"Capital punishment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... generally a moral, sometimes an inverted one, in the Rops etchings. Order Reigns at Warsaw is a grim commentary on Russian politics quite opportune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used by Socialists as a protest against capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies the impassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops had read Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runs from Bulicame to be portioned ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... now limited 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 abolished ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... the principal merchants, "to the number of more than 200," are incarcerated at Bordeaux in one night.[41133] At another time, Paris provides a haul of farmer-generals or parliamentarians. Carts leave Toulouse conveying its parliamentarians to Paris to undergo capital punishment. At Aix, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... post-office; no potatoes, tea, coffee, newspapers, brown paper, copper coinage, streetlamps, shawls, muslin or cotton goods. But there is at times the dreaded plague, which decimates wherever it comes; the terrible frequency of capital punishment for comparatively trivial offences; the pleasant probability of meeting with a few highwaymen in every country journey; the paucity of roads, and the extreme roughness of such as do exist; a lamentable lack of education, even in the higher classes, hardly atoned for by the ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... wicked wags! If the abolition of capital punishment be effected in France, we hope you will be specially excepted as unworthy of mercy for this cruel plot to make Miladi Morgan expose herself thus to the sneers of an ill-natured world. We think we see you in conclave, laughing ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... represented Hercules having to choose between two paths, the one being that of virtue, the other of pleasure. Like Socrates later on, he too was subject to the terrible accusation of impiety, and underwent capital punishment. The Sophists furnish the most important epoch in the history of ancient philosophy; until their advent the philosophic systems were great poems on the total of all things, known and unknown. The Sophists opposed these ambitious and precipitate generalizations, in which ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Emperor of Rome, abolished 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 ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... information regarding lightning rods, he having doubts of their legality. While they were talking, M. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, another physician, arrived. He was looking for advice regarding a proposed new method of capital punishment, and wished to know if, in the Doctor's opinion, a painless death could be produced by quickly severing the head from the body. Next morning, M. Jourdan, with hair and beard as red as the flank of my bay mare and a loud voice, came soon after ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... 10. The law is made for manstealers. This crime among the Jews exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment. Exodus xxi. 16. And the apostle here classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word he uses, in its original import comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or in retaining them in it. Stealers of men are all those who bring off ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 bear in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I shall enter more fully into this question: at present I shall only say that there is a great unwillingness to take away life in America, and it is this aversion to capital punishment which has directed the attention of the American community to the penitentiary system. Several varieties of this species of punishment have been resorted to, more or less severe. The most rigid—that of solitary confinement in dark cells, and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a barrister 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 sentence. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... fustigation^, gantlet, strappado^, estrapade^, bastinado, argumentum baculinum [Lat.], stick law, rap on the knuckles, box on the ear; blow &c (impulse) 276; stripe, cuff, kick, buffet, pummel; slap, slap in the face; wipe, douse; coup de grace; torture, rack; picket, picketing; dragonnade^. capital punishment; execution; lethal injection; the gas chamber; hanging &c v.; electrocution, rail-riding, scarpines^; decapitation, decollation^; garrotte, garrotto [It]; crucifixion, impalement; firing squad; martyrdom; auto-da-fe [Fr.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... addressing the girls round the stove as much as Constance. "I've met with some rare good arguments this new year, no mistake! There's been some as say that Dan never meant to do it. That's as may be. But if it's a good reason for not hanging, there's an end to capital punishment in this country. 'Never meant'! There's a lot of 'em as 'never meant'! Then I'm told as she was a gallivanting woman and no housekeeper, and as often drunk as sober. I'd no call to be told that. If strangling is a right punishment for a wife as spends her time in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... bonds for sixty days. During those days they shall be brought to [the magistrate] into the comitium (meeting-place) on three successive market-days and the amount for which they have been judged liable shall be declared publicly. Moreover on the third market-day they (the debtors) shall suffer capital punishment (capite poenae) or shall be delivered for sale beyond ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... Interest Threatening Letter to Thomas Hood from an Ancient Gentleman Crime and Education Capital Punishment The Spirit of Chivalry in Westminster Hall In Memoriam—W. M. Thackeray Adelaide Anne Procter Chauncey Hare Townshend ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... are appointed to command over different portions of the country, and, wherever they are, have a jurisdiction in all matters over the Subahs. In particular, their criminal jurisdiction is much more extensive, as they can condemn to capital punishment, without any reference to the court, while the Subah requires an order from thence before he can punish any criminal. Still more are the Subahs under the authority of the higher officers of state, the Chautariyas and Karyis, when any of these eight great ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... times it 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 ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... as little chance of a Whig Administration as of "a thaw in Nova Zembla," Holland, in the House of Lords, supported Catholic Emancipation, advocated the emancipation of slaves, opposed the detention of Napoleon as a prisoner of war, and moved the abolition of capital punishment for minor offences. From November, 1830, to his death, with brief intervals, he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in the administrations of Lord Grey and of Lord Melbourne. Outside the House he kept the party together by his great social gifts. An admirable talker, 'raconteur', ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... one rather important point," Piers replied. "Russia was the first country to abolish capital punishment for ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Whitman. As for those crockery chimney-piece ornaments, the bourgeois (QUORUM PARS), and their cowardly dislike of dying and killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly they have got out of touch of life. Their dislike of capital punishment and their treatment of their domestic servants are for me the two flaunting emblems ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not in favour of capital punishment, and would do away with all judges and trials by jury, leaving the Press to fight out the criminal ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... determined against capital punishment, was graciously pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss of your eyes too easy a censure, some other way may be inflicted hereafter. And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected, concerning the great ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... the premeditated slaughter of a citizen, is a crime of so deep and scarlet a dye, that there is scarce a nation to be found in which it has not, from the earliest period, been deemed worthy of a capital punishment. 'He who sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,' is a general maxim which has received the assent of all times and countries. But it is equally certain that even the rude legislators of former days soon perceived that the death of one man may be occasioned by another, without ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... whom most, if not all, might be saved alive, would seem at first sight a matter serious enough for the attention of "philanthropists." Those who abhor the practice of hanging one man would, one fancies, abhor equally that of poisoning many; and would protest as earnestly against the painful capital punishment of diarrhoea as against the painless one of hempen rope. Those who demand mercy for the Sepoy, and immunity for the Coolie women of Delhi, unsexed by their own brutal and shameless cruelty, would, one fancies, demand mercy also for the British workman, and ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... 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 is ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Capital punishment is inflicted by placing the victim on his knees, with his arms bound behind him, and his head is severed from his body by the stroke of a heavy knife ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... nourish this beatitude: "Blessed is the man who destroys all barriers"? Florence Akemit said as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently challenging—threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man who brutally and honestly beats them down, and destroys them utterly? So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an untidy litter ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... authority, capital punishment may be divided into two kinds—beheading and strangulation. The ceremony of hara-kiri was added afterwards in the case of persons belonging to the military class being condemned to death. This was first instituted in the days of ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the instigator of the plot, and the others were 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
... 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. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... by the chimney-piece, the shine of many wax tapers from above illuminating his pale face, the glow of the great red fire relieving from behind his slim figure. He had to propose, as an amendment to the next subject in the case-book, "Whether capital punishment be consistent with God's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drowning does what is morally right, whether his motive be duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble.' Upon which I would observe, in passing, that to save a fellow-creature from drowning can be deemed to be necessarily right by none but uncompromising opponents of capital punishment. Most others will be disposed to doubt its having been a sufficient reason for commuting the sentence of death passed upon the murderer of Dhuleep Sing's gamekeeper, that, owing to physical malformation, hanging might perhaps have given him more than ordinary pain ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... to be 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 writing and speaking on this matter, not merely with ability ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... made him mild and gentle, unwearied in giving and in doing good. His wrath slumbered for a season, and around the spot where the heads of those who had suffered capital punishment