A YANKEE ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 161, 10 July 1871, Page 4

A YANKEE ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

oration was delivered somewhere in Wisconsin .bygone r of the profession, who would seem to have quite an aversion to capital punishment: "May it please your. lordship and gentlemen' of the jury^ tlie case ia as dear as ice, and sharp to the point as 4 No ' from your sweetheart. The Scripture saith, 'Thou shalt not kill;' now, if you bang my client, you transgress the command as slick as grease, and as plump as a goose egg'in a loafer's face. Gentlemen., murdter is murder, whether committed by twelve jurymen, or : by an humble individual likb my client. Gentlemen, I do not deny the fact of ray client having killed a man ; but is that any reasou why you should do so ? No such thing, gentlemen. You may bring tbe prisoner in ' guilty,' the hangman may dp his duty, but wifl that exonerate you ? No such thing ; in that case you' > will be murderers. Who among you is prepared for the brand of Cain to be stamped, on his brow to-day ? Who% freemen — who in this land of liberty and light ?•'■ Gentlemen. I will pledge my word not one of you has a bowie knife or a pistol in his pocket. No, gentlemen,, your,. pockets are odoriferous with the perfumes of cigar-cases aud tobacco. You can smoke the tobacco of rectitude in the* pipe of a peaceful conscience ; but hang my unfortunate client, and the scaly alligators of remorse will gallop through the internal principles of your animal vertebrae, until the spinal vertebras of your anatomical construction is turned into a railroad for. the grim and gory goblins of despair. Gentlemen, beware of committing murder ! Beware, I say, of meddling with the Eternal prerogative ! — beware, I say. Remember the fate of the man who attempted to steady the ark, and tremble. Gentlemen, I adjure you, by the manumitted ghost of temporary sanctity, to do no murder ! I adjure you, by the name of woman, the tickling timepiece of time's theoretical transmigration , to do no murder! I adjure you, by the love you have for the esculent and condimental gusto of y of our native pumpkin, to do no murder ! I adjure you, by the American Eagle, that whipped tlie universal game-cock of creation, and now sits roosting on the magnetic telegraph of time's illustrious transmigration, to do no murder ! And, lastly, gentlemen, if you ever expect to wear long-tailed coats, if you ever expect free dogs not to bark at you, if you ever expect to wear boots made of the free hide of the the rocky mountaiu buffalo, and, to sum up all, if you ever expect to be anything but a set of sneaking, loafing, rascally, cut-throatod, braided small ends of humanity, whittled down into indistinctibility, acquit my client, and save your country." — The prisoner was acquitted.