"Capital punishment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Life were inspired almost directly by frequent collusion with the pages of DE QUINCEY and COLERIDGE, whose wild lives and turbulent experiences possess a peculiar charm for the Triton of the Tribune. When Mr. GREELEY wishes to write against capital punishment—which he does about every time the moon changes—he naturally turns over a few pages of Thirty Years in Washington. When he purposes to tempt the bounding bean of the kitchen garden of Chappaqua, or humble the hopeful harrow of agriculture, he may be found either at the Italian Opera, serenely ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... amaze. Then, one understands how the murderer is only an instrument whose passions are used by God in carrying out the karmic decree which condemned the victim long before the crime was committed; then, too, one knows that capital punishment is a legal crime of which divine Justice makes use—yes, a crime, for none but God can judge; every being has a right to live, and does live, until God ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... Courts and the law of the people. "From the commencement of the year 1836 to the end of 1842 there had been" [in consequence of this conflict] "forty-three acts of incendiarism, eleven assassinations, and seven agrarian outrages entailing capital punishment," all within a limited part of Belgium. See Parliamentary Reports on Tenure of Land in Countries of Europe, 1869, p. 118-123. In Belgium decisive measures of punishment at last put an end to agrarian outrages. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... civilised or savage, have been continually exploited and oppressed. International morality, at present, does not exist. Murder within the family, the tribe, and the nation is marked as a crime, save that judicial murder, capital punishment, is permitted—on the principle of (supposed) Utility. But multiple murder outside the nation—War—is not regarded as criminal, nor is theft "wrong," when committed by a strong nation on a weak one. It may be that out of the widespread ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... Barrant told himself that Mrs. Pendleton's suspicion of Thalassa rested on nothing more substantial than feminine prejudice, an unreasoning impulse of dislike which would leave few men alive if it always carried capital punishment in its train. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... to wreck the Kerensky Ministry and the Soviets, transportation was disorganised and internal troubles provoked; to crush the Factory- Shop Committees, plants were shut down, and fuel and raw materials diverted; to break the Army Committees at the front, capital punishment was restored and military ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... the cinque ports, imitating the bigotry and avidity of their sovereign, despoiled most of them of this small pittance, and even threw many of them into the sea; a crime for which the king, who was determined to be the sole plunderer in his dominions, inflicted a capital punishment upon them. No less than fifteen thousand Jews were at this time robbed of their effects, and banished the kingdom: very few of that nation have since lived in England: and as it is impossible for a nation to subsist without lenders of money, and none will ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... was unspeakably frightful. Those were days of capital punishment for half the offences in the calendar, and of what was to her scarcely less dreadful, of promiscuous imprisonment, fetters, and gaol fever. Poor Aurelia's ignorance could hardly enhance these horrors, and when her perceptions ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... served certain magistracies in them, were enrolled among Roman citizens, with all the rights to which the citizens of the capital were entitled,— absolute authority over wife, children, and slaves, security from capital punishment except by a vote of the people, or under military authority in the camp, access to all the honors and employments of the state, the right of suffrage, and the possession of Quirinal property. They felt themselves ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... for resident and traveling priests without fail, and this is the same in all places. The priests occupy themselves with benevolent ministrations and with chanting liturgies; or they sit in meditation." Fa-Hsien tells us the Indian people were happy and honest; capital punishment was unknown. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... whose opinion was first asked, spoke briefly, but strenuously and to the point, and as became the Consul elect, soon to be the first magistrate of that great empire. He declared for the capital punishment of all those named above, and of four others, Lucius Cassius, Publius Furius, Publius Umbrenus, and Quintus Annius, if ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the dangerous classes of men the dread of capital punishment is a dissuasive from crimes of violence, so that the number of murders is less, and the lives of peaceable citizens are safer, than were murder liable to some milder penalty, then it is the undoubted right of the public to ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... writer does not say nay. He protests most solemnly he is a Turk, too. He wears a turban and a beard like another, and is all for the sack practice, Bismillah! But O you spotless, who have the right of capital punishment vested in you, at least be very cautious that you make away with the proper (if so she may be called) person. Be very sure of the fact before you order the barge out: and don't pop your subject into the Bosphorus, until you are ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at Lord Norbury's expense. The laws, at that period, made capital punishment so general that nearly all crimes were punishable with death by the rope. It was remarked Lord Norbury never hesitated to condemn the convicted prisoner to the gallows. Dining in company with Curran, who was carving some ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... invited them. According to the tenor of the sentence, which the criers read aloud and incorrectly, two farmers of the revenues, monopolists of money, dilapidators of the royal provisions, extortioners, and forgers, were about to undergo capital punishment on the Place de Greve, with their names blazoned over their heads, according to their sentence. As