of passion, or is the outcome of passion, and is not the work of the recidivist, of that class of men of clearly marked criminal tendencies, called by some writers instinctive criminals. Often, too, what a hair's-breadth difference of force or direction divides the mere assault from murder-but what a difference in the penalty. A paragraph I saw some time ago in a daily paper gives a case in point. A young man, Arthur Branson, was charged with brutal cruelty to his child. He had flung the baby at its mother and broken its thigh; he had so beaten the little thing that its body was badly bruised and its eyes blackened. The child was only eight months old. The prisoner was sentenced to two month's imprisonment. Had the blow struck the child in a vital part the sentence would have been death; as it was, despite the murderous intent, two month's imprisonment was considered a punishment proportionate to the offence.

Murder is often the result of great provocation, but the legal penalty is always death. Again, take the case of two persons who agree to commit suicide together; one dies, the other survives-is brought back to life, perhaps with great difficulty, and being brought back to life is liable to be tried, and put to death for the murder of his companion. If both die they are "temporarily insane;" if one survives, he is a criminal.

Prince Kropotkin, writing of Eastern Siberia, whither murderers are deported after having completed their term of imprisonment, says that there is scarcely another country in the world where you could travel or stay with greater security.

As a matter of fact it is necessary that we should revise our opinions, and cease to look upon murderers as the

vilest class of criminals, and as such, deserving of the most severe punishment.

THE ARGUMENT OF ECONOMY.

Let us turn for a moment to the arguments in favor of the retention of the death penalty.

First, that it is a deterrent. I have already shown by facts and figures that this is a fallacious idea, and will therefore not further labor the point.

Next, that it is economical. The readiest objection of the average Englishman to any reform comes from the pocket. He is a curious person, this average Englishman, he does not mind spending four or five millions on such a piece of stupendous folly as the fortification of London, he does not mind spending thousands on the preservation of homicidal lunatics, but he "must draw the line somewhere," and he draws it here. Anyone might think that this particular reform involved a tremendous outlay; an outlay which might be indulged in by wealthy countries such as Italy, Portugal, Holland, Finland and Switzerland, but which is altogether beyond the means of povertystricken England. As a matter of fact it would involve an additional expenditure of £300 or £400 per annum. cost of an ordinary criminal is about £25 a year—much less than the cost of a criminal lunatic-multiply this by fifteen and we get a total of £375; a sum which may be further reduced by deducting the hangman's salary.

The

Mr. Justice Stephen was in favor not only of the retention of capital punishment, but of its extension. What, he asked, is the use of keeping a wretch alive at the public expense? But to carry this argument to its logical conclusion you must conduct the criminal lunatic and the

habitual thief to the lethal chamber side by side with the murderer. I will not say that this would not be a more merciful fate than a succession of sentences of imprisonment, going right through a man's life, from the early years of his boyhood until his old age. I will not say that it would not be wiser in the interests of the community generally. But such a course would probably involve some hundreds of executions yearly, and that I take leave to say is an idea which is difficult to contemplate with equanimity.

THE ALTERNATIVE PUNISHMENT.

I may be asked, If the death penalty is abolished what should be the alternative punishment in cases of murder? I think that a term of imprisonment longer or shorter according to the degree of criminality would be sufficient. Henry Romilly urges an unalterable life sentence, but under our present system I would not wish perpetual imprisonment to anyone. And, in spite of all our failures so far, I should be very sorry to see the law itself shut the door on all chances of reforming the criminal; and without hope of liberty, there can be little real reform.

At some time, in the not too distant future, I am hoping to see an experiment tried in this country of indeterminate sentences for first offenders; this would probably includeat the very lowest estimate-one-half the murderers. This, however, is only a hope for the future; for the present the penalty I would assign to murderers would be imprisonment for a term in the discretion of the judge. This alternative is not without objection from the humane point of view, but it is a thousand times better than execution or perpetual imprisonment.

If it should be considered impossible to persuade that House of Compromise, commonly known as the House of Commons, to agree to so downright a measure as the total abolition of the death penalty-thus giving to England, in common with those other countries I have mentioned, a bloodless code of laws-still it might perhaps be not so difficult to persuade the House to suspend the operation of the penalty for a given period. Such a course would put it to the proof, whether would-be murderers are so much more numerous and so much more desperate in England than they are in other lands, that they can only be restrained from laying violent hands upon their fellowmen by fear of the gallows.

II. THE LASH.

A DEGRADING PUNISHMENT.

From the discussion of capital punishment, one naturally turns to the question of flogging, the only other form of corporal punishment now practised in England. Many of the arguments against the use of the gallows are equally sound against the use of the lash. Both are brutal punishments, legacies from a barbaric age, which seek to intimidate the criminal from further crime rather than to

work any real reform in his moral nature. In both cases the State hires an official to do that within the prison gates which, if done by the individual outside, would be a crime punishable by the utmost rigor of the law.

In England a man convicted of garotting or of robbery with violence may be sentenced to so many lashes with the cat. Flogging is also a prison punishment; that is, a punishment which may be ordered by the prison authorities to be inflicted upon a prisoner for some violation of the prison regulations.

What flogging is like in prisons may be learned from a description, written by Mr. Owen Pike, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, of a case he witnessed in Newgate thirty or more years ago, but which is a perfectly fair description of a flogging to be seen in any of our prisons to-day.

"The prisoner," says Mr. Pike," is fastened to a triangle so that he can move neither hand nor foot. His back is bare. The man who wields the lash shakes out its nine thongs, raises it aloft with both hands and deals the criminal the first blow