It is only on similar grounds that the *death-penalty for murder* can be justified. The life of the very worst of men should be sacrificed only for the preservation of life; for if it be unsafe to leave them at liberty, they may be kept under restraint and duress, without being wholly cut off from the means of enjoyment and improvement. The primeval custom of the earlier nations required the nearest kinsman of the murdered man to kill the murderer with his own hand, and in so doing to shed his blood, which was believed to have a mysterious efficacy in expiating the crime. This form of revenge was greatly checked and restricted by the institutions of Moses; it fell into disuse among the Jews, with their growth in civilization; and was certainly included in the entire repeal of the law of retaliation by Jesus Christ.(5) But if with the dangerous classes of men the dread of capital punishment is a dissuasive from crimes of violence, so that the number of murders is less, and the lives of peaceable citizens are safer, than were murder liable to some milder penalty, then it is the undoubted right of the public to confiscate the murderer’s right to life, and thus to sacrifice the smaller number of comparatively worthless lives for the security of the larger number of lives that may be valuable to the community. Or again if, by the profligate use of the pardoning power, the murderer sentenced to perpetual imprisonment will probably be let loose upon society unreformed, and with passions which may lead to the repetition of his crime, it is immeasurably more fitting that he be killed, than that he be preserved to do farther mischief. Yet again, if there be in the death-penalty for murder an educational force,—if by means of it each new generation is trained in the greater reverence for human life, and the greater detestation and horror of the crime by which it is destroyed,—then is capital punishment to be retained as a means of preserving an incalculably greater number of lives than it sacrifices. On these grounds, though in opposition to early and strong conviction, we are constrained to express the belief that, in our time and country, the capital punishment of the murderer is needed for the security of the public, and is justified as a life-saving measure.