just of what importance is it whether it's
punishment by death be just or not?--nobody needs to incur it.

Men are not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is
not deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather pelted the
hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a
part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder
proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it
is somewhat deterrent--it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder
is his crime, his second is ours.

The voice of Theosophy has been heard in favor of downing the gallows.
As usual the voice is a trifle vague and it babbles. Clear speech is the
outcome of clear thought, and that is something to which Theosophists
are not addicted. Considering their infirmity in that way, it would be
hardly fair to take them as seriously as they take themselves, but
when any considerable number of apparently earnest citizens unite in a
petition to the Governor of their State, to commute the death sentence
of a convicted assassin without alleging a doubt of his guilt the
phenomenon challenges a certain attention to what they do allege. What
these amiable persons hold, it seems, is what was held by Alphonse Karr:
the expediency of abolishing the death penalty; but apparently they do
not hold, with him, that the assassins should begin. They want the State
to begin, believing that the magnanimous example will effect a change of
heart in those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their
assertion that "death penalties have not the deterring influence which
imprisonment for life carries." In this they obviously err: death deters
at least the person who suffers it--he commits no more murder; whereas
the assassin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further
punishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be
able to get at. Even as matters now are, the most incessant vigilance is
required to prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants
and one another. How would it be if the "life-termer" were assured
against any additional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally,
or strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described
as a place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed the
difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would
be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life