"Capital punishment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Hertford, which led to her trial for witchcraft at assizes held in the following year, 1712, when she was found guilty; and became memorable as the last person who, in this country, was condemned to capital punishment for that impossible offence. The judge got first a reprieve and then a pardon. The lawyers had refused to draw up any indictment against the poor old creature, except, in mockery, for 'conversing familiarly with the devil in form of a cat.' But of that offence she was found guilty upon ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... candid person who will carefully read the government's dispatch No. 70, dated September 25, 1869, will see that a government holding such language could find nothing in Mr. Motley's expressions in a conversation held at his first official interview to visit with official capital punishment more than a year afterwards. If Mr. Motley had, as it was pretended, followed Sumner, Mr. Fish had "out-Sumnered" ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... caused them to be indicted for piracy and murder. This was almost immediately disposed of, on the ground that the charges, if true, were not cognizable in the American courts, the alleged offences having been perpetrated on board a Spanish vessel. The Africans therefore were in no immediate danger of capital punishment. Ruiz and Montez on their part seem to have met with sympathy and kindness, and to testify their gratitude caused the following to be inserted in the ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... prince Satyavat said that the persons brought out for execution should not be executed. The power of kings did not extend over the lives of their subjects. In other words the prince argued against the propriety of inflicting capital punishment upon even grave offenders. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... good woman! Shall you send him to prison, Admiral Merrifield? What can be done to him?' said Arthurine, not looking at all as if she would like to abrogate capital punishment. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perhaps, no other example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father's wrongs; and promised to admit into the act of oblivion all, except those whom the parliament should except; and the parliament doomed none to capital punishment, but the wretches who had immediately cooperated in the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had only justified ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... a matter of record that in the twentieth century the universal form of capital punishment was execution by electricity. In every state-prison stood the "death-chair," the visible embodiment of the moral force which the wrong-doer had defied, and which, in the ensuing struggle, had proved too strong for him. No wonder ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... civilization—of our education, our business, even our religion—is to make us neurotic, excitable, impatient. In our cooler moments we enact laws expressive of mistaken mercy rather than of unflinching justice. Some of the states have even abolished capital punishment and in but one can a brute be tied up and whipped for the cowardly crime of wife-beating. We establish courts rather to acquit than to convict by disqualifying intelligence for jury service and enforcing the stupid unit rule. We provide convicts with comforts unknown ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and out of the gymnasium he, with difficulty, escaped a half-dozen more fistic encounters, as everybody from the manager down felt that his crime deserved nothing short of capital punishment. He had absolutely wrecked a perfectly good scheme in the perfection of which several thousand dollars had been spent, and now there could not be even the possibility of a chance of their ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Service. My article in the "North American Review.'' Renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. Evarts; his witty stories. My efforts to interest Senator Platt in civil-service reform; his slow progress in this respect. Wayne MacVeagh; Judge Biddle's remark at his table on American feeling regarding capital punishment. Great defeat of the Republican party in 1882. Judge Folger's unfortunate campaign. Election of Mr. Cleveland. My address on "The New Germany'' at New York. Meeting with General McDowell, the injustice of popular judgment ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... gentle Reader, for digressing. The lady led me astray. I was speaking of "The Stormy Petrels," and of the reforms they accomplished, which were many. We abolished, I remember, capital punishment and war; we were excellent young men at heart. Christmas we reformed altogether, along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of twelve. I never recollect any proposal to abolish anything ever being lost when put to the vote. There were few things ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... calculated to promote the views of those who advocate the abolition of capital punishment, it is the fact of a woman meeting her death at the hands of the common hangman. There is something abhorrent, especially to the mind of the stronger sex, in the idea of a female suffering the extreme ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... her existence and her crimes can go no length to prove the possibility that another class of witches, no otherwise resembling her than as called by the same name, either existed