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Untitled Article
probability , and I ana surely justified in the assertion * since it appears from the Parliamentary returns for the past year , that , out of 341 individuals , convicted of burglary or highway-robbery , and sentenced to death accordingly ., only five were executed !
Far be it from me to regret this fact , —on the contrary , I could wish that none had suffered ; but I do most sincerely regret the state of the law , which rendered so wholesale a distribution of mercy expedient , feeling convinced that the increasing prevalence of those very crimes is , in a great measure , attributable to it .
Whilst , however , the punishment in question has tended to increase the spread of crime from its actual severity , in the manner just described , it has also produced the same untoward result from its apparent leniency . Paradoxical as this assertion may appear at first sight , it will , I think , upon investigation , be found to be correct . The same punishment is differently estimated by
different individuals , —and none perhaps more so , than the one under consideration . And this diversity may arise as well from peculiarities of temperament , as from accidental circumstances . In some men the fear of death is engendered solely by a natural timidity of disposition—in others , it proceeds From the consciousness of a rnispent life , and of the certainty of a future day of
retribution : but neither of these causes can be supposed to render death an object of dread to those whose crimes render them liable to incur it at the hangman ' s hands . That they are not subject to the one , —the boldness of their deeds clearly shows , — and that they regard not the other , the enormity of their offences too plainly proves . Death , we have too much reason to fear , is ,
by them , considered eternal sleep—futurity an idle dreamand life only valued so long as it affords the means of sensual gratification . Is it , then , surprising that tho possible forfeiture of life should fail to prevent them from seeking to obtain by any means , however culpable , that which they esteem the sutnmum bonum ? or unreasonable to assert , that
a violent death , which seems to us , and really is , tlte most awful punishment that man has it in his power to inflict upon his fellow-man , is very differently estimated by persons entertaining the particular opinions just alluded to ? No ; death is by many of them less feared than a year ' s imprisonment coupled with hard labour ! The case of the man Ilallan , who was
executed in December last at Cambridge , * for arson , will serve to elucidate this fact . This individual , it appears from his own Confession , bore no ill-will towards those whose property he destroyed , his sole motive being the paltry sum which he received , as director The ' Globe , ' in its defence of ' Death-punishment / having particularly instanced
incendiarism aa a crime , tor the prevention of which , it was n&cetisary , I determined to notice what effect tho sentence passed upon Ilallan would produce . Judge my surprise upon reading , a few days after it had been carried into execution , in that very paper , a paragraph announcing fourteen incendiary Jlret which had occurred i » CambruigcMrr , and ihe wfoimng a / untie * , in the co ¥ rsc of the i preceding fortnig ht . '
Untitled Article
364 On the Propriety of totally abolishing
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 334, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/22/
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