not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not
deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather hooted the
hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a
part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder
proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging, that it
is somewhat deterrent--it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder
is his crime, his second is ours.

The socialists, it seems, believe with Alphonse Karr, in the expediency
of abolishing the death penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with
him, that the assassins should begin. They want the state to begin,
believing that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in
those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their
assertion that death penalties have not the deterring influence that
imprisonment for life carries. In this they obviously err: death deters
at least the person who suffers it--he commits no more murder; whereas
the assassin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further
punishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be
able to get at. Even as matters now are, incessant vigilance is required
to prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants and one
another. How would it be if the "life-termer" were assured against any
additional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally, or
strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described as a
place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed, the
difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would
be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would
have to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what
these gentlemen propose to substitute for death?

The death penalty, say these amiables and futilitarians, creates