I submit that universal
forgiveness would hardly do as a working principle. Even those who are
most apt and facile with the incident of the woman taken in adultery
commonly cherish a secret respect for the doctrine of eternal damnation;
and some of them are known to pin their faith to the penal code of their
state. Moreover there is some reason to believe that the sinning woman,
being "taken," was penitent--they usually are when found out.

I care nothing about principles--they are lumber and rubbish. What
concerns our happiness and welfare, as affectible by our fellowmen, is
conduct "Principles, not men," is a rogue's cry; rascality's counsel to
stupidity, the noise of the duper duping on his dupe. He shouts it most
loudly and with the keenest sense of its advantage who most desires
inattention to his own conduct, or to that forecast of it, his
character. As to sin, that has an abundance of expounders and is already
universally known to be wicked. What more can be said against it, and
why go on repeating that? The thing is a trifle wordworn, whereas the
sinner cometh up as a flower every day, fresh, ingenious and inviting.
Sin is not at all dangerous to society; it is the sinner that does all
the mischief. Sin has no arms to thrust into the public treasury and
the private; no hands with which to cut a throat; no tongue to wreck
a reputation withal. I would no more attack it than I would attack an
isosceles triangle, a vacuum, or Hume's "phantasm floating in a void."
My chosen enemy must be something that has a skin for my switch, a head
for my cudgel--something that can smart and ache and, if so minded,
fight back. I have no quarrel with abstractions; so far as I know they
are all good citizens.

THE DEATH PENALTY

I.

"DOWN with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is
always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle of "a life for
a life"--to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of
the divine authority," and the rotten rest of it The law making murder
punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the
display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without
provocation. Even the most brainless opponent of "capital punishment"
would do that if he knew enough. It is in precisely the same sense an
admonition, a warning to abstain from crime. Society says by that law:
"If you kill one of us you die," just as by display of the pistol
t