to those names, the sentence made no mention of them. The curiosity of the Parisians was at its height, and, as we have said, an immense crowd waited with feverish ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this idea is no more nor less than that mentioned in books 47 and 48 of the Digest: "The criminal is liable to punishment to the extent that he is morally guilty of the crime he has committed." The entire classic school is, therefore, nothing but a series of reforms. Capital punishment has been abolished in some countries, likewise torture, confiscation, corporal punishment. But nevertheless the immense scientific movement of the classic school has ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. Ah, it's a fine thing for the trade! Five of 'em strung up in a row, and none left to play ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... that nothin' less'n capital punishment would reform a nerve like that; so I tells him to blaze away. No use goin' into details. ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... cause of Humanity. He had in his nature an abhorrence of depriving any living thing of life, and with regard to his own diet he totally abstained from animal food. This led him to bestow his active attention towards putting a stop to capital punishment. In 1809 he published Opinions of Different Authors on the Punishment of Death. The work was so well received, that he added a a second and third volume to it. In 1811, when the important question occupied ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... see or even to think of what is here described without gravely meditating on its suggestions. Is capital punishment justifiable? This is the question I purpose to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... more than the rest," said Henry. "He parts with his money with regret; and, as he had no concern whatever with my having given this person shelter for a night, I wish to Heaven, if I escape a capital punishment, that the penalty may be of a kind I could ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... man among the inducements to commit the crime whereto he is tempted; for with your true gamester the excitement seems to be in proportion to the value of the stake. Yet I hold as little with the humanity-mongers, who deny the necessity and lawfulness of inflicting capital punishment in any case, as with the shallow moralists, who exclaim against vindictive justice, when punishment would cease to be just, if ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... Superintendent of Police, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Surveyor of Taxes, besides being Board of Trade, Board of Works, and I know not what besides. In fact, he is the Government, although the Datu Klana's signature or seal is required to confirm a sentence of capital punishment, and possibly in one or two other cases; and his Residential authority is subject only to the limitations of his own honor and good sense, sharpened somewhat, were he other than what he is, by possible snubs from the Governor of the Straits Settlements or the Colonial ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... people with all the kindness and friendship which we could desire; but you mar it, by seducing the men from their allegiance to their lawful sovereign, inducing them to become rebels, and subjecting them to a capital punishment whenever they may (as they most probably will) fall into the hands ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Capital punishment should not be administered, if at all, except to a murderer whose guilt has been established to the satisfaction of the great majority of the people in the community to which he belongs, and never in the case of a suspected murderer of whom this ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... be put in a serious work on "Animal Intelligence"! The dead birds we now and then find hanging from the nest, or from the limb of a tree, with a string wound around their necks are no doubt criminals upon whom their fellows have inflicted capital punishment! ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... of both parties was established, I believe, beyond a doubt; but some legal loophole was found by which the woman was permitted to elude the capital punishment, and condemned to live. The ungrateful guest was sentenced to be hanged: shortly before the time of execution he made full confession of his having planned and instigated the poisoning of his unsuspecting host, and died the death ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... from the Star Chamber, for the same reasons as the Star Chamber had borrowed from the Roman Forum, because they had no law, statute, or tradition of their own. Thus the Roman Law took possession of our courts, I mean its doctrine, not its sanctions; the severity of capital punishment was omitted, all the rest remained. The grounds of these laws are just and equitable. Undoubtedly the good fame of every man ought to be under the protection of the laws as well as his life, and liberty, and property. Good fame is an outwork, that ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... odd executions. He says, as I say, that each new one is an augmented terror. But he is upon the spot to smooth the felon's troubled spirit, and I am with him to teach the felon's boon companions the direness of the penalty. Without either the Chaplain or myself, capital punishment ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... mes amis," and he was gone. The severed head, passing through a red-coloured bag fixed under, fell to the ground—the blood spouted forth from the neck like water from a fountain—the body, lifted up without delay, was flung down through a trap-door in the platform. Never did capital punishment more quickly take effect on a human being; and whilst the executioner was coolly taking out the axe from the groove of the machine, and placing it, covered as it was with gore, in a box, the remains ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... hate capital punishment! It is a relic of cowardly barbarism, and it is a disgrace for civilised countries still to have their guillotines and scaffolds. Every human being has a moment when his heart is easily touched, when the tears of grief will flow; and those tears may fecundate ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... proportionately severe penalties and persecutions are deemed necessary. It is sought to drive out the devil with Beelzebub. Prof. Haeckel also considers it proper to proceed against criminals with the severest punishments possible, and that capital punishment, in particular, be stringently applied.