1. The inviolability of human life is not an absolute thing, at least not for those who admit the right of legitimate self-defense. We shall examine this presently. 2. Judiciary mistakes are very rare, and will become more and more so, as justice becomes more respectful towards the rights of the accused, and through greater publicity, by the intervention of a jury, etc. 3. Experience is not so much of a test as it is said to be, and is often made on too small a scale. The attempts at abolition have not been very numerous. In Tuscany murders have always been very rare on account of the gentleness of manners. In Switzerland, on the contrary, crime is on the increase, and certain cantons have asked for a return to the death penalty. Besides, it is a very difficult experiment to make. How could a society as complicated as ours dare to trust its security to so hazardous an experiment? 4. The refinement of manners may gradually bring about, thanks to the institution of the jury, the diminution, perhaps some day the suppression, of the penalty of death, without its being necessary for the State to lay aside this powerful means of defense and intimidation. The penalty of death, in fact, can be considered legitimate only in the light of the right of self-defense. If society needs this penalty to protect the life of its members, it may be said that it is authorized to use it, on the same ground as each individual to whom we have conceded the right to repel force by force, and to deprive of his own life one who should threaten to take _his_ life. But, it will be objected, the right of self-defense, when ending in homicide, is justifiable only at the moment of the attack, and to ward off a sudden aggression itself threatening murder; but the deed once committed and the criminal in the hands of the law, there is no reason to fear a new aggression from him, and his chances of escape from justice through evasion are too few to justify the violation of a duty so absolute as the respect for human life. It may be answered that society, by the death penalty, not only defends itself against the criminal himself, but against all those who might be inclined to imitate him. The penalty of death is above all a precautionary means of defense, that is to say, a means of intimidation. The future criminal is warned beforehand of the risks he runs; he accepts voluntarily the punishment he will incur. If society should catch him in the act--_flagrante delicto_--it would certainly, in order to prevent the crime, since it is the representative of all individuals, have the same rights as the individual of defending himself. But the difficulty of seizing upon the criminal at the moment of commission, can it be considered a circumstance in favor of the criminal, and does society lose its right, because, through the skill and precautions of assassins, it can but very rarely, and scarcely ever, catch them in the act?