he same
degree. To this it may be answered that punishment for crime is not
intended to be retaliatory, but admonitory and deterrent. It is,
therefore, peculiarly necessary to those not easily reached by other forms
of warning and dissuasion. Control of the wayward is not to be sought in
reduction of restraints, but in their multiplication. One who cannot be
curbed by reason may be curbed by fear, a familiar truth which lies at the
foundation of all penological systems. The argument for exemption of women
is equally cogent for exemption of habitual criminals, for they too are
abnormally inaccessible to reason, abnormally disposed to obedience to the
suasion of their unregulated impulses and passions. To free them from the
restraints of the fear of punishment would be a bold innovation which has
as yet found no respectable proponent outside their own class.

"Very recently this dangerous enlargement of the meaning of the phrase
'emancipation of woman' has been fortified with a strange advocacy by the
female 'champions of their sex.' Their argument runs this way: 'We are
denied a voice in the making of the laws relating to infliction of the
death penalty; it is unjust to hold us to an accountability to which we
have not assented.' Of course this argument is as broad as the entire body
of law; it amounts to nothing less than a demand for general immunity from
all laws, for to none of them has woman's assent been asked or given. But
let us consider this amazing claim with reference only to the proposal in
the service and promotion of which it is now urged: exemption of women
from the death penalty for murder. In the last analysis it is seen to be a
simple demand for compensation. It says: 'You owe us a _solatium_. Since
you deny us the right to vote, you should give us the right to
assassinate. We do not appraise it at so high a valuation as the other
franchise, but we do value it.'

"Apparently they do: without legal, but with virtual, immunity from
punishment, the women of this country take an average of one thousand
lives annually, nine in ten being the lives of men. Juries of men, incited
and sustained by public opinion, have actually deprived every adult male
American of the right to live. If the death of any man is desired by any
woman for any reason he is without protection. She has only to kill him
and say that he wronged or insulted her. Certain almost incredible recent
instances prove that no woman is too base for