at a more recent period, or were liable to the same capital punishment, for a very different and much more doubtful class of offences, which, however odious, are nevertheless to be proved possible before they can be received as a ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... indignation became ungovernable. They accordingly seized Him at the time of the Passover, and, on the charge that He said He was the Son of God, He was condemned as a blasphemer. [27:2] He suffered crucifixion—an ignominious form of capital punishment from which the laws of the empire exempted every Roman citizen—and, to add to His disgrace, He was put to death between two thieves. [27:3] But even Pontius Pilate, who was then Procurator of Judea, and who, in that capacity, endorsed ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... ordinary Courts of the country, or before such special Courts as later on may legally be constituted. The punishment for their misdeeds shall be left to the discretion of the Court, with this reservation, that in no case shall capital punishment be inflicted. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... amount of three thousand livres was discovered; which they had received the day before from a man who called himself a merchant from Paris, but who was a police spy sent to entrap them. After giving up the bond of the Cardinal, the Emperor graciously remitted the capital punishment, upon condition that they should be transported for life ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... indulge in this sport alone; but generally he was (it seems) accompanied by some of his courtiers, who shared the pleasures of the chase with him on the condition that they never ventured to let fly their weapons before he had discharged his. If they disregarded this rule they were liable to capital punishment, and might esteem themselves fortunate if ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... possible event,—some hoped for it, others dreaded it. When I reflect on the state of feeling which then prevailed, I am certain that a movement in his favour would infallibly have taken place had judges more complying than even those who presided at the trial condemned Moreau to capital punishment. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... pleasures have dangers, and that I do not always read characters rightly. The very evening after my little stroll and renewal of friendship with Ned Temple I was sitting in my room, reading a new book for which the author should have capital punishment, when I heard excited voices, or rather an excited voice, below. I did not pay much attention at first. I supposed the excited voice must belong to either Maria or Alice, for no others of my brother's family ever seem in the least excited, not to the extent of raising their ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... inexorable. If the Lady Marnell had chosen to ally herself with Lollards, she well knew what she was doing, and must abide the consequences. Vainly did Lord Marnell represent how young and inexperienced she was; in vain did he urge that the Act which made the Lollards amenable to capital punishment had been passed since her indictment, and only a few weeks before. Henry was not naturally disposed to hear his pleasure called in question; and Abbot Bilson had had possession of the ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... and that one magistrate alone, corrected the enormities of this numerous people, many years before I knew them, and twenty-five after." I add, that the ancient lords of Birmingham, among their manorial privileges, had the grant of a gallows, for capital punishment; but as there are no traces even of the name, in the whole manor, I am persuaded no such thing was ever erected, and perhaps the anvil ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... his position uneasily, but steadily refuses to meet her beseeching eyes. He visits two more unhappy crocuses with capital punishment, and something that is almost a sigh escapes him; but he will not look up, and he will not trust himself to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... who abstract money from the person by cutting or opening the apparel. Manu, ch. 9, sl. 277; where the third offence entails capital punishment.] ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... not in favour of capital punishment, and would do away with all judges and trials by jury, leaving the Press to fight out the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... residents who had petitioned the Queen were denounced as "revolutionaries," and threatened with the vengeance of the burghers. "If war breaks out," wrote De Rand Post,"[103] the Johannesburg agitators are the real instigators, and to these ringleaders capital punishment should be meted out." In the Volksraad discussion of the Franchise Law the same passionate hatred of the Uitlanders was manifested. "Is it the English only who have the right to make conditions?" asked Mr. Lombard on July 15th. "If it comes to be a question of war, there will be a ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... twenty-eight years that he occupied the throne he was engaged in a number of petty wars, none of which requires specific mention. The only unpopular measure associated with his name was the creation of a Grand Council of Eunuchs, to which was referred all questions of capital punishment, and this body soon acquired a power which made it resemble the tyrannical and irresponsible British Star Chamber. After five years this institution became so unpopular and was so deeply execrated by the nation that Hientsong, however reluctantly, had to abolish ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... tariff, we will be concerned in our thinking with details, what articles need protection and how much do they need; the ultimate desirability of a protective tariff will not be a problem remotely occurring to us. If we are by training committed to capital punishment, we will be concerned, if we think about it at all, with means and methods; we will think about the relative merits of hanging or electrocution; the ultimate justification or desirability of capital punishment will not be a problem or issue for us at all. