“In the counties of Lincoln, Stafford, and Denbigh, in the year 1838, there was respectively one commutation of the sentence for murder. The result was that in the following year the commitments fell from two to one in the first county, from three to one in the second, and from one to none in the third, thus giving respectively a decrease of one-half, two-thirds, and of the whole. The last is more correctly called an extinction than a decrease.
“In Cheshire, Middlesex, Somersetshire, and Surrey, in the year 1838, there were, respectively, two commutations of the sentence for murder. The result was that in the first county the commitments, as between that year and the year following, fell from two to one; in the second county they fell from seven to three; in the third, from three to one; and in the fourth, from three to two; thus giving a diminution, respectively, of one-half, four-sevenths, two-thirds, and one-third.
“In Kent, in the year 1838, the sentences of nine convicts for murder were commuted, the commitments for that crime in the same year being seventeen. In the following year the commitments for murder were only two, showing a decrease of fifteen. In this last case, however, we cannot in fairness press the argument in favour of the salutary effect of discontinuing capital punishments to the extent that the arithmetical table would show. That year, if we recollect right, was the year of the extraordinary outbreak headed by the madman Courtenay or Thom. That event swelled the commitments for murder to an unprecedented height. The fall in the commitments from seventeen, in that year, to two in the year following, is not a fall under equal circumstances, and it would be illogical to make it an argument for more than this: that society received no detriment because the deluded followers of the frantic Courtenay were sent to a penal settlement, instead of being strangled on the scaffold.
“Looking to the table of EXECUTIONS, we find that in the three years ending the 31st of December, 1836, the number executed was 85, while during the three years ending the 31st of December, 1839, the number was only twenty-five. The commitments in the former period were 3,104, in the latter 2,989, showing a decrease, though a small one, in the number of commitments, while there is exhibited an increase in the number of convictions; namely, from 1,536 to 1,788, showing the centesimal proportion of convictions to commitments in the two periods, to be represented by the figures 49·48 and 59·48 respectively.
“These returns, as far as they go, are highly satisfactory as the testimony of experience to the safe policy of ABOLISHING CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS ALTOGETHER, and thus getting rid of the barbarous and brutalizing exhibitions of cold-blooded cruelty and deliberate slaughter which they present to the people.”
Morning Herald, 1840.
From this statement of facts, and indeed from all that has taken place regarding crimes where capital punishment has been remitted, there can be little doubt that it is inexpedient; there can be none that it is unnecessary. But if any still persist that the Divine sanction is given by “He who sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” then the tyrant who engages in a war of aggression, the general who sanctions one effective shot being fired, should alike bear the penalty with the midnight assassin. Nay, does not the man who accidentally “sheds the blood” of him who is “made in the likeness of God,” literally come within the pale of the command, if command it be?
The Chinese but seek to carry out this principle: they merely say, and with juster pretension to consistency, “we cannot remit it; there must be blood for blood.”
Yet we would dispute their right to have always blood for blood; why then may we not question the right ever to have blood shed, under Bible sanction at least? God makes no mention of motives or comparative reasonings as to guilt; in this His supposed command there is no discretionary option to soften its asserted force. By whatever means or under whatever circumstances one man kills another, blood is shed; and if blood for blood should hold good, then under this reasoning the slayer must die. If it be argued, that wilful shedding of blood is meant, I point to the words of the text; they refer to “life for life,” they give no exceptions: “Who then, oh man! made thee a judge to tell the signs of the times?”
Once grant an exception to execution, once admit the doctrine of reprieve, and the authority, as a command, in the Bible ceases altogether.