[162] By this stand the Professor places himself in sweet accord with the re-actionists of all shades, who otherwise are mortally opposed to him. Haeckel is of the opinion that incorrigible scape-graces must ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the native governments, and concluded treaties with them; it was Zemindar of several districts, and within those districts, like other Zemindars of the first class, it exercised the powers of a sovereign, even to the infliction of capital punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction. It is incorrect, therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a mere trader, and has since become a sovereign. It was at first a great trader and a petty prince. The political functions at first attracted little notice, because they were ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had been customary to inflict capital punishment by decapitating the victim with the sword. At the opening of the Revolution a certain Dr. Guillotin recommended a new device, which consisted of a heavy knife sliding downward between two uprights. This instrument, called after him, the guillotine, which is ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of Italy, Africa, and perhaps Spain, where, at the end of two or three years, the rigor of the penal laws was either suspended or abolished, the multitude of Christians in the Roman empire, on whom a capital punishment was inflicted by a judicial, sentence, will be reduced to somewhat less than two thousand persons. Since it cannot be doubted that the Christians were more numerous, and their enemies more exasperated, in the time of Diocletian, than they had ever been ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... created a great sensation. Crowds blocked the street in front of the shop where it was hung. The pictures were in such demand that Cruikshank sat up all night to etch another plate. The Gurneys, Wilberforce, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir James Mackintosh, all worked vigorously against capital punishment, save, possibly, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... money from the person by cutting or opening the apparel. Manu, ch. 9, sl. 277; where the third offence entails capital punishment.] ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... money and kind to women, was probably at the bottom of the condonation. We know from a paper, reproduced (to our thinking unnecessarily) in one of these volumes, that in 1840 Thackeray went to see Courvoisier hanged, and was so much upset by the spectacle that he prayed for the abolition of capital punishment to wipe out its stain of national blood-guiltiness. It may be noticed, moreover, that his stern denunciation of crime and folly has by this time settled down into a philosophic mood that is almost fatalistic, as when he suggests that 'circumstance only brings out the latent defect ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... itself, after it has once started, there is, like treason in the body-politic, but one remedy—capital punishment. Parleying with the rebels is worse than useless. Pastes, caustics, X-rays, trypsin, radium,—all are fatally defective, because they suppress a symptom only and leave the cause untouched. Only in one form of surface-cancer, the so-called flat-celled or rodent ulcer, which has little ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... earth. I leave you in the charge of the kindest of nurses, next to the wife of my bosom the best of women. Appreciate her, sir, or perish in my esteem. She is one whom not to love is to be guilty of an offence deserving capital punishment, and a bastinado to season the culprit for his execution. Have I not often informed her myself that a flower from her hand means more than treasures from the hands of others. Expect me absent for a week. The harangues will not be closely ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... leading to it. At eight o'clock in the morning of December 30th, the president, Carel, declared the trial closed, and the court retired to "form its opinions." Not till three o'clock did the bell announce the return of the magistrates. The verdict was immediately pronounced. Capital punishment was the portion of Mme. Acquet, Flierle, Lefebre, Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'Epine, Le Hericey, Gautier-Boismale, Lemarchand and Alexandre Buquet. The Marquise de Combray was condemned to twenty-two years' imprisonment in irons, and so were Lerouge, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... and terms of imprisonment varying according to the gravity of the offence. So mild a penalty excited the wrath of men whose fathers and brothers had perished on the guillotine. Some cried out for death, others for banishment to Cayenne. When it was pointed out that the infliction of capital punishment for the mere attempt at sedition would place this on a level with armed rebellion, it was answered that a distinction might be maintained by adding in the latter case the ancient punishment of parricide, the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... that it was charged with encouraging violations of the Navigation Laws; with holding in contempt the Courts of Admiralty; with failing to furnish troops and to place them under officers of the Crown; with executing capital punishment without any authority in her charter; with encouraging manufactures, contrary to the known wishes of the Crown; with irregular and unjust court proceedings; with treating contumaciously the royal commissioners sent to settle the Mohegan ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... received the day before from a man who called himself a merchant from Paris, but who was a police spy sent to entrap them. After giving up the bond of the Cardinal, the Emperor graciously remitted the capital punishment, upon condition that they should be transported for life ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... very eloquent, but he had a hopeless case. The defence he put up was that Helene was irresponsible, but the major part of the advocate's speech was taken up with a denouncement of capital punishment. It was a barbarous anachronism, a survival ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... employed in mischief; and