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... by a charge replete with stupid malignity. Some, who believed themselves skilled in the Levitical law, accused him of being the cause of the death of Emry and Robinson, the two unfortunate men whom the Indians had slain, and, with this pretext, they clamored for capital punishment. To their insane charge Smith replied by taking the accusers into custody, and by the first vessel he sent them for trial to England. By his courage, his address, and his firmness he now wielded great influence with the Indians, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the person, and very devoudy embraced his opinion, never dreaming that the law was restrained only to magicians, sorcerers, and enchanters: for otherwise, if the word Maleficus signified what it most naturally implies, every evil-doer, then drunkenness and whoredom were to meet with the same capital punishment as witchcraft But why should I squander away my time in a too tedious prosecution of this topic, which if drove on to the utmost would afford talk to eternity? I aim herein at no more than this, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... cardinal was in prison at Loches; and Louis resolved to leave him there forever, without any more fuss. But at the same time that, out of regard for the dignity of cardinal, which he had himself requested of the pope for the culprit, he dispensed with the legal condemnation to capital punishment, he was bent upon satisfying his vengeance, and upon making Balue suffer in person for his crime. He therefore had him confined in a cage, "eight feet broad," says Commynes, "and only one foot higher than a man's stature, covered with ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Ludamar, it was necessary when crimes were committed that examples should sometimes be made. On such occasions the offender was brought before Ali, who pronounced, of his sole authority, what judgment he thought proper. But I understood that capital punishment was seldom or never inflicted, except ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... was he who apportioned the grub. A man who broke the law took his chances. The Yukon swept him away, and he might or might not win to Bering Sea. A few days' grub gave him a fighting chance. No grub meant practically capital punishment, though there was a slim chance, all depending on the season ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... contingent on their arrival unhurt at its base. He built large heiaus, amongst others the one at Kawaihae, at the dedication of which to his favourite war god eleven human sacrifices were offered. To the end he remained devoted to the state religion, and the last instances of capital punishment for breaking tabu, a thraldom deeply interwoven with the religious system, occurred in the last year of his reign, when one man was put to death for putting on a chief's girdle, another for eating of a tabooed dish, and a third for ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Convention at Binghamton; Mrs. Stanton's comment; letter of Miss Anthony on family affection: the "raspberry experiment;" the "good old times;" "health food cranks;" New York Convention in hands of mob; stirring up teachers at Lockport; mass meeting at Rochester in opposition to capital punishment; gift of Francis Jackson. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in Japan.] When Carletti, in 1597, went from the Philippines to Japan, all the passengers on board were examined carefully, by order of the governor, and threatened with capital punishment if they endeavored to conceal "certain earthen vessels which were wont to be brought from the Philippines and other islands of that sea," as the king wished ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... executive functions. The old eorls and ealdormen were warriors; and yet to them had been committed the administration of justice, which they often abused,—frequently deciding cases against the verdicts of jurors, and sometimes unjustly dooming innocent men to capital punishment. Alfred hanged an ealdorman or alderman, one Freberne, for sentencing Haspin to death when the jury was in doubt. He even hanged twenty-four inferior officers, on whom judicial duties ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... upon to lead. The ants and bees are notoriously expert in the matter of instinct. They have colonies in which some of the latest principles of social organization seem to find analogues: slavery, sexual regulations, division of labour, centralization of resources, government distribution of food, capital punishment, etc. ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... it true that, although Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN is still nominally Chancellor of the Exchequer, he is really a prisoner in the Tower, conveyed under guard to and from the House, and that the reprieve of the sentence of capital punishment passed on him by The Daily Mail may expire—and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... who had first advised the same arbitrary mode of proceeding in the cases of the marchioness of Exeter, of the countess of Salisbury, and of several persons of inferior rank connected with them; on whom capital punishment ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... after having dwelt upon the enormity of our offence, and denounced duennas, their characters, their evil ways and worse intrigues, laying to the charge of all what I alone was guilty of, he said he would not visit us with capital punishment, but with others of a slow nature which would be in effect civil death for ever; and the very instant he ceased speaking we all felt the pores of our faces opening, and pricking us, as if with the points of needles. We at once put our hands up to our faces and found ourselves ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... is immoral to say to men who have preached clemency throughout the whole of their political career, who have initiated their rule by the abolition of capital punishment, who, when in power, never signed a single sentence of exile against those who had persecuted them, nor even against the known enemies of their principle.—"You are the sanguinary organizers of terror, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Sir Thomas Armstrong, a person who had distinguished himself in youth by duels and drunken exploits. He was particularly connected with the Duke of Monmouth, and was said to be concerned in the Rye-House Plot, for which he suffered capital punishment, 20th June 1684. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... accept the office of earthly princes, not that they may inflict capital punishment themselves, but that this may be carried into effect by others in virtue of their ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... any one who should attend a meeting of the Carbonari to capital punishment. But the society continued to exist, despite this severe enactment, and was at the basis of many of the outbreaks that took place in Italy from 1820 onward. Mazzini, Garibaldi, and all the leading patriots were members of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... streets leading to it. At eight o'clock in the morning of December 30th, the president, Carel, declared the trial closed, and the court retired to "form its opinions." Not till three o'clock did the bell announce the return of the magistrates. The verdict was immediately pronounced. Capital punishment was the portion of Mme. Acquet, Flierle, Lefebre, Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'Epine, Le Hericey, Gautier-Boismale, Lemarchand and Alexandre Buquet. The Marquise de Combray was condemned to twenty-two years' ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot where they left off. Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began. Do you think that you are going to die, sir? No! there's no hope of you. You haven't got your lesson yet. You've got to stay after school. We make a needless ado about capital punishment,—taking lives, when there is no life to take. Memento mori! We don't understand that sublime sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone once. We've interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense; we've wholly ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... wonderful for mere centers of (Christian) paganism; we shall marvel at their genius, as shown in the fragments that go under the names of those totally mythological poets, Dante and Milton; and at their foul cruelty, as shown by their capital punishment and their wars. And what shall we know of ancient Athens and Rome? Our scholars will sneer at the superstition that they ever existed; our theologians will say the world was created ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... hundred and forty. Of these a hundred and five were in their places. Many thought that the Bishops ought to have been permitted, if not required, to withdraw; for, by an ancient canon, those who ministered at the altars of God were forbidden to take any part in the infliction of capital punishment. On the trial of a peer impeached of high treason, the prelates always retire, and leave the culprit to be absolved or condemned by laymen. And surely, if it be unseemly that a divine should doom ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... virtuous man honored and rewarded, they would dread as much the punishment of the first, as they would ambitiously covet the triumphs of the last; terror hardly prevents crime, never does it inspire virtue. Does any one consider the effect of capital punishment on the criminals themselves? Either they brave it with reckless impudence; or, inanimate, they suffer it, half dead with terror; or they offer their heads ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... gallows? If women vote, they are responsible for whatever blood is shed by the State. Yes, but, Mr. Chesterton, aren't they just as responsible for it in any case? Don't women help to pay the hangman's wages with every ounce of tea or of sweets they buy? If capital punishment is obscene, then we can do without it, and a woman's vote will not make her a sharer in the evil. If capital punishment is morally stimulating to the nation at large, there is no reason why women should not be allowed to share in the stimulation. Now what has become of Chesterton's ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... he was gone. The severed head, passing through a red-coloured bag fixed under, fell to the ground—the blood spouted forth from the neck like water from a fountain—the body, lifted up without delay, was flung down through a trap-door in the platform. Never did capital punishment more quickly take effect on a human being; and whilst the executioner was coolly taking out the axe from the groove of the machine, and placing it, covered as it was with gore, in a box, the remains of the culprit, deposited in a shell, were hoisted into a wagon, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... the severest capital punishment on the chiefs of the revolt in Baltimore, but all went off unharmed. The administration one day willingly allows the law to slide from its lap, and the next moment grasps at an unnecessary arbitrary ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... consented to do. But the horses, unfortunately, were mules, practically ready for the bone-yard; the Quartermaster had put them to one side, as they were useless for any further work, and they were awaiting the arrival of the veterinary officer to receive capital punishment. Every time I dug my spurs in my mount, in a mad endeavor to make it go, the only result was a kick in the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... as in the Nation, is the refusing of pardons. Yet I can imagine nothing more necessary from the standpoint of good citizenship than the ability to steel one's heart in this matter of granting pardons. The pressure is always greatest in two classes of cases: first, that where capital punishment is inflicted; second, that where the man is prominent socially and in the business world, and where in consequence his crime is apt to have been one concerned ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... sentence is sure to be commuted to transportation, or something equivalent. I was talking to the Home Secretary about it only last night. Lapse of time and subsequent good character quite preclude any idea of capital punishment." All the time that he said this he had other thoughts at the back of his mind—some curiosity, a little regret, a touch of remorse, a wonder how the meeting (which, of course, would have to be some time) between Lady Corbet and Ellinor would ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... motive be duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble.' Upon which I would observe, in passing, that to save a fellow-creature from drowning can be deemed to be necessarily right by none but uncompromising opponents of capital punishment. Most others will be disposed to doubt its having been a sufficient reason for commuting the sentence of death passed upon the murderer of Dhuleep Sing's gamekeeper, that, owing to physical malformation, hanging ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... doubt if the assertion would hold water. At the same time Buddha has an enormous number of followers in China, Tibet, India, and Ceylon; they, too, have traditions of a Holy Mother and Child, of a fast in the wilderness, and here, even now, crucifixion is the form of capital punishment." ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... justify the law: the law may in some cases have its inevitable hardships, and I may feel regret at times that I have not the option of passing a less severe sentence than I am compelled to do. But yours is no such case; on the contrary, had not the capital punishment for consumption been abolished, I should certainly ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... into contempt; he would set all sorts of idle people to profitable occupation, including in the same class, priests, women, noblemen, gentlemen, and 'sturdy and valiant beggars,' that the labour of all may be reduced to six hours a day. His dislike of capital punishment, and plans for the reformation of offenders; his detestation of priests and lawyers (Compare his satirical observation: 'They (the Utopians) have priests of exceeding holiness, and therefore very few.); his remark that 'although every ...
— The Republic • Plato
... was required to do duty; and between then and the latter part of the week I sat upon four or five cases—all crimes of violence, and one described in the indictment as murder. This position was the more unpleasant for me, as I am, by strong conviction, an adversary of capital punishment. I absolutely deny the right of society to put any man or any woman to death, whatever be his or her crime. My proper course then seemed to lie in the direction of a public statement, which would have created, I suppose, some little ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... however, in witchcraft still continued, and it was not till the ninth year of George II., that the statutes against it were repealed. We believe there is still an Irish statute unrepealed, which inflicts capital punishment on witches. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... see his father for the last time, and if he failed in moving his compassion, he had formed the desperate resolution of putting an end to his own life in his presence; a far greater crime than that for which he dreaded receiving a capital punishment. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Flamboyant Animalism Transcendental Hash Just Criticism Progress of discovery and Improvement—Autotelegraphy; Edison's Phonograph; Type-setting Eclipsed; Printing in Colors; Steam Wagon; Fruit Preserving; Napoleon's Manuscript; Peace; Capital Punishment; Antarctic Explorations; The Desert shall Blossom as the Rose Life and Death—Marvellous Examples Outlines of Anthropology (continued) Chapter X.