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Wendell Phillips (search for this): chapter 10
ishment), commanding us to execute our fellow-men; and yet, in all civilized society, Mr. Chairman, the man who executes that law — the hangmanis not esteemed fit for decent society. In Spain, the man who has hung another runs out of the city in disgrace, and if he were to appear again, the mob would tear him in pieces. To call a man a hangman is the greatest insult you can cast upon him. Dr. Beecher (interrupting).--I suppose that is because he has touched sin and been polluted. Mr. Phillips.--But the mob does not pelt the clergy-. man who takes the man's hand only the moment before he is executed! [This retort excited great merriment, the audience loudly applauding.] No, Mr. Chairman, it is a very remarkable circumstance that in all time the man who did his duty in obeying this statute has been infamous. Then here is another very important fact. That statute--one line of which, according to these gentlemen, has sufficient vitality to cover all space and time — is so
Robert Rantoul (search for this): chapter 10
ause, if it is, it is a per. mission to commit suicide. You have got to upset the American idea of government before you can even exercise it as a permission. Mr. Rantoul, in one of his exceedingly able reports on this subject, fourteen years ago, placed this before the legislature in the most unanswerable light. You must argue nce of the example, for the gallows; there is no necessity for it. Experience proves that there is not. Gentlemen, I would not weary you with details; but take Rantoul's reports, and you will find my statement fully confirmed. It is proved by English history that just so fast as you take the death-penalty from a crime, the crim succeeded, she shall now try the other. We used to punish highway robbery with death. Then that crime was frequent; but things got to such a state that, as Robert Rantoul said, a man was more likely to be struck by lightning, sitting in his parlor in any town of the Commonwealth, than to be hung for highway robbery. We took of
Rush (search for this): chapter 10
government is a compact among the people; and a government founded on that basis cannot have the right to take life, unless the individual has the right to take his own,--unless suicide is justifiable. The reverend gentlemen who have appeared before you in opposition to the petitioners, would not allow for a moment that I have the right to commit suicide; but if I have not the right to take my own life, how can I give that right to Governor Gardner, or to a jury of twelve men? Beccaria, Dr. Rush, and all the most eminent writers on this subject deny the right of society to take life, on the ground that it conflicts with the republican form of government. These gentlemen escape from this by throwing overboard the whole theory of American society. They say society is not a compact. They upset the Declaration of Independence and the Massachusetts Constitution, and maintain that government is derived from God; and in that way they get the idea of capital punishment from the Bible: f
Shakspeare (search for this): chapter 10
ds; we have got to make out the rest. Some say it is a prophecy, Whosoever taketh the sword, shall perish by the sword; and so of all the different meanings. I do not go into them, because it is utterly immaterial to my argument which is the best. The simple fact that the most eminent Oriental scholars have never been able to agree upon an interpretation, is enough for me. Is it not singular, I say, that so transcendent an act of legislation as breaking into the bloody house of life, as Shakspeare writes,--the taking of human life,--should be left to hang on a doubtful sentence, in a dead language, more than three thousand years old? Why, gentlemen, if a doctrine is of importance in the Bible, it is spread over many pages; it shines out in parable; it is put prominently forward in exhortation ; it is given in one way and then in another; first by one writer and then by another,--but here is this single sentence, nothing else; we have got to hang on this; we cannot find it anywhere
Lemuel Shaw (search for this): chapter 10
m whence he can never escape; where he can never see the face of his kind again. Has society any need to take that man's life to protect herself? Has she retreated to the wall? If society has only the right that the individual has, she has no right to inflict the penalty of death, because she can effectually restrain the individual from ever again committing his offence. Suppose a man should attempt to kill me in the street, and I should take his life, and when I was brought before Chief-Justice Shaw, and asked how I killed him, I should say: I overcame him; I threw him on the sidewalk; I bound him hand and foot; and then I killed him, --would that be justifiable? No, I should be imprisoned for manslaughter. Society takes the murderer; she shuts him up in jail; she keeps him ninety days, or longer; she tries him before twelve men; and then, having him utterly, irremediably in her power, she hangs him; and then she turns round and tells you, I have only the right of the individua
