The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1887. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2521, 10 February 1887, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1887. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

a jCtfFEEY and Penn are to be hung, and if hanging is it proper punishment for grave offences they undoubtedly deserve their fate. It is, however, at the best, a brutal, barborous, method of extinguishing corporal existence, and assuming that it is well.for society that murderers should be put to death; a surer and less repulsive method of destruction should be resorted to. The law as it was ones administered, contemplated the torture as well as the death of the criminal,'but now-a-days the idea of accompanying the death penalty with physical torment is abandoned in theory but maintained in practice. The men who were' hung in New South Wales the other day. fur-, nished an example of the hideous effect] of the present method of death by 3 strangulation. Thousands and tens,; of thousands of people shuddered-at: the recital of the execution, the horror of which probably went home to them rather than to the more callous' breasts of evil doers. The advocates of capital punishment rely somewhat

upon the text from Holy writ " whoso sheddeth man's blood; by man shall his blood be shedindeed the learned judge who sentenced Ca&ey andPeun quoted this authority in his very able address to the prisoners; but if this command be one of divine origin it evidently does not justify strangulation ivith a rope. It is time that death by lianging:\vere abolished as -a ; method more cruel than any: which is applied to extinguish existence in the brute "creation./ Some less repulsive form of death should be legalised, till such time as humanity is ripe for discontinuing'' capital punishment altogether. In a rude and uncivilised community death is the readiest and most effecacious method of ridding society of a dangerous man, but in a highly civilised state there does not exist a similar urgency for such an extreme remedy. It is impossible to declare that even men lik Caffrey and Penn are incapable of reformation. The actualpunishment they will now suffer, though a horrible one is yet less severe than penal servitude for life. We cannot, however, hope that while in tho mother country capital punishment is regarded ■as an essential part of the law any more advanced view can be taken of its operation in this colony, but we might almost expect that with asocial reformer like Sir KobertStout at the head of our Government, some less objectionable foum of death than that of strangulation might be adopted. .