depends upon the circumstances.
Now, in my judgment, society has the right to do two things--to
protect itself and to do what it can to reform the individual.
Society has no right to take revenge; no right to torture a convict;
no right to do wrong because some individual has done wrong. I am
opposed to all corporal punishment in penitentiaries. I am opposed
to anything that degrades a criminal or leaves upon him an unnecessary
stain, or puts upon him any stain that he did not put upon himself.

Most people defend capital punishment on the ground that the man
ought to be killed because he has killed another. The only real
ground for killing him, even if that be good, is not that he has
killed, but that he may kill. What he has done simply gives evidence
of what he may do, and to prevent what he may do, instead of to
revenge what he has done, should be the reason given.

Now, there is another view. To what extent does it harden the
community for the Government to take life? Don't people reason in
this way: That man ought to be killed; the Government, under the
same circumstances, would kill him, therefore I will kill him?
Does not the Government feed the mob spirit--the lynch spirit?
Does not the mob follow the example set by the Government? The
Government certainly cannot say that it hangs a man for the purpose
of reforming him. Its feelings toward that man are only feelings
of revenge and hatred. These are the same feelings that animate
the lowest and basest mob.

Let me give you an example. In the city of Bloomington, in the
State of Illinois, a man confined in the jail, in his efforts to
escape, shot and, I believe, killed the jailer. He was pursued,
recaptured, brought back and hanged by a mob. The man who put the
rope around his neck was then under indictment for an assault to
kill and was out on bail, and after the poor wretch was hanged
another man climbed the tree and, in a kind of derision, put a
piece of cigar between the lips of the dead man. The man who did
this had also been indicted for a penitentiary offence and was then
out on bail.

I mention this simply to show the kind of people you find in mobs.
Now, if the Government had a greater and nobler thought; if the
Government said: "We will reform; we will not destroy; but if the
man is beyond reformation we will simply put him where he can do
no more harm," then, in my judgment, the effect would be far better.
My own opinion is, that