A Cynic Looks at Life | Page 7

Heaven is a prophecy
uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from analogy.

THE DEATH PENALTY
I
"Down with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is
always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle; of "a life
for a life"--to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of the
divine authority," and the rest of it. The law making murder punishable
by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the display of a
pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without provocation. It is in
precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning to abstain from
crime. Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us you die," just as
by display of the pistol the individual whose life is attacked says:
"Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in either case must be
more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly reasoner among the
anti-hanging unfortunates would hardly expect to frighten away an
assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course these queer
illogicians can not be made to understand that their position commits
them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of aggression; and that is
fortunate for the rest of us, for if as Christians they frankly and
consistently took that ground we should be under the miserable
necessity of respecting them.
We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in
this country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws--that the
death penalty is threatened but not inflicted--that the pistol is not
loaded. In civilized countries where there is enough respect for the laws
to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man still has

as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking we
shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and assassins and
persons with a private system of lexicography who define murder as
disease and hanging as murder, but in all this welter of crime and
stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the
human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the
death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not
derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and
punishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the
lives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a
public good, without reference to the crimes that disclose their deserts.
If we could discover them by other signs than their bloody deeds they
should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death as
evidence. The scientist who will tell us how to recognize the potential
assassin, and persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest benefactor of
his century.
What would these enemies of the gibbet have--these lineal descendants
of the drunken mobs that hooted the hangman at Tyburn Tree; this
progeny of criminals, which has so defiled with the mud of its
animosity the noble office of public, executioner that even "in this
enlightened age" he shirks his high duty, entrusting it to a hidden or
unnamed subordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it
whether its punishment by death be just or not?--nobody needs to incur
it. Men are 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