were exhibited as a warning to their fellow-men, the hungry, screeching crows now ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 the toes, they are ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... asked what could be done to find stolen money if the thief refused to say where he had hidden it. But this was not his only argument. "The accused himself," he said, "has a guarantee in torture, which makes him a judge in his own case, so that he becomes able to avoid the capital punishment attached to the crime of which he is accused." And this writer confidently asserts that for a single example which might be cited in two or three centuries of an innocent man yielding to the violence of torture, a million cases ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fulfilled. Threats of capital punishment, and promises of ample rewards, transformed the editor of the Telegraph into as enthusiastic an admirer of Napoleon as he had formerly been of Queen Louisa; and, after having hitherto written nothing but fulsome eulogies, he now ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... unlimited control 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 S. 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... moderation. Still, in the nature of things, proscription on a small scale was inevitable. Besides the regicides proper, twenty persons were to be named for imprisonment and permanent incapacitation for office then, and liable to prosecution and possibly capital punishment hereafter. It seemed almost inevitable that Milton should be included. On June 16th his writings against Charles I. were ordered to be burned by the hangman, which sentence was performed on August 27th. A Government proclamation enjoining ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... His youthful appearance. Anecdotes showing his love of Fun. His sense of Justice. His Remarkable Memory. His Costume and Personal Habits. His Library. His Theology. His Adherence to Quaker Usages. Capital Punishment. Rights of Women. Expressions of gratitude from Colored People. His fund of Anecdotes and his Public Speaking. Remarks of Judge Edmonds thereon. His separation from the Society of Friends in New-York. Visit to his Birth-place. Norristown Convention. Visit from his Sister Sarah. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... the army or abolished the death penalty or thrown open the sluice-gates to anarchist floods. On the contrary, they claimed to have reorganized the national forces, reintroduced the severest discipline ever known, appointed experienced officers, and restored capital punishment. Nor was it they, but their predecessors, they added, who had ruined the transport service of the country and caused the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 would lose ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Constitution and laws which is 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... extravagant, and she is not rich, and there are a lot of us. I owe a good bit to Tiffin, and to my London tailor too, but he will wait any time. Tiffin duns me, hang him! though why he should be devoted to capital punishment for asking for his due I don't know either. I should not have had such a lot of patties, fruit, ices, and stuff. He will have to be paid at latest when I leave; and at that time, if I get into Woolwich, there will be my outfit. And then I must needs buy a gun and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... law of the land required the capital punishment of witches, no blame ought to be attached to judges and jurors for discharging their respective duties in carrying it into execution. It will not do for us to assert, that they ought to have refused, let the consequences to themselves ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... "Of course, you feel Ned's death keenly, and it must be ten times harder for you to bear than if it had taken place in the natural way. Talk about not believing in capital punishment after this! Why, the people would tear him to pieces if they could get ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... name of law many atrocious crimes are committed. Imprisonment, capital punishment and war are yet crude in their methods. They are still susceptible of more refining. Here cruelty has rather a thin garment on and needs to be ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... 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 amputation of the hand. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... 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 is true, informed ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... matter of record that in the twentieth century the universal form of capital punishment was execution by electricity. In every state-prison stood the "death-chair," the visible embodiment of the moral force which the wrong-doer had defied, and which, in the ensuing struggle, had proved too strong for him. No wonder that it was both feared and hated by the citizens ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... 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 ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... is not so crazy after all," this man wrote. And then he insinuated that Schrank very carefully planned to commit the deed in a state where there is no capital punishment and in a county—the only one in the country—in which "there is ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... 1818, the cause was taken up by the Whig philosopher, Sir James Mackintosh, and made a distinct step in advance. Though there were still obstacles in the upper regions, a committee was obtained to consider the frequency of capital punishment, and measures were passed to abolish it in particular cases. Finally, in 1823, the reform was adopted by Peel. Peel was destined to represent in the most striking way the process by which new ideas were gradually ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... that, although Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN is still nominally Chancellor of the Exchequer, he is really a prisoner in the Tower, conveyed under guard to and from the House, and that the reprieve of the sentence of capital punishment passed on him by The Daily Mail may expire—and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... of municipal laws, and extended it over the vessels and crews of the United States on the high seas and in foreign ports, and even over citizens of the United States resident in China; and has established judicatures, with power to inflict even capital punishment within that country. ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... be sure," she prattled on, "to come back and tell me what you see there, and what you find out ... what comes to light ... how they'll try him ... and what he's condemned to.... Tell me, we have no capital punishment, have we? But be sure to come, even if it's at three o'clock at night, at four, at half-past four.... Tell them to wake me, to wake me, to shake me, if I don't get up.... But, good heavens, I shan't sleep! But wait, hadn't I better come ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to the disturbance of the established government: the third, that she should be publicly tried for her crimes, of which her enemies pretended to have undoubted proof, and be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment: the fourth was still more severe, and required that, after her trial and condemnation, capital punishment should be inflicted upon her.[****] Throgmorton supported the mildest proposal; but though he promised his mistress's guaranty for the performance of articles, threatened the ruling party with immediate vengeance in case of refusal,[v] and warned them not to draw on themselves, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... our young 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 ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... live in common. After wearying the readers on this and numerous other 'isms,' it was discontinued. He went into a political frenzy over Clay and protection; next his paper was full of the 'Irish Repeal,' 'Advocacy of the Water Cure,' 'Phrenology,' 'Mesmerism,' 'Opposition to Capital Punishment,' 'Trinitarianism' and the 'Drama.' ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... 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 fact, that ever since Cain stood before ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... intelligence, however, which I heard of him was that he had undergone capital punishment by order of the king; to whom he had written, when in prison, saying that he was punished by the just judgment of God, because he had loved the king more than God; and that out of deference to his sovereign he had ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... Soudan is! As a sorely-tried friend said to me, after passing a succession of sleepless nights owing to the dust and rain storms, and overburdened days because of the heat, "What do the British want in this country? Is it the intention of the Government to do away with capital punishment and send all felons here? I am not surprised the camel has the hump. I would develop one here myself. What an accursed country!" Yes, it is not an elysium; and when one allows the dirt, heat, and discomfort to wither all power of ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... criminal intercourse with a young man; her husband died, and she married the lover. Several years had elapsed, when the public began to suspect the previous intercourse of this couple: they were thrown into prison, put upon trial, and very narrowly escaped capital punishment.] ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the law may in some cases have its inevitable hardships, and I may feel regret at times that I have not the option of passing a less severe sentence than I am compelled to do. But yours is no such case; on the contrary, had not the capital punishment for consumption been abolished, I should certainly inflict ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... objects of persecution lose their lives. The popular belief, however, in witchcraft still continued, and it was not till the ninth year of George II., that the statutes against it were repealed. We believe there is still an Irish statute unrepealed, which inflicts capital punishment on witches. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... there might be a disposition to stop this waste of public money, passed acts which decreed capital punishment to any orator who should propose to modify the laws which ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... There is no capital punishment for murder in Mexico, and when criminals have served their terms and return to their native village the Indians may even send them back to Durango, saying that they are better off without them. Suicide is unknown. When murder or theft ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... 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
... could they have expected to 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 ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... years of prison and authorship, and its not unfitting close, in the English statesman's death by the headsman—so tranquil though violent, so ceremoniously solemn, so composed, so dignified;—such a contrast to all other forms of capital punishment, then ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... piety and judgment; and am persuaded that the Council of Geneva has done right in putting to death this obstinate man, who would never have ceased his blasphemies. I am astonished, that any one can be found to disapprove of this proceeding." Farel expressly says, that "Servetus deserved a capital punishment." Bucer did not hesitate to declare, that "Servetus deserved something worse than death." The truth is, although Calvin had some hand in the arrest and imprisonment of Servetus, he was unwilling that he should be burnt at all. "I desire," says he, "that the severity of the punishment ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... amputation of the first joint of the fore-finger of the right hand for the first offence. For the second, the whole hand was sacrificed, and for the third, the head itself was forfeited. Sometimes, in cases of capital punishment, decapitation was performed by degrees! and other refinements too horrible to mention were ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... went on the chief of police, "is to obey the commands of the authorities. Do you know, Ivan Ivanovitch, that a person who purloins a government document in the court-room incurs capital punishment equally with ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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
