death penalty for crime,
and the new system is not yet by any means universal. That it is a
better system than the old, or would be if enforced, is a natural
presumption from human progress, out of which it is evolved. But
coincidently with its evolution has evolved also a sentiment adverse
to punishment of women at all. But this sentiment appears to be of
independent growth and in no way a reaction against that which caused
the change. To mitigate the severity of the death penalty for women to
some pleasant form of euthanasia, such as drowning in rose-water, or
in their case to abolish the death penalty altogether and make their
capital punishment consist in a brief interment in a jail with a
softened name, would probably do no good, for whatever form it might
take, it would be, so far as woman is concerned, the "extreme penalty"
and crowning disgrace, and jurors would be as reluctant to inflict it as
they now are to inflict hanging.

IV.

Testators should not, from the snug security of the grave, utter a
perpetual threat of disinheritance or any other uncomfortable fate to
deter an American citizen, even one of his own legatees, from applying
to the courts of his country for redress of any wrong from which he
might consider himself as suffering. The courts of law ought to be open
to any one conceiving himself a victim of injustice, and it should be
unlawful to abridge the right of complaint by making its exercise more
hazardous than it naturally is. Doubtless the contesting of wills is
a nuisance, generally speaking, the contestant conspicuously devoid of
moral worth and the verdict singularly unrighteous; but as long as
some testators really _are_ daft, or subject to interested suasion, or
wantonly sinful, they should be denied the power to stifle dissent by
fining the luckless dissenter. The dead have too much to say in this
world at the best, and it is monstrous and intolerable tyranny for them
to stand at the door of the Temple of Justice to drive away the suitors
that themselves have made.

Obedience to the commands of the dead should be conditional upon their
good behavior, and it is not good behavior to set up a censure of
actions at law among the living. If our courts are not competent to
say what actions are proper to be brought and what are unfit to be
entertained let us improve them until they are competent, or abolish
them altogether and resort to the mild and humane arbitrament of the
dice. But