Library Collections: Document: Full Text

If hanging or punishment by death is the right course why is the crime daily repeated? It ought to prevent the repetition of the crime, or else it does not answer the purpose, our Newspapers become a daily record of these dreadful violations. Now let the man live and grow old and grey, who that ever saw or conversed with him would ever go and do the like. I attended when I was a schoolgirl, the lectures of a man who was confined ten years for forgery and although he declared his innocence, yet its effect upon me was such that it would be a moral impossibility for me to imitate the hand writing for a fraudulent purpose, a feeling of horror that I cannot describe and known only to myself, for I never heard the subject canvassed by any one, influences me, and this arises only from my personal acquaintance with the man himself I can describe it, only to an internal wall that shrinks with dread and aversion from an embodied crime. Might it not operate in like manner, with others, and in all instances of the kind. To see an old grey headed person guilty of a crime, makes a much more painful impression and deeper, on my mind than one that is young. We can often see ourselves pictured out when we look at the inferior race of beings, as we read exemplified in fables, like the story of the mice in counsel when one killed another, all the rest set upon the survivor and make an end of him, we would look upon it as absurd in the extreme and cruel. How do we know that a superior being does not look upon our ways in this respect towards each other in the same light, that we would look upon them. Suppose the cows were to do so, would it not be dreadful, and would not we take effectual means to prevent the double loss of those innocent and useful creatures, and are we not of more value than many sparrows.

In trouble to be troubled is to have your trouble doubled, is a rhyme I have often heard, do we not double trouble in this way? There is no device or work in the grave, and the balances have no weight after death, it is mere blasphemy to carry the yoke into another world, in the Revelations where it speaks of the third seal, it says, he that carried the balances sat upon a black horse, black is not death. I am sensible that all I can say is weak and feeble in comparison to the awful responsibility of the alternative, but the opinion of one that has studied and practiced what they know as faithfully as I have, does not deserve to be despised. "Thine inward teachings make me know, my danger and my refuge too," reads the hymn. My inward teachings convince me I am right, and that we inevitably draw a curse upon our children and our country by these kind of punishments.

I know I am right, there is an insurmountable barrier, and indescribable conviction on my mind that I cannot account for, that forces me to a stand firm as a rock. Salt, applied as I have said will prevent all drunkenness, we could drink wind like water without being able to get drunk, and our senses could not reel. This application of salt ought to be practiced by every one, but we can make the convict work righteousness in fear of death, when elsewhere it is neglected through carelessness, laziness or poverty, for the want of a sufficient quantity of salt. Salt thus applied will be of no inconvenience to the prisoner, as I can give assurance in my own experience, for I have practiced it for months, almost years, and it will neither injure his health or comfort. It would be less expense to supply salt for this purpose to the prisoner, and have a fund appropriated, than all that is now incurred by execution. It is moral reformation, not bodily torture that a good parent ought to require from a child, and if this can be obtained without punishment, all proper ends are surely gained. You say we would all be in danger of our lives if it was not for the dread of being hung. I do not believe it, why then does it not work. I doubt if there has been one individual less brought to the gallows for this hundred years, according to the population, from the fear of being hung. There is a natural instinct that preserves beings of one kind among each other, and no kind ever destroy each other, except the Bee, they will fight among themselves until a whole hive is destroyed, and they live on honey. All sweet is cruel and spoils the disposition. Did we drop the subject and not in crowds go to the hanging, I believe we would at last never know of an unnatural death except by, accident any more than we do in the brute kingdom. I know I am right, old ways should be done away, and all become new. Salt will make a new creature, and he that believeth shall not make haste. What is the cause of the utter prostration of the poorer class of people in the old countries? It is impossible for a beggar ever to be any other wise than a beggar. I saw Mr. --- hung from my father's garret window in --- when I was six years old.

With the greatest respect, I remain,
Your humble Servant.

The ensuing letter was written by a very worthy and well educated gentleman, a lawyer, -- who has been deranged two years. He is generally pleasant and able to converse rationally, but is easily excited and has no power of self-control, not even enough to keep from tearing his own clothes, although he says he "knows it is wrong and wicked, but cannot help it."