unately such a system is not
practicable, but he who denies its justice must deny also the justice of
a bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, service
for service. We can not undertake by such clumsy means as laws and
courts to do to the criminal exactly "what he has done to his victim,
but to demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and
(therefore) right.

"Taking the life of a murderer does not restore the life he took,
therefore it is a most illogical punishment. Two wrongs do not make a
right."

Here's richness! Hanging an assassin is illogical because it does not
restore the life of his victim; incarceration is logical; therefore,
incarceration does--_quod, erat demonstrandum._

Two wrongs certainly do not make a right, but the veritable thing in
dispute is whether taking the life of a life-taker is a wrong. So naked
and unashamed an example of _petitio principii_ would disgrace a debater
in a pinafore. And these wonder-mongers have the effrontery to babble of
"logic"! Why, if one of them were to meet a syllogism in a lonely road
he would run away in a hundred and fifty directions as hard as ever he
could hoof it. One is almost ashamed to dispute with such intellectual
cloutlings.

Whatever an individual may rightly do to protect himself society may
rightly do to protect him, for he is a part of itself. If he may rightly
take life in defending himself society may rightly take life in
defending him. If society may rightly take life in defending him it may
rightly threaten to take it. Having rightly and mercifully threatened to
take it, it not only rightly may take it, but expediently must.

II

The law of a life for a life does not altogether prevent murder. No law
can altogether prevent any form of crime, nor is it desirable that it
should. Doubtless God could so have created us that our sense of right
and justice could have existed without contemplation of injustice and
wrong; as doubtless he could so have created us that we could have felt
compassion without a knowledge of suffering; but he did not. Constituted
as we are, we can know good only by contrast with evil. Our sense of sin
is what our virtues feed upon; in the thin air of universal morality the
altar-fires of honor and the beacons of conscience could not be kept
alight. A community without crime would be a community without warm and
elevated sentiments--without the sense of justice, without generosity,
wi