r Shakespeare?

--_The Sun_, New York, March 19, 1899.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE WHIPPING-POST.

_Question_. What do you think of Governor Roosevelt's decision in
the case of Mrs. Place?

_Answer_. I think the refusal of Governor Roosevelt to commute
the sentence of Mrs. Place is a disgrace to the State. What a
spectacle of man killing a woman--taking a poor, pallid, frightened
woman, strapping her to a chair and then arranging the apparatus
so she can be shocked to death. Many call this a Christian country.
A good many people who believe in hell would naturally feel it
their duty to kill a wretched, insane woman.

Society has a right to protect itself, but this can be done by
imprisonment, and it is more humane to put a criminal in a cell
than in a grave. Capital punishment degrades and hardens a
community and it is a work of savagery. It is savagery. Capital
punishment does not prevent murder, but sets an example--an example
by the State--that is followed by its citizens. The State murders
its enemies and the citizen murders his. Any punishment that
degrades the punished, must necessarily degrade the one inflicting
the punishment. No punishment should be inflicted by a human being
that could not be inflicted by a gentleman.

For instance, take the whipping-post. Some people are in favor of
flogging because they say that some offences are of such a frightful
nature that flogging is the only punishment. They forget that the
punishment must be inflicted by somebody, and that somebody is a
low and contemptible cur. I understand that John G. Shortall,
president of the Humane Society of Illinois, has had a bill introduced
into the Legislature of the State for the establishment of the
whipping-post.

The shadow of that post would disgrace and darken the whole State.
Nothing could be more infamous, and yet this man is president of
the Humane Society. Now, the question arises, what is humane about
this society? Certainly not its president. Undoubtedly he is
sincere. Certainly no man would take that position unless he was
sincere. Nobody deliberately pretends to be bad, but the idea of
his being president of the Humane Society is simply preposterous.
With his idea about the whipping-post he might join a society of
hyenas for the cultivation of ferocity, for certainly nothing short
of that would do justice to his bill. I have too much confidence
in the legislators of that State, and maybe my conf