College, Loudon, he chose a safe topic for his treatment as an individual politician. If be had set himself to denounce the lash in the army, he might have caused inconvenience to the Ministry to which he belongs, seeing that they are pledged to abolish that punishment as soon as they can find a convenient and effective substitute, but that they have not yet discovered this. But capital punishment, inflicted on civilians or soldiers for the crime of murder, is not a political, much less a party question, or. a subject in the Ministerial programme of legislation, Mr. Bazawr is free to denounce capital punish. ment independently of his colleagues, just as he would be free to advocate the suppression of the liquor traffic; and wears not sorry to see his attention directed to the subject. His view may be extreme, that in no case is society justified in taking the life of a murderer; but it is well that this aide of the subject should be put forcibly before the public mind. If Mr. BRIGHT obtains many sympathisers with his views.it will probably be, not because a majority, or a very large minority, of people disapprove in the abstract of hanging in every case, but because our present law and judicial practice as to capital punishment are not Retiefactory. Comparatively few people, probably, disapproved of the extreme penalty being inflicted upon PEACE or CATHERINE WEBSTER; but CaSeS do occur every now and then in which popular sympathy is in favour of the hangmaa's victim. Now, we think that this one extreme penalty of death should, above all others, never be indicted but in the class of eases in which public opinion and public feeling approved of it. It is not enough that a penalty is practically deterrent, or supported by precedent throughout ages, it should be in consonance with the public conscience; and we do not believe that the public conscience approves of hanging for all the crimes that are now classed under the general term murder. It seems now to be almost practically forgotten that not many years ago, in several sessions of Parliament. attempts were made by the Government of the day to put the law of murder on a more satisfactory footing. It was then proposed that there should be a separation of homicidal crimes into classes. beginning with murder in the first degree, and passing through murder in the second degree to manslaughter, or imlnable (though not intentional) hooncide. 't i,e proposed alteration of the law has never carried into effect, and so juries are still chliged to return, according to law, verdicts op. pos..d to their moral conscience, and the Home Office is left as the unsatisfactory tribunal to mitigate the undue severity of the law. If Mr. Batonx would set himself to obtaining for juries the right of saying in what cases capital punishment was deserved, he would be going a considerable way towards attaining his object of abolishing that penalty, while he would be supported by e greater weight of public opinion. If the classifioation of every particular homicide into murder in the first or in the second degree, as well as alternatively into manslaughter. were left to juries, it is hardly probable that nearly so many victims would be sent to the scaffold BB at present, or that public feeling would be ever seriously outraged by an execution. If we will not draw the line, or allow it to be drawn, between one class of murder and another, public feeling will become disgusted with numerous and indiscriminate hangings, and what security the gallows might afford to Society will he lost.  WURNISH ON THE 8188 SYSTEM lie• Dm* Jaituary 111.