that one magistrate alone, corrected the enormities of this numerous people, many years before I knew them, and twenty-five after." I add, that the ancient lords of Birmingham, among their manorial privileges, had the grant of a gallows, for capital punishment; but as there are no traces even of the name, in the whole manor, I am persuaded no such thing was ever erected, and ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... meeting of the Afro-American Debating Club the question of capital punishment for murder occupied the attention of the orators for the evening. One speaker had a great deal to say about the sanity of persons who thus took the law into their own hands. The last speaker, however, after a stirring harangue, concluded with great feeling: "Ah disagrees wif capital punishment ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... prominent advocates for the abolition of capital punishment were Sir Samuel Romilly (who died in 1818) and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... permanent mark in South African history, it will be because it survives a searching test. In South Africa—as in many other countries—it is the invariable practice of the Courts to decline to accept the plea of guilty to a capital charge. The prisoner is informed that as the plea involves capital punishment it will not be accepted; and a formal trial and sufficient evidence of the crime are required by the Court. That is done even in cases where the prisoner knows what the punishment will be! In the case of the Reformers the State Attorney had, it ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... gentle Reader, for digressing. The lady led me astray. I was speaking of "The Stormy Petrels," and of the reforms they accomplished, which were many. We abolished, I remember, capital punishment and war; we were excellent young men at heart. Christmas we reformed altogether, along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of twelve. I never recollect any proposal to abolish anything ever being lost ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Spain. The only man suspected of such practices was Leicester's own favourite and financier, Jacques Ringault, whom the Earl had persisted in employing against the angry remonstrances of the States, who believed him to be a Spanish spy; and the man was now in prison, and threatened with capital punishment. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their arrival unhurt at its base. He built large heiaus, amongst others the one at Kawaihae, at the dedication of which to his favourite war god eleven human sacrifices were offered. To the end he remained devoted to the state religion, and the last instances of capital punishment for breaking tabu, a thraldom deeply interwoven with the religious system, occurred in the last year of his reign, when one man was put to death for putting on a chief's girdle, another for eating of a tabooed ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... liberality and consequently went hand in hand with the first chamber, of which Wessenberg and Prince von Furstenberg were active members, and with the second, at the head of which stood Professors Rotteck, Welcker, and von Itzstein. Rotteck proposed and carried through the abolition of capital punishment as alone worthy of feudal times, and, on Welcker's motion, censorship was abolished and a law for the press was passed. The federal assembly, however, speedily checked these reforms. The grandduke was ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the society in which Selwyn delighted was one which now seems both morbid and cruel: that of attending the execution of those condemned to capital punishment. Even to his friends and immediate successors, no less than to those who have written of him, the fact that a man so full of kindness, who took pleasure in the innocent companionship of children, could with positive ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... philosophers, all would have punished the Christians, if they could; but they could not agree whom to punish. They would have agreed with great satisfaction, as we have said, to inflict condign and capital punishment upon the heads of the sect; and they would have had no objection, if driven to do something, to get hold of some strangers or slaves, who might be a sort of scapegoats for the rest; but it was impossible, when they once began to persecute, to make distinctions, and not ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... who had first advised the same arbitrary mode of proceeding in the cases of the marchioness of Exeter, of the countess of Salisbury, and of several persons of inferior rank connected with them; on whom capital punishment had already been inflicted. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... be remembered that Plato, with all his transcendent genius, was (as Niebuhr has termed him) a very indifferent patriot, who loved to blacken the character of his country's democratic institutions; and if the fact was that the Prytanis, at the trial of Miltiades, opposed the vote of capital punishment, and spoke in favour of the milder sentence, Plato (in a passage written to show the misfortunes that befell Athenian statesmen) would readily exaggerate this fact into the story ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... briskly forward in due order, with counsel for defense and ample opportunity to call witnesses. There were no more capital punishments. It was made known that the Committee had set for itself a rule that capital punishment would be inflicted by it only for crimes so punishable by the regular law. But each outgoing ship took a crowd of the banished. The majority of the first sweepings were low thugs—"Sydney Ducks," hangers-on, and the worst class of ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... (duellum, bellum,) high treason against the state or its sovereign; but in those times any offence deserving capital punishment was included under that of treason, Qui Horatio perduellionem judicent, to pass sentence on Horatius, as being manifestly guilty of murder; not to try whether he ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... chiefly to escaped convicts and to political and religious criminals, most of whom are sent to the island of Sakhalin. Capital punishment, except in cases of attacks on the royal family and condemnation by courts-martial, was ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... enormous number of followers in China, Tibet, India, and Ceylon; they, too, have traditions of a Holy Mother and Child, of a fast in the wilderness, and here, even now, crucifixion is the form of capital punishment." ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... I stay a prisoner here, I'll keep my parole. If I've done you service, admiral, be sure of this, it was done with clear intent. My object was to save the men who, having mutinied and fled from Admiralty control, are subject to capital punishment." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to rule the genii itself has summoned. Characteristic of the low plane of humane feeling in State and city is the substitution of the electrician for the hangman in judicial murder, at a time when the effort is general upon the Eastern Continent to abolish capital punishment. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... considered as a very possible event,—some hoped for it, others dreaded it. When I reflect on the state of feeling which then prevailed, I am certain that a movement in his favour would infallibly have taken place had judges more complying than even those who presided at the trial condemned Moreau to capital punishment. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... way of taking care of the bogey of Controllers. Capital punishment had been outlawed all over Earth; it had long since been proved that legalized murder, execution by the State, solved nothing, helped no one, prevented no crimes, and did infinitely more harm than ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... in favour of capital punishment, and would do away with all judges and trials by jury, leaving the Press to fight out the criminal cases ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... me some," he said, "to go contrary to my life-long principles. I'm a humanitarian by conviction and I'm opposed to capital punishment. It seems to me that the taking of human life is not justified, and that the advance of civilization, especially in the great republic of which I am ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... be considered by the Gentiles as messengers from God? For if they had inculcated any immoralities, such as rebellion, murder, adultery, robbery, revenge, their mission would not only have been disbelieved, but they would have undergone capital punishment by the sentence of the judge, which it was their business to avoid. Mahomet, throughout the Koran, inculcates all the virtues, and pointedly reprobates vice of all kinds. His morality is merely the precepts of the Old and New Testaments, modified a little, and ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... liberty by the teeth or belly of some "Elect" saint! And I, miserable, believed that more mercy was to be shown to the fruits of the earth than men, for whom they were created. For if any one an hungered, not a Manichaean, should ask for any, that morsel would seem as it were condemned to capital punishment, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... mines, each combatant having his vizor down and being unknown to the other. The governor's name was Barbason, and he was one of those accused of complicity in the murder of the Duke of Orleans; but in consequence of this incident, Henry saved him from the capital punishment which he would otherwise have incurred on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Shotaye mentioned the probability of her suffering capital punishment, had not thought of her children and of the consequences that would arise in case she herself were to share that fate. She felt greatly relieved upon hearing the cave-woman speak so hopefully of her own case, for she bethought herself of those ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... body of a debtor for debt, and even annulled debts in a state of general distress,—which did not please the rich, nor even the poor, since they desired a redivision of lands such as Lycurgus had made in Sparta. He repealed the severe laws of Draco, which inflicted capital punishment for so many small offences, retaining the extreme penalty only for murder and treason. In order further to promote the interests of the people, he empowered any man whatever to enter an action for one that was injured. He ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... accompanied by some of his courtiers, who shared the pleasures of the chase with him on the condition that they never ventured to let fly their weapons before he had discharged his. If they disregarded this rule they were liable to capital punishment, and might esteem themselves fortunate if they ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... due from good citizens to the public authorities of the society. These circumstances have induced me to pardon generally the offenders here referred to, and to extend forgiveness to those who had been adjudged to capital punishment. For though I shall always think it a sacred duty to exercise with firmness and energy the constitutional powers with which I am vested, yet it appears to me no less consistent with the public good than it is with my personal feelings to mingle in the operations of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... friends, who may perchance glance over these pages, to pause a moment and consider: If capital punishment should now be inflicted on every disobedient child, how many roods of earth would be planted with the instruments of death? If every city were doomed to destruction in which the majority of sons and daughters "set light by father and mother," how many would remain? To ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Gomorrah disappeared in the Dead Sea, and the details of its history cannot be written. To mitigate its horrors the worst of the criminals were transported to Norfolk Island. The Governor there had not the power to inflict capital punishment, and the convicts began to murder one another in order to obtain a brief change of misery, and the pleasure of a sea voyage before they could be tried and hanged in Sydney. A branch pandemonium was also established in Van Diemen's Land. This ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... over their military resources. It was indeed no slight tribute to Colleoni's reputation for integrity that the jealous republic, which had signified its sense of Carmagnola's untrustworthiness by capital punishment, should have left him so long in the undisturbed disposal of their army. The standard and the baton of St. Mark were conveyed