Punitory laws never have, and never will cure the evils to which society is liable. “Life is sweet,” some one has said, and yet even the death penalty does not prevent murder. If the menace of death is not a deterrent, what can be said for lesser penalties like fines and imprisonment. That capital punishment is not a preventive of crime was (upon investigation) the conviction of Bentham, Beccaria, George Clinton, Lord Brougham, Judge J. W. Edmunds, William H. Seward, Wendell Phillips, Douglas Jerrold, Cassius M. Clay, Dr. Lushington, Edward Livingston, Theodore Parker, Vice-President Dallas, DeWitt Clinton, Victor Hugo, Mittermaier, John Howard, Sir Samