Switzerland also has
abolished it, but a few cantons, under the influence of a few
atrocious and recurrent crimes, revived it in their codes, but did
not carry it out. In the United States it has been abolished in
Michigan, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, and Maine. An inquiry into the
legislation and statistics relating to murder in Europe and
America was instituted by Lord Granville in July, 1880 and the
results were published in 1881. (``Reports on the Laws of Foreign
Countries respecting Homicidal Crime.'')
In a manuscript register of executions in the Duchy of Ferrara
between 970 and 1870, I found that, excluding the nineteenth
century, there were 5,627 executions in 800 years (3,981
for theft, and 1,009 for homicide), that is an average of 700 in
each century, in the city of Ferrara alone. And at Rome,
according to the records of the Convent of St. John the Beheaded,
between 1500 and 1770 there were 5,280 executions, or 1,955 in
each century, in the city of Rome alone. Now, if we consider the
proportion of population in Ferrara and Rome to that of Italy as a
whole, we reach an enormous number of executions in former
centuries, which can scarcely have been fewer than four hundred
every year.
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