to Colleoni by two ambassadors, and presented to him at Brescia on June 24, 1455. Three years later he made a triumphal entry into Venice, and received the same ensigns ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... eyes, and hands in reserve for very special occasions)—it was stated that "the blank cards are automatically fed to the punches." That punches should be spelt without the capital P is of course a Printer's error, deserving capital punishment. Mr. P. thinks it right to state in answer to numerous inquiries, that all his Punches speak by the card. But as to even the smallest of the Punch family being "fed" on cards, or getting his or her living by cards, the statement is utterly at variance with the facts. Mr. P. is quite sure ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... reared its head as the time-honored emblem of this privilege, by the side of St. George the Dragon-slayer, over the palaces of the Mukaukas at Memphis, and at Lykopolis in Upper Egypt. And in both these places the head of the family retained the right of arbitrary judgment and capital punishment over the retainers of his house and the inhabitants of the district he governed, after Justinian first, and then the Emperor Heraclius, had confirmed them in their old prerogative. The chivalrous St. George was placed between the snakes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this head writers have specified the custom of giving new names to those taken into the king's service (1:7); the threat that the houses of the magi should be made a dunghill (2:5); the different forms of capital punishment in use among the Chaldeans and Medo-Persians; the dress of Daniel's companions (3:21); the presence of women at the royal banquet (5:2), etc. See Davidson's Introduction, p. 920, who sums up the argument thus: "It is improbable that an author in the Maccabean ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... shall most willingly, my dear boy. In order to encourage the art of reading in England, which formerly made but slow progress, the capital punishment for murder was remitted if the criminal could read; and this, in law-language, is termed ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... I have opposed repressive measures and cruelty wherever I have met with them. I have always disapproved of capital punishment in all its forms; I have protested earnestly and repeatedly against the military commissions in the last reign, and have been out of favour on account of doing so. Up till now such influence and power as I have ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... he put the rope across the road intending to punish and even injure his stepfather, but without any intention of killing him, I think under the circumstances of extreme provocation, and what interest we could bring to bear on the matter, he would get off the capital punishment, for the jury would be sure to recommend him to mercy. I shall privately let Green and Porson, who are evidently acting as his friends in the matter, know that I think it would be far better for him to tell the truth and throw himself on the mercy ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... In the meantime all their papers had been seized. Many of the first nobility who, by the pretended kindness of the Duke of Alva, had allowed themselves to be cajoled into remaining experienced the same fate. Capital punishment was also, without further delay, inflicted on all who before the duke's arrival had been taken with arms in their hands. Upon the news of Egmont's arrest a second body of about twenty thousand inhabitants took up the wanderer's staff, besides the one hundred ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the Son of God. According to the scriptures, which anyone may freely search, God advised or countenanced deception[5]; stealing[6], selfishness[7], conquest by force[8], indiscriminate slaughter[9], murder[10], cannibalism[11], killing of witches[12], slavery[13], capital punishment for rebellious sons or for seeking false gods[14], sacrifices of animals[15] and other acts representing the ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... of America. In his debating society he had good practice in public speaking, and on all questions took what we may justly call the Quaker side, i. e., the side which he thought had most in it of humanity and benevolence. He sided against capital punishment, against the established church, and defended the principle of equal toleration of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... reflective mind there rose a vision of the gallows nine years later to be erected by his own order, whereon John Billington, deliberate murderer of John Newcomen, should expiate his crime and open the gloomy record of capital punishment in New England. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... political and religious freedom. Anticipating Beccaria's criticism of the death penalty by almost forty years, Carracioli argues that since man's right to life is inalienable, no government can have the power of capital punishment.[4] Misson's belief in equality is extended to include the negro slaves the Victoire takes at sea as well as the natives of Madagascar. After asking the negroes to join his crew, Misson ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... never understood by the public, Balusky and Viviadi were discharged, and Jean de Courtois was deported. Martiny was sentenced to capital punishment, and Lamotte received a long term of imprisonment. But these eventualities came long after Curtis and Hermione had been remarried in strict privacy, and in the presence of a small but select circle of friends, ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... thinking with details, what articles need protection and how much do they need; the ultimate desirability of a protective tariff will not be a problem remotely occurring to us. If we are by training committed to capital punishment, we will be concerned, if we think about it at all, with means and methods; we will think about the relative merits of hanging or electrocution; the ultimate justification or desirability of capital punishment will not be a problem ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Vladimir had persuasive ways, and was not likely to be deterred by such opposition. Nestor admired him very much. He says that Vladimir was a different man after he had been converted; that he was so afraid of committing a sin, that he hesitated