... as it is given in the Bible. Where is the morality and righteousness of the wars of which we read? Where is the justice and goodness of God in the bloody wars of Israel? Where is the righteousness of capital punishment? A great many persons say, in their ignorance, there is no righteousness in those things. Friend, travel slowly over this ground. "Take the shoes off thy feet, for it is holy ground." Go into the Bible and look! God is there. You knew it not. Principles never change. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... 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 ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mege's flat, which still remained closed, whereas every other window of the lofty house was wide open. Although the Socialist deputy hated the Anarchists, those shutters were doubtless closed as a protest against capital punishment. Whilst the multitude had been rushing to that frightful spectacle, Mege, still in bed, with his face turned to the wall, had probably been dreaming of how he would some day compel mankind to be happy beneath the rigid laws of Collectivism. Affectionate ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... had the knowledge or the instinct to conceive a proper plan of campaign. The generals could hardly be censured, for their hands were tied; they were forbidden to be severe; they dared not squelch insubordination. Capital punishment, even in the army, and at such a crisis as this, was abolished. There had been, I heard, something suspiciously resembling a mutiny in the column of Sanchez Bregua. A certain Colonel Castanon was put under arrest on a charge of Alfonsist ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... lodged with a General commanding an army, and, among them, it had authority to subject all offenders to the same correction to which a soldier rendered himself liable by breaches of discipline. The Comitia Centuriata could therefore inflict capital punishment. Not so, however, the Comitia Curiata or Comitia Tributa. They were fettered on this point by the sacredness with which the person of a Roman citizen, inside the walls of the city, was invested by religion and law; and, with respect to the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... government, committed to a belief in the efficacy of capital punishment, paid Tobias Dramm at the rate of seventy-five dollars a head for hanging offenders convicted of the hanging crime, which was murder. He averaged about four hangings every three months or, say, about nine hundred ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... effect of example. "What do you say," asked the chief of the Ke clan on one occasion, "to killing the unprincipled for the good of the principled?" "Sir," replied Confucius, "in carrying on your government why should you employ capital punishment at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good and the people will be good." And then quoting the words of King Ching, he added, "The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it." Thus ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... long order. For one thing, it imposes all kinds of penalties from capital punishment to fines. For another, it was in force up to the beginning of George the Third's reign, when the last case of a person being burned for witchery in England occurred, and since then it ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... bailiff of Dijon were standing firmly by the French flag, careless of the order of the Diet, Ludovico's auxiliaries declared that in fighting against their Swiss brethren they would be acting in disobedience to the Diet, and would risk capital punishment in the end—a danger that nothing would induce them to incur unless they immediately received the arrears of their pay. The duke, who a spent the last ducat he had with him, and was entirely cut off from his capital, knew that he could not get money till he had fought his way through to it, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... husband expected, and was lucky enough to postpone the latter indefinitely. At her trial in Jamaica, she would have escaped through the compassion of the court, if some one had not deposed that she often deliberately defended piracy with the argument that pirates were fortunately amenable to capital punishment, and this was a restraint to cowards, without which a thousand rascals who passed for honest people, but who did nothing but pillage widows and orphans and defraud their neighbors, would rush into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... witness chair upon the voir dire and perjured himself like a gentleman in order to escape from service, shyly confessing to an ineradicable prejudice against the entire Italian race and this defendant in particular, and to an antipathy against capital punishment which, so each unhesitatingly averred, would render him utterly incapable of satisfactorily performing his functions if selected as a juryman. Hardly one, however, but was routed by the Machiavellian Babson. Hardly one, however ingenious his excuse—whether about to ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... pandemonium, such as the world had never known since Sodom and 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
