In its favour
there is the absolute, irrevocable, and instantaneous elimination
from society of an individual who has shown himself absolutely
unadaptable, and dangerous to society. But I hold that, if we
would draw from the death penalty the only positive utility
which it possesses, namely, artificial selection, then we must
have courage enough to apply it resolutely in all cases where it
is necessary from this point of view, that is to say, to all born
criminals, who are the authors of the most serious crimes of
violence. In Italy, for example, it would be necessary to execute
at least one thousand persons every year, and in France nearly two
hundred and fifty, in place of the annual seven or eight.
Otherwise the death penalty must be considered as an unserviceable
and neglected means of terror, merely to be printed in the codes;
and in that case it would be acting more seriously to abolish it.
So regarded it is too much like those motionless scarecrows which
husbandmen set up in their fields, dotted about with the foolish
notion that the birds will be frightened away from the corn. They
may cause a little alarm at first sight; but by and by the birds,
seeing that the scarecrow never moves and cannot hurt them, lose
their fear, and even perch on the top of it.
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