to inflict capital punishment, until the bishop reminded him that crime must be punished. He also divided his income among the churches, and thus became the Saint (p. 044) Vladimir of Russia. Popular ballads keep alive the memory of the first Christian prince. He is often mentioned in them ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... also sentenced to death, but their sentence was to be carried out in France. Duval was strangled at Quebec, and his head was placed on a pike which was set up in the most conspicuous part of the fort. This was the second example of capital punishment in New France. The first case recorded was at Charlesbourg Royal, or Cap-Rouge, near Quebec, in the winter of 1542-3, when Michel Gaillon, one of Roberval's companions, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... Pharisee of the Pharisees. Lying, indeed! Why, you hate prevarication. As for murder, your friends know you too well to mention the subject in your hearing, except in immediate connection with capital punishment. You are of course willing to make some allowance for Cellini's time and place—the first half of the sixteenth century and Italy! "Yes," you remark, "Cellini shall have strict justice at my hands." So you say as you settle yourself ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... doors, in having heard the opinions of those likely to commit such crimes, and having a familiar acquaintance with their habits, and the motives from which they act. The reverend lecturer to whom I have referred, based his argument for the continued infliction of capital punishment on the perpetual obligation of the Mosaic law: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." He also maintained, if I understand him rightly, that the office of the hangman ought to be considered ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... subjects upon which free discussion tending toward uniform laws seems desirable are: marriage and divorce, rights of married women, corporations and trusts, insurance, child labor, capital punishment, direct primaries, convict labor and labor in general, prison reforms, automobile regulations, contracts, banking, conveyancing, inheritance tax, income tax, mortgages, initiative, referendum and recall, election reforms, tax adjustment, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... were enjoined to be sparing in capital punishments. In one rescript addressed to the Governor of distant Gujarat, that functionary was directed in no case, except in that of dangerous sedition, to inflict capital punishment until his proceedings had received the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... were arrested at Fort Gary (Winnipeg), and delivered at Pembina in January, 1864, and were afterward taken to Fort Snelling, where they were tried, condemned and executed in the presence of 10,000 people, being the last of the Indians to receive capital punishment for their great crimes. Little Six confessed to having murdered fifty ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... have been ten years in this government," he wrote, "and as I have never received any representation against the laws, or the manner in which they have been administered, I must conclude that the people are content with both." Content with laws which prescribed capital punishment for the killing of a cow! Content with laws which had been conceived in an iron age, and under a state of society which was now happily passing away! Content with the laws! When a majority of the population, through their representatives ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... bodies, of those upon whom capital punishment has been inflicted, to the hyenas and jackals, and leaving them to be devoured by these voracious brutes, the negroes give them a species of sepulture; and that is as described, by closing them up in vaults hewn in trunks of the baobab—and in my opinion ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... resumed, speaking steadily again, "I ought to warn you that such considerations as these will not affect my judgment of this particular case. In the first place, I have no quarrel with capital punishment as such. I do not believe we could rightly give it up. Your attitude properly means that wherever we can legitimately feel pity for a murderer, we should let him escape his penalty. I, on the other hand, believe that if the murderer saw things ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... vestiges of nominal paganism were erased in this century, and it remained only under Christian names. Capital punishment was proclaimed against all who worshipped the old deities under their old titles, and "this dreadful severity contributed much more towards the extirpation of paganism, than the exhortations and instructions of ignorant missionaries, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... Emerson delivered an address at Harvard on the "Progress of Culture" (printed in his Letters and Social Aims), in which he enumerates optimistically the indications of social advance: "the new scope of social science; the abolition of capital punishment and of imprisonment for debt: the improvement of prisons; the efforts for the suppression of intemperance, vice, etc.," and asks: "Who would live in the stone age, or the bronze, or the iron, or the lacustrine? Who does not prefer the age of steel, of gold, of coal, petroleum, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... uterus of an early ovum, of moles, hydatids, etc. Disease of the uterus and ovarian dropsy may be mistaken for pregnancy. Careful examination is necessary to determine the nature of the condition present. Pregnancy may be pleaded in bar of immediate capital punishment, in which case the woman must be shown to be 'quick with child.' A woman may also plead pregnancy to delay her trial in Scotland, and both in England and Scotland, in civil cases, to produce a successor to estates, to increase damages ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... forming such band, or its organization, character, and denomination, shall be judged militarily by the courts martial. If found guilty, even though only of the fact of belonging to an armed band, they shall be condemned to capital punishment, and the sentence shall be executed ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... philanthropy interfered in their behalf, and threw obstacles in the swift and sure career of justice. Very few, if any, escaped the terrible punishment due