y,
practically it is only vindictive. Its failure has caused some to
despair and others to reflect.

Chapter V.

ELIMINATION--DR. CHAPPLE'S PROPOSAL.

In the last chapter it was shown that capital punishment sought for its
justification in the theory that certain criminals had assumed an
attitude of permanent and aggressive hostility towards society. Their
presence in society is regarded as a menace to human life, and no moral
improvement is expected to result from their imprisonment. So hopeless
is this class of criminal regarded as being that, so it is declared, no
other policy save that of extermination can be considered.

In primitive society criminals were less numerous than in our own time;
but those that did then exist belonged, almost all of them, to the worst
type. There being no public institutions for the administration of
justice, practically one course only remained open, and that was, that
the person wronged should seek to avenge himself as best he could, and
the death of the wrong-doer was generally the satisfaction that he
sought. As civilization has advanced, criminals have become more
numerous; but they have taken to crime by more gradual steps. Society,
too, has deprived the individual of the right of wreaking his own
vengeance, and has erected institutions for the purpose of determining
guilt and apportioning punishment. From the days of Noah, deeds of blood
and other crimes of a serious nature, have been punished by death and
from then, until this present day, the one idea underlying the
administration of justice has been that society should get rid of its
criminals as speedily as possible. Repression alone was thought to be
efficacious, reformation was scarcely thought of.

Of late years the criminal has been more carefully studied by his
fellow-beings. Some have studied him as a monster and believed him to
have the heart of a beast; others have studied him as a man and had
faith in his possibilities. The former have noticed the failure of
repressive methods, such as flogging and other penal severities, and
have in despair been led to advocate that the only possible remedy is
that of extermination. The latter have discovered that the failure of
these repressive methods but imposes upon society the obligation of
adopting a system of an entirely different order and with an entirely
different object, viz: a system for the reformation of the criminal.

The "exterminators" have studied th