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Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2, Capital punishment (1855） (search)
oral tone; we have a homogeneous population; it is easy to get a living here, and poverty, therefore, does not drive to crime, as in some other places,--our circumstances are all favorable to morality. We are in a better condition to try such an experiment than Michigan, far better than Belgium, Tuscany, or Russia; yet they tried it and were successful, and why will not we try it also? All the great lights of jurisprudence are on our side,--Franklin, Livingston, Rush, Lafayette, Beccaria, Grotius, -I might mention forty eminent names, all throwing their testimony against the gallows. Lafayette said, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death, until you show me the infallibility of human testimony. He thought it was enough to discredit the gallows, that men might be hung by mistake. There have been two or three scores of such cases in the history of jurisprudence. Now, with all this experience on our side, with the fact that we are the very best government in the worl