—The Law of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... he would execute any sentence short of capital punishment. But one case was tried by such court. The offense was a gross violation of rule 9. The culprit was let off with a sharp reprimand by General Hayes; but my first act after the exchange of prisoners was to prefer charges and specifications against him. The ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... first Christian Emperor of Rome, abolished crucifixion. It is recognised that through Christ's death upon the cross man obtains all that makes life precious. Instead of being regarded with scorn, a cross is the coveted emblem now of valour and exalted achievement. The instrument wherewith capital punishment was inflicted on abandoned criminals has come to be an ornament of monarchs. Such a change is to be explained only by the fact that it is the sign of Christ's redeeming sacrifice, and that to multitudes ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... did not object to capital punishment or war, or the industrial system or casual wards, or flogging of criminals or the Congo Free State, because none of these things really got hold of her imagination; but she did object, she did not like, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the subjects upon which free discussion tending toward uniform laws seems desirable are: marriage and divorce, rights of married women, corporations and trusts, insurance, child labor, capital punishment, direct primaries, convict labor and labor in general, prison reforms, automobile regulations, contracts, banking, conveyancing, inheritance tax, income tax, mortgages, initiative, referendum and recall, election reforms, tax adjustment, and similar topics. In great questions, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... region of song and poetry—first effusions and last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnac and of Pitts, names that will entwine themselves with costermongers and barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and capital punishment be ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... ode may tell us we remember. Heaven itself must be an experiment to every human soul which shall find itself there. It may take time for an earthborn saint to become acclimated to the celestial ether,—that is, if time can be said to exist for a disembodied spirit. We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... independent growth and in no way a reaction against that which caused the change. To mitigate the severity of the death penalty for women to some pleasant form of euthanasia, such as drowning in rose-water, or in their case to abolish the death penalty altogether and make their capital punishment consist in a brief interment in a jail with a softened name, would probably do no good, for whatever form it might take, it would be, so far as woman is concerned, the "extreme penalty" and crowning disgrace, and jurors would be as reluctant to ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... liable to capital punishment. The mutilation of noses no longer exists, although some years ago it was the most usual punishment, and one village was entirely peopled by the unfortunate victims of ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... way of taking care of the bogey of Controllers. Capital punishment had been outlawed all over Earth; it had long since been proved that legalized murder, execution by the State, solved nothing, helped no one, prevented no crimes, and did infinitely more harm than good in ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... writing as magic. But Vladimir had persuasive ways, and was not likely to be deterred by such opposition. Nestor admired him very much. He says that Vladimir was a different man after he had been converted; that he was so afraid of committing a sin, that he hesitated to inflict capital punishment, until the bishop reminded him that crime must be punished. He also divided his income among the churches, and thus became the Saint (p. 044) Vladimir of Russia. Popular ballads keep alive the memory of the first Christian prince. He is often ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... Justice Scrogs.' Again, 'A Papist qua Papist cannot be a faithful subject,' He had, however, no sympathy with the Covenanters, a name which he does not use, but he describes them as 'praecise phanaticks.' He did not consider it unjust to bring them to capital punishment, because they denied the right of the king to govern, though on grounds of humanity and policy he was inclined to mercy. In 1682 he observes on the execution of Alexander Home, a small gentleman of the Merse, who had commanded a party at the insurrection of Bothwell Bridge, 'tho ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... of his co-pastor. One old man, scorning the accusation, and refusing to plead at his trial, was, according to the law, pressed to death for his contumacy. Nay, even dogs were accused of witchcraft, suffered the legal penalties, and are recorded among the subjects of capital punishment. One young man found means to effect his mother's escape from confinement, fled with her on horseback, and secreted her in the Blueberry Swamp, not far from Taplay's Brook, in the Great Pasture; he concealed her here in a wigwam which he built for her shelter, provided her with food and ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... had never known since Sodom and Gomorrah disappeared in the Dead Sea, and the details of its history cannot be written. To mitigate its horrors the worst of the criminals were transported to Norfolk Island. The Governor there had not the power to inflict capital punishment, and the convicts began to murder one another in order to obtain a brief change of misery, and the pleasure of a sea voyage before they could be tried and hanged in Sydney. A branch pandemonium was also established ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... resident and traveling priests without fail, and this is the same in all places. The priests occupy themselves with benevolent ministrations and with chanting liturgies; or they sit in meditation." Fa-Hsien tells us the Indian people were happy and honest; capital punishment was unknown. