to the full the evil of his
present state. Not to blast him utterly, not to exclude him forever
from the kindly society of men, but to lead him into the way along
which--if he travel it--he may eventually return, though perhaps
only after many years, to human fellowship. If the verdict is
pronounced in any other spirit, it is false and inhuman. The
methods to be employed to bring about reformation must often be
severe and painful, and one of these methods is shock, shock sharp
and sudden enough to loosen the incrustations of evil habit,
and to shake a wicked nature down to its foundations. The
purpose of the trial of a criminal in a court of justice, and of the
verdict in which the trial culminates, is to supply such a shock, a
searching and terrible experience, yet salutary and indispensable in
order that better things may ensue.

From what has been said, it follows that the death penalty as a
punishment even for the worst crimes is morally untenable; for
either the culprit is really irredeemable, that is to say, he is an
irresponsible moral idiot, in which case an asylum for the insane is
the proper place for him; or he is not irredeemable, in
which case the chance of reformation should not be taken from
him by cutting off his life. The death penalty is the last lingering
vestige of the _Lex Talionis_, of the law which attempts to
equalize the penalty with the crime, a conception of justice which
in all other respects we have happily outgrown. It does not
necessarily follow that the immediate abolition of capital
punishment is expedient. It is not expedient in fact, because of the
condition of our prisons, and because of the abuses to which the
pardoning power of the State is subjected; because security is
lacking that the worst offenders, before ever they can be
reclaimed, may not be returned unrepentant into the bosom of
society, to prey upon it anew with impunity. But, then, we must
not defend the death penalty as such, but rather deplore and do our
utmost to change our political conditions, which make it still
unwise to abolish a form of punishment so barbarous and so
repugnant to the moral sense.

The step which follows the arrest and condemnation of the
evildoer is isolation, with a view to the formation of new habits. A
change of heart is the necessary pre-requisite of any permanent
change in conduct; but the change of heart, and the resolution to
turn over a new leaf to which it gives birth, must be gradua