Tuscany, where there has been no death penalty
for a century, is one of the provinces with the lowest number of
serious crimes; and in France, in spite of the increase of general
crime and of population, charges of murder, poisoning, parricide,
and homicide, dropped from 560 in 1826 to 430 in 1888, though the
number of executions diminished in the same period from 197 to 9.
The death penalty is an easy panacea, but it is far from being
capable of solving a problem so complex as that of serious crime.
The idea of killing off the incorrigibles and the born criminals
is easily conceived, and Diderot, in his Letter to Landois,
maintained that it was a natural consequence of the denial of
free-will, saying: ``What is the grand distinction between man
and man? Doing good and doing harm. The man who does harm ought
to be extinguished, not punished.'' But as against this too
facile notion we must look to experience, and to the other
material and moral conditions of social life, for the necessary
balance and completion.
I will not further discuss the death penalty, for it is by this
time an exhausted question from the intellectual standpoint, and
has passed into the domain of prejudice for or against, and this
prejudice is concerned rather with the more or less repugnant
method of execution than with the penalty itself.
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