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... said, "to go contrary to my life-long principles. I'm a humanitarian by conviction and I'm opposed to capital punishment. It seems to me that the taking of human life is not justified, and that the advance of civilization, especially in the great republic of ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... along with it a variety of other social and political movements such as spiritualism, total abstinence, and the prevention of capital punishment; which prevented many sympathetic friends of the cause from joining it, and gave it a quaint, and sometimes even a comical aspect. These Utopian and impracticable notions were accepted by the abolitionists partly on the log-rolling principle, and partly ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... heart-sick at the general indifference of Church and clergy to the temporal condition of the people,—at their apologies for and defences of slavery, war, and capital punishment,—Rogers turned Protestant, in the full sense of the term. He spoke of priests and "pulpit wizards" as freely as John Milton did two centuries ago, although with far less bitterness and rasping satire. He could not endure to see Christianity and Humanity divorced. He longed to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... executions. He says, as I say, that each new one is an augmented terror. But he is upon the spot to smooth the felon's troubled spirit, and I am with him to teach the felon's boon companions the direness of the penalty. Without either the Chaplain or myself, capital punishment would ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... no capital punishment," says he; "for, from all we learn, it is not more efficacious in preventing crime, than other punishments which are milder; and we prefer making the example to offenders a lasting one. But we endeavour to prevent offences, not so much by punishment as by education; ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... and not capital by the laws of India, and was condemned and executed. That the evidence of this man, not having been encountered at the time when it might and ought to have been by the said Warren Hastings, remains justly in force against him, and is not abated by the capital punishment of the said Nundcomar, but rather confirmed by the time and circumstances in which the accuser of the said Warren Hastings suffered death. That one of the offices for which a part of the money above mentioned is stated to have been paid to ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... shine of many wax tapers from above illuminating his pale face, the glow of the great red fire relieving from behind his slim figure. He had to propose, as an amendment to the next subject in the case-book, "Whether capital punishment be consistent with God's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Saru, though the relations between their respective inhabitants were not close and intermarriages were avoided. The functions of judge were not entrusted to these chiefs; an indefinite number of a community's members sat in judgment upon its criminals. Capital punishment did not exist, nor was imprisonment resorted to, beating being considered a sufficient and final penalty, except in the case of murder, when the nose and ears of the assassin were cut off or the tendons of his feet ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I heard of him was that he had undergone capital punishment by order of the king; to whom he had written, when in prison, saying that he was punished by the just judgment of God, because he had loved the king more than God; and that out of deference to his sovereign he had caused ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... Stones). Gavroche,[55] who loves puns and is very fond of slang, gave this nickname to a set of huge stones which stood before the prison of La Roquette, and on which the guillotine used to be erected on the mornings when a capital punishment was to take place. The executioner was the Abbe de Cinq-Pierres, for Gavroche is as logical as he is ingenious. Well! the abbey exists no longer, swept clean away from the front of the Roquette prison. This is splendid! ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... thing that the Roman Inquisition was never known to pronounce the execution of capital punishment, although the apostolic see was occupied during that time by popes of extreme rigor and severity in all that relates to the civil administration. We find in all parts of Europe scaffolds prepared to punish crimes against religion; scenes which sadden the soul were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... searching test. In South Africa—as in many other countries—it is the invariable practice of the Courts to decline to accept the plea of guilty to a capital charge. The prisoner is informed that as the plea involves capital punishment it will not be accepted; and a formal trial and sufficient evidence of the crime are required by the Court. That is done even in cases where the prisoner knows what the punishment will be! In the case of the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... flinging the bodies, of those upon whom capital punishment has been inflicted, to the hyenas and jackals, and leaving them to be devoured by these voracious brutes, the negroes give them a species of sepulture; and that is as described, by closing them up in vaults hewn in trunks of the baobab—and in my opinion a very comfortable kind of ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Chambers of Commerce and Agriculture, the opening of credits to the Negroes by the Mauritian Commercial Bank, the reforms at the Royal College respecting the English Scholarships, and the employment of men of color in the departments of the government. His attacks upon capital punishment and barbarous prison treatment resulted in laws which mitigated the former harsh conditions, and his criticism of the banking institutions in the crisis of 1843 led to considerable reform in that quarter. His bitter attacks on political and social conditions made many enemies. One ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... parts of the ship. Here we have the origin of the brutal discipline of the next century, summed up in the Consolidation Act of George II. [Footnote: 22 George II. c. 33.]—an Act wherein ten out of thirty-six articles awarded capital punishment without option, and twelve death or ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... then my father was informed that the tzarina had condescended to pardon his criminal son, and remit the capital punishment, condemning him instead to exile for life in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... VIII is bound to present him, in the schoolboy's phrase, as "a great widower." William the Silent must not be a chatterbox, Torquemada a humanitarian, Ivan the Terrible a conscientious opponent of capital punishment. And legend has its fixed points no less than history. In the theatre, indeed, there is little distinction between them: history is legend, and legend history. A dramatist may, if he pleases (though it is a difficult task), break wholly unfamiliar ground in the past; but where a historic legend exists ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... about that! I've heard much that is good about our legal administration, too. There is no capital punishment here ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Roman pearls, and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied drily that, if the attempt to pass a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that the "Tallyho" appeared to have so ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... high authority, who complained of the number of thieves, the Master explained that this was due to the greed of the upper classes. "But for this greed," he added, "even if you paid people to steal, they would not do so." To the same man, who inquired his views on capital punishment, Confucius replied: "What need is there for capital punishment at all? If your aims are worthy, the people also will ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... civilised or savage, have been continually exploited and oppressed. International morality, at present, does not exist. Murder within the family, the tribe, and the nation is marked as a crime, save that judicial murder, capital punishment, is permitted—on the principle of (supposed) Utility. But multiple murder outside the nation—War—is not regarded as criminal, nor is theft "wrong," when committed by a strong nation on a weak one. It may be that out of the widespread misery caused by ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... was duly eliminated by the abolition of the Fleet and the Marshalsea; and it must be admitted that Punch has long since forgotten his declared crusade against capital punishment. But he has been otherwise busy. His sympathy for the poor, the starving, the ill-housed, and the oppressed; for the ill-paid curate and the worse-paid clerk; for the sempstress, the governess, the shop-girl, has been with him not only a religion, but a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... government, like the wicked, even though it do what in itself is right, cannot be viewed as in possession of privilege from God, or as acting for his glory. Yet the inflicting of a just penalty, even by an unwarranted power, is not to be reckoned as injustice, or—if a capital punishment, as murder. It is the claim to power which is made, but not the accomplishment of the deed of retribution—which in itself is just, that is faulty. Take for example the execution of justice on a murderer. Murder is not the crime to be laid to the charge ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... tossed in the air. You received me and my people with all the kindness and friendship which we could desire; but you mar it, by seducing the men from their allegiance to their lawful sovereign, inducing them to become rebels, and subjecting them to a capital punishment whenever they may (as they most probably will) fall into the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nominal paganism were erased in this century, and it remained only under Christian names. Capital punishment was proclaimed against all who worshipped the old deities under their old titles, and "this dreadful severity contributed much more towards the extirpation of paganism, than the exhortations and instructions of ignorant ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant |
