criminal always counts on preserving his own life as a condition sine qua rum to the enjoyment of his revenge. Death to him is an unmitigated misfortune, and the thought of the lonely death-watch, the ghostly scaffold, and the black cap, is a powerful factor in staying his hand. Death, then, is the one grand deterrent which the State may and must employ, both to preserve and restore social order and to counteract the fatal fascination by which crime sometimes tends to run riot in the community. Death, too, has been recognized since the world began as the only just retribution for certain atrocious crimes. Foul murder is committed, and, by a certain natural instinct, men immediately demand that the murderer pay the penalty. Examples of this are to be seen in the necessity in olden times for the cities of refuge, in the later right of sanctuary, in the Italian vendetta and the modern lynching. Now, who will dare assert that man's natural impulse to wreak just vengeance is essentially evil? Nothing in Nature is essentially evil. The methods suggested by passion or an exasperating paralysis of justice may be unlawful, but the impulse that gave rise to the movement is natural and as such is good. The necessity of the right to inflict capital punishment, therefore, is founded on Nature itself, and the exercise thereof by the State, far from being a usurpation of God's exclusive prerogative, is entirely in accord with the designs of the Author of man and of society.
Brethren, though a right may exist, yet its exercise may be inexpedient. This, we are told, is the case