... Ecclesiastical prelates accept the office of earthly princes, not that they may inflict capital punishment themselves, but that this may be carried into effect by others in virtue of their ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... 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 ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... upon for their more complete subjugation. While the general principles of the Bible are in favor of the most enlarged freedom and equality of the race, isolated texts have been used to block the wheels of progress in all periods; thus bigots have defended capital punishment, intemperance, slavery, polygamy, and the subjection of woman. The creeds of all nations make obedience to man the corner-stone of her religious character. Fortunately, however, more liberal minds are now giving us higher and purer ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... vigilant enemy unawares. This was just then regarded as of especial importance, for at the time of which I am now writing the traffic in slaves was regarded as piracy, and rendered its perpetrators liable to capital punishment, in consequence of which almost every slaver went heavily armed, and her crew, knowing that the halter was already about their necks, resisted capture by every means which their ingenuity could devise, whenever they had the chance, and often fought ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... they would dread as much the punishment of the first, as they would ambitiously covet the triumphs of the last; terror hardly prevents crime, never does it inspire virtue. Does any one consider the effect of capital punishment on the criminals themselves? Either they brave it with reckless impudence; or, inanimate, they suffer it, half dead with terror; or they offer their heads with ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... and while the other rioters are vainly tormenting their heavy skulls by trying to guess what has become of their leaders, we shall render the latter so pliable and tame by all kinds of tortures and threats of capital punishment, that when we finally set them free again, they will actually believe they are in our debt, and in their gratitude become willing tools in our hands to be used as we ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... requested the member from the Pas de Calais to read from the tribune his appeal in favor of the King. Drunau attempted to do it, but was hooted down. Paine persisted,—presented his speech again the next day. Marat objected to its reception, because Paine was a Quaker, and opposed to capital punishment on principle; but the Convention at last consented to the reading. After alluding to the all-important assistance furnished by Louis XVI. to the insurgent American Colonies, Paine, as a citizen of both countries, proposed sending him to the United States. "To kill Louis," wrote ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... relations of government and climate. Hallam inclines to the opinion that he was a Jew, and attached Divine authority only to the Old Testament. But this was enough to furnish him with his chief data for the existence of witches and for their capital punishment; and in the account of his "Republic," given by Hallam, there is enough evidence that the sagacity which often enabled him to make fine use of his learning was also often entangled in it, to temper our surprise ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... seminarist priests was not enough to put an end to it. With reference to the laity, the Lord Treasurer, however strict in other respects, recommends to his sovereign quite a different mode of proceeding. We should never proceed to capital punishment of such men: we should rather mitigate the oath imposed on them: in particular we should never force the nobles to a final decision between their religious inclinations and their political duties, never drive them to despair. But at the same ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... order that the Assembly might reflect on the charge, and thus, at least, affect the impartiality of justice. "Hasten!" exclaimed Isnard; "whilst you are deliberating perhaps the traitor will flee." "I have been a long time judge," replied Boulanger, "and never did I decree capital punishment so lightly." Vergniaud, who saw the indecision of the Assembly, rushed twice into the tribune to combat the excuses and the delays of the right side. Becquet, whose coolness was equal to his courage, desirous of averting the peril, proposed that it ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... strange contradiction with its own bloody deeds, it celebrated the last day of its existence by a law which, as a farewell to the thousand corpses it had sacrificed to the revolution, it had printed on its gory brow. On the day of its dissolution the Convention gave to France this last law: "Capital punishment is forever abolished." [Footnote: Norvins, "Histoire de Napoleon," vol. i., ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... seems) 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... of America, white men as well as Indians execute this law with cruel severity against each other. Civilised communities adopt it in a mitigated form as applied to capital punishment, but the untutored inhabitants of the desert continue to practise it with the same rigour which belonged to the first ages ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... prison term with capital punishment as the happy alternative failed to disturb The Hopper. To their surprise and somewhat to their shame he won the Shaver to a tractable humor. There was nothing in The Hopper's known past to justify any expectation that he could quiet a crying baby, and yet Shaver with a child's unerring instinct ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... Essex had forfeited all right to appeal, since it was himself 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... that what ought to turn the human mind from some peculiar tendency produces the opposite effect. One would think that the perusal in the newspaper of some crime and capital punishment would warn away all who had ever meditated the crime, or dreaded the chance of detection. Yet it is well known to us that many a criminal is made by pondering over the fate of some predecessor in guilt. There is a fascination in the Dark and Forbidden, which, strange to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
