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To His Excellency Governor Hunt
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"Thine inward teachings make me know | |
4 | reads the hymn. My inward teachings convince me that I am right, and that we inevitably draw a curse upon our children and a country by these kind of punishments. I know I am right, there is an insurmountable barrier, an 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 wine like water without being able to get drunk, and our senses would 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 it is elsewhere neglected through carelessness, laziness or poverty, from not being able to afford salt for this purpose. 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, than all that is now incurred by execution, and have a fund appropriated for this especial use. 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 have its effect? 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 created kind ever destroy each other, 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. | |
5 | 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 otherwise than a beggar. I saw John Russell hung from the garret window of my parent's house when I was six years old. Now hunt the right way. |