awful deed is done, and all proof of innocence, however strong, however clear, comes too late. Truth may utter in the ears of the world her verdict, "not guilty," but the gallows has done its work; the grave holds the body of him who died as a felon and she cannot call him back to life.

The results of the abolition of capital punishment have been tested by actual experiment. I am enabled, therefore, to speak confidently when I say that the abolition of the gallows would be safe. Suffer me to call your attention to a few facts. More than a century ago the death penalty was removed from the penal code of Russia by an edict of the Empress Elizabeth. The immediate result may be judged of by the language of her successor, Catherine, who said: "The twenty years' reign of the Empress Elizabeth gave the fathers of the nation a more excellent pattern than that of all the pomps of war, victory, and devastation." And so well convinced was Catherine of the wisdom of the policy which governed her predecessor on the imperial throne that she adopted it in her new code of laws. Since then but two executions have taken place, both for rebellion against the government. The whole experiment, which has been making for a hundred years, is entirely satisfactory. The entire safety of the abolition is clearly and convincingly demonstrated, and none think of returning to the death punishment. In 1791 it was said by Count de Segne to be one of those countries in which the fewest murders were committed; and the evident reason may be found in this saying of Catherine: "We must punish crime without imitating it; the punishment of death is rarely anything but a useless barbarity." It has been said that the abolition of capital punishment in Russia is a deception. But a Russian in this country recently declared through the Boston Atlas that it was real, absolute -it is "clean gone forever." The honorable Vice President of the United States, late Minister to the Imperial Court, speaking from his own observation and the testimony of jurists, statesmen, etc., confirms the most favorable accounts which have been given of the happy results of the abolition and the general satisfaction with which the present system is regarded there. None with whom he conversed even dreamed of going back to the old system. The laws, he adds, are of the mildest character, and their effects are seen in the character of the people. Barbarous as they were before the mitigation of their criminal code, its mildness has wrought such a change that they are now "the mildest and most peaceable people he has ever seen."

The experiment has been tried in Belgium and has demonstrated how safe and beneficial is the abolition of capital punishment. The superintendent of a prison in that country stated to Joseph Hume of the British Parliament in 1837 that from his own experience the measure (the substitution of imprisonment for hanging) tended greatly to soften the disposition of the mass of the people. It appears from an official table in my possession that as executions decreased capital crime diminished; for when the executions were forty-seven a year there were over seventy capital convictions, but in 1834 when there were no executions the sum total of the capital convictions was less than nine, of which four only were for murder. The Inspector General of the prisons in Belgium gave as his testimony, "that the punishment of death is useless, unfit as a means of prevention, the object of general and growing repugnance, and can be replaced by safeguards more efficacious.”

Tuscany is another of those countries where the experiment of the entire abolition of the death penalty has been tried. To show what was the result I quote from an eminent writer: "In 1765 the punishment of death was abolished in Tuscany, imprisonment at hard labor for life taking its place. The result was as the Grand Duke Leopold testifies in an edict issued twenty-one years afterward that instead of increasing the number of crimes it considerably diminished that of the smaller ones and rendered those of an atrocious nature very rare. Even our own country, whose moral and religious character we are wont to regard as so superior to that of any European and [which] presents a striking contrast to Tuscany at the period we are noticing-Massachusetts and New Hampshire have together but two-thirds as many people as Tuscany; yet in less than five months after Barret was hanged at Worcester last winter the murders in those states were three-fifths as many as in Tuscany during twenty years. So were they, too, within two months after Eager's execution in New York City and a territory around it not larger than Tuscany, with not one-fourth as many inhabitants. Pennsylvania had four-fifths as many in seven weeks after Zephon's execution, though its population is about the same as that of Tuscany. That is, in proportion to time and population the murders in Massachusetts and New Hampshire were eighty times as numerous as in Tuscany; in Pennsylvania, one hundred and twenty; and in New York City and vicinity three hundred times as numerous. The Marquis of Pastoret says the happy effect of abolishing the death punishment in Tuscany was a fact so fully recognized

when he wrote (in 1790) that he could not think of seeking means of proving what no one thought of disputing. While he lived in that country he often heard the people praise 'the mildness of their laws, and the efficacious influence it had in diminishing the number of crimes.' Count Sellon of Geneva remarks upon this statement that it 'corresponds with those of all the travelers who go abroad to acquire knowledge, and is confirmed by Professor Pietet in his letters from Florence.' M. Berlinghieri, late minister of Tuscany at Paris, says that the humanity of Leopold's penal legislation ‘was attended with the most satisfactory results. Crimes of all kinds. were much more rare during that period than either before or after.' And Carmignani, a distinguished professor of criminal law in the University of Pisa, bears a like testimony to the good results of the

*

The abolition of the death punishment, then, is safe-more than safe by actual experiment. Crimes have not increased, but decreased, and the dispositions of the mass of the people have been softened.