to their crimes MUTINY AND MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS. The effect of the EXAMPLE, which is the object of capital punishment was most salutary. No mutiny has occurred in the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... escaped with a burning in effigy when his L'Ecole des Filles was burnt at the foot of the gallows (1672). Lyser, who spent his life and his property in the advocacy of polygamy, was threatened by Christian V. with capital punishment if he appeared in Denmark, and his Discursus Politicus de Polygamia was sentenced to public ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... has a place in the Chinese courts of justice. There is one mode of capital punishment in which a dozen or twenty knives are placed in a covered basket, and each knife is marked for a particular part of the body. The executioner puts his hand under the cover and draws at random. If the knife is for ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... crucifixion. It is recognised that through Christ's death upon the cross man obtains all that makes life precious. Instead of being regarded with scorn, a cross is the coveted emblem now of valour and exalted achievement. The instrument wherewith capital punishment was inflicted on abandoned criminals has come to be an ornament of monarchs. Such a change is to be explained only by the fact that it is the sign of Christ's redeeming sacrifice, and that to multitudes who glory in the Cross, He who suffered the painful death on Calvary ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... expected from a generation which abhors torture, labours for the reformation of criminals, and even doubts whether it should not abolish capital punishment—a shaking of the heavens is abroad, of which we shall hear more and more, as the years roll on—a general inclination to ask whether Holy Scripture really endorses the Middle-age notions of future punishment in endless torment? Men are ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Bishop Wilberforce wrote, describing a dinner-party in 1847: "Carlyle was very great. Monckton Milnes drew him out. Milnes began the young man's cant of the present day—the barbarity and wickedness of capital punishment; that, after all, we could not be sure others were wicked, etc. Carlyle broke out on him with, 'None of your Heaven-and-Hell-Amalgamation Companies for me. We do know what is wickedness, I know wicked men, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... in such circumstances is always painful. I need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind. Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of individuals—chiefly of the Society of Friends—I petitioned the crown for a commutation of the ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... should kill the ravisher, and leave his body on the public road. He also enacted that the homicide should have the same fate. "It is just," to quote the words of the law, "that he who knows how to kill should learn how to die." Robbery, attested by seven witnesses, also involved capital punishment, and a judge convicted of having let a noble escape, underwent the same punishment that would have been inflicted on the criminal. The punishment, however, differed according to the station of the delinquent. Thus, for the non-observance ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the prisoner at the bar, Nicholas Grabguy, guilty of the heinous offence of raising his hand to a white man, whom he severely maimed with a sharp-edged tool; and the jury in their wisdom, recognising the fact of their verdict involving capital punishment, have, in the exercise of that enlightened spirit which is inseparable from our age, recommended him to the mercy of this court, and, in the discretion of that power in me invested, I shall now pronounce sentence. Prepare, then, ye lovers ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... calculated to promote the views of those who advocate the abolition of capital punishment, it is the fact of a woman meeting her death at the hands of the common hangman. There is something abhorrent, especially to the mind of the stronger sex, in the idea of a female suffering the extreme penalty of the law. On the other hand, the crime for which Margaret ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... female part of our community let it be recorded that only one woman has suffered capital punishment. On her condemnation she pleaded pregnancy, and a jury of venerable matrons was impanneled on the spot, to examine and pronounce her state, which the forewoman, a grave personage between sixty and seventy years old, did, by this short address to the ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... the result of the present public movement for the abolition of capital punishment, and however far future experiments may go towards establishing the expediency and safety of such a change in criminal jurisprudence, the history of every nation and people will show, we believe, the remarkable ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the time we write about, regular witch-finders, as in the time of James the First, still the feeling against witches, and the belief that they practised, existed. They were no longer handed over to summary and capital punishment, but, whenever suspected, they were sure to meet with very rough treatment. Such was the fate of Mr Vanslyperken, who was now seized by the crowd, buffeted, and spit upon, and dragged to the parish pump, there being, fortunately for him, no horse-pond near. After having been well beaten, pelted ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... was a nominal Christian, yet to him, plainly, the Bible was only a book of fables and fairy-tales. The Mosaic account of Creation is simply waived, as we waive Jack the Giant-Killer when dealing with the question of capital punishment. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... com. to arrange A. S. Annivers. and W. R. Con., no one else for common work, on large families, 162; unterrified by mob, rebukes teachers at Lockport con., 163; demands equal pay for women, not frightened by fogies, 164; calls meet. to oppose capital punishment, hissed by mob, trustee of Jackson fund, 165; desire for Free church, 167; persists in lecture courses for Rochester, shrinks from active work, feels spiritual loneliness, 168; exhorts women to be discontented, no freedom without ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper |
