clear breach over you. But now--thanks be to God! that dreary winter is
rapidly hastening away. The sun of humanity is going steadily up from
the horizon to its zenith, growing larger and brighter, and melting the
frozen earth beneath, its powerful rays. The genial showers of
repentance are softly falling upon the barren plain; the wilderness is
budding like the rose; the voice of joy succeeds the cotes of we; and
hope, like the lark, is soaring upward and warbling hymns at the gate of
heaven. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

"From Words of Encouragement to the Opprest."

* * * * *

Listen to the voice of justice and of reason; it cries to us that human
judgments are never certain enough to warrant society in giving death to
a man convicted by other men liable to error. Had you imagined the most
perfect judicial system; had you found the most upright and enlightened
judges, there will always remain some room for error or prejudice. Why
interdict to yourselves the means of reparation? Why condemn yourself to
powerlessness to help opprest innocence? What good can come of the
sterile regrets, these illusory reparations you grant to a vain shade,
to insensible ashes? They are the sad testimonials of the barbarous
temerity of your penal laws. To rob the man of the possibility of
expiating his crime by his repentance or by acts of virtue; to close to
him without mercy every return toward a proper life, and his own esteem;
to hasten his descent, as it were, into the grave still covered with the
recent blotch, of his crime, is in my eyes the most horrible refinement
of cruelty. MAXIMILIEN MARIE ISIDORE ROBESPIERRE.

From "Against Capital Punishment."