There is one single fact more touching this point that I would refer you to. We are told by Sir John Ross, the English navigator, that among the Eskimos the crime of murder rarely occurs, and among them there is no capital punishment-no gallows-no executioner. It is a prime doctrine with them, and it is worthy of the serious consideration of Christian men, that to kill the murderer would be to make themselves as bad as he. Now if lawful killing is not necessary among so savage and unenlightened a people to refrain from crime, if murder is rarely committed among them though they have not the example of the gibbet and the halter and the strangling to death of a human being, is such killing necessary among an enlightened and professedly Christian people? And do they need the restraining (!) example of a fellow man choking to death like a dog upon the scaffold, in order to make them lawloving and mild and peaceable citizens? I would blush for him who would say this. I would blush for the land that gave him birth.

I will not longer tresspass upon your patience. I have written to this length because I had not time to say less; and I would fain say more. As I have proceeded, reasons and arguments have accumulated upon my mind, and I find it difficult to reach a point at which I would wish to leave this subject. The operations of your own mind, your own moral perceptions, and your long experience will readily supply what I have left unwritten.

In conclusion, my dear sir, one word. Should the subject of capital punishment be brought before the convention of which you are a member, may not I-may not the friends of this great reform-hope to find your influence exerted in its behalf and your voice raised in its defense? For this you will deserve and receive the thanks of the great and good, and it will be a blessed thought in after days that you helped blot out from the statute books of our land a most cruel and bloody law and to present to a new state a constitution unpolluted and undefiled by so vile a stain as that of capital punishment.

I am, sir, with the greatest respect,

Yours, in the work of reform,

JEFFERSON

THE EXEMPTION ARTICLE

[December 12, 1846]

An article has been adopted by the convention exempting from execution or forced sale forty acres of land with the improvements or in lieu thereof a town or city lot not exceeding $1000 in value.

Every one to his notion, but we regard this as the most outrageous act ever passed by a legislative body-in this country at least; the bankrupt act of 1841 cannot hold a candle to it. We shall take the liberty hereafter to discuss this article with perfect freedom, and we shall do it with the more freedom as attempts to argue against it were stamped down in the convention.

From the above, which we transfer from the Argus, our readers will see that it is out in full blast upon the homestead exemption. Knowing as we do the organization of its editor our friends may seem surprised that we should marvel at its peculiar course. We admit with them that he is a proper representative of the Old Hunker feeling which in New York and elsewhere contended only for the interest of the creditor by placing the unfortunate debter upon "the limits," or by confining him in prison, and hunting him as if he were a criminal worthy a felon's fate. Such abstractionists compose a regular genus, and the portraiture of Shakespeare's fancy is as applicable to modern Shylock's as the character which his inimitable pen has immortalized

I'll have my bond; speak not against my bond;

I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond!

But we notice the fact of the opposition of this sheet, solely to place the people of Dane "rectus in curiam" properly before the state, that their liberal feelings may not be maligned by the erratic course of a single delegate. Notwithstanding his base misrepresen

tation on the floor of the convention (which by the way was promptly denied by a friend of liberal feelings) that the people of Dane were opposed to the doctrine of exemption, we affirm most positively that we do believe that three-fifths if not more of his entire constituency were wilfully, treacherously misrepresented in his talk and in his vote. There were no two subjects that were more agitated before the whole people of Dane than the questions of an elective judiciary and the homestead exemption. The Whigs universally favored them, both in their resolutions in their county mass convention and in the addresses of their candidates for the delegacy. And at the only two Democratic meetings that we attended in the county we know that our speakers advocated these wholesome principles and urged that the Whigs were endeavoring to steal our thunder. In this matter we speak by the card, truly, knowingly, and do not believe that over one-tenth of our people if left to themselves could be induced to oppose this humane, popular provision.

Not a single petition from the country has been sent in opposed to its requirements; those that were circulated in its favor were readily, cheerfully signed. The rest of our delegates from this county in their votes but fairly represented the known popular will; and to them and other friends, good and true, that faithfully stood by the rights of the poor man in resisting the insidious attempts that were made to destroy the article more than our praise is due. They have their reward in their own breasts, and in the warm, honest hearts of the heretofore unprotected many that will remember them in honor.

STRICTURES UPON MARSHALL M. STRONG
[December 12, 1846]

The Argus says that the bankrupt act of 1841 cannot hold a candle to the most outrageous act ever passed by a legislative body, viz., the exemption of the homestead. This must have been the reason of the late case of political suicide that occurred in the convention. One of the members 10 from his knowledge of the frauds perpetrated under the bankrupt bill became so indignant at the passage of the exemption article as to resign his seat, after throwing himself with a great flourish upon future times for friends and justice.

If the gentleman has any idea of deferring his chance until the people crawfish upon a measure so truly republican and reasonable as this, we fancy he will have to wait some time, if not longer, for his 10 Marshall M. Strong