Spear (search for this): chapter 10
o be obeyed in its full spirit, to the extent of it. Is not that proper? The opponents of capital punishment, gentlemen, are perfectly willing to obey this statute, with the gentlemen who support the gallows, if they will obey it to the letter, entirely. How long could any legislature that obeyed that command, in its full spirit, sit in any Christian country? Let us see. In the first place, you will remark that this is but a single line of Hebrew text. If you will look into our friend Spear's book, or Dr. Cheever's book, or any book on this subject, on either side, you will find that there are as many as twelve different interpretations of it. No two of the great lights of Oriental learning and the Hebrew language have been able to agree upon an interpretation. One says that it means one thing, and another, another thing; and from Calvin and Luther down to our own day, there has been no unanimous agreement among scholars as to the meaning of this sentence. Is it not rather si
Belgium (Belgium) (search for this): chapter 10
olished. We have got outside of the Bible now; we have got the experience of two hundred years in England, that every crime from which the penalty of the gallows was taken off has diminished; we have got the experience of Russia, of Tuscany, of Belgium, of Sir James Mackintosh in India, where they have given up the death penalty, yet murder did not increase. You say, these experiments were local, and for a short time; true, but they were all one way. Society has never tried the gallows but to; 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,
Oriental (Oklahoma, United States) (search for this): chapter 10
ine of Hebrew text. If you will look into our friend Spear's book, or Dr. Cheever's book, or any book on this subject, on either side, you will find that there are as many as twelve different interpretations of it. No two of the great lights of Oriental learning and the Hebrew language have been able to agree upon an interpretation. One says that it means one thing, and another, another thing; and from Calvin and Luther down to our own day, there has been no unanimous agreement among scholars say it is a prophecy, Whosoever taketh the sword, shall perish by the sword; and so of all the different meanings. I do not go into them, because it is utterly immaterial to my argument which is the best. The simple fact that the most eminent Oriental scholars have never been able to agree upon an interpretation, is enough for me. Is it not singular, I say, that so transcendent an act of legislation as breaking into the bloody house of life, as Shakspeare writes,--the taking of human life,--s
Sinai (Mississippi, United States) (search for this): chapter 10
he authority of a statute so uncertain in its meaning that no sheriff would hang an individual man on a precept so equivocal, and so much surrounded with difficulties! If men are to come here and propound it as a statute sounding down to us from Sinai, and before Sinai, then it is a statute that we must put our hands on our lips, and our lips in the dust, and obey to the letter. We have no right to reject one word and take the next; there is no trifling to be done with it. Gentlemen, we haSinai, then it is a statute that we must put our hands on our lips, and our lips in the dust, and obey to the letter. We have no right to reject one word and take the next; there is no trifling to be done with it. Gentlemen, we have now dismissed the subject of obligation. It is unnecessary to say,,after this, that I do not believe in the obligation. If society can get permission to take life from this text, it is the most that it can get; it is no command, no continuing command. But, mark you, even that permission your Constitution does not allow you to use! Your Constitution does not even recognize it as a permission; because, if it is, it is a per. mission to commit suicide. You have got to upset the American i
Florence (Italy) (search for this): chapter 10
t. The whole current of legislation is to give it up. We have given it up in almost all cases, and we are safer than we were. No State that has abolished it has ever taken a backward step voluntarily. It was re-established in Tuscany by a foreign power, and is not executed even-there. I understand that the Grand Duke of Tuscany promised his sister never to obey the law forced upon him by Napoleon, and you see murderers walking in their parti-colored dress along the streets of Leghorn and Florence; yet Tuscany is the most moral and well-behaved country in Italy. So it is with our States. All experience points one way. The old barbarous practices have gradually given place to others more humane and merciful. Once a prisoner was not allowed to swear his witnesses; then they would not allow him counsel. Now he may swear his witnesses, and is entitled to counsel; yet the government is safe. Men used to say, We cannot get rid of the .gallows. Why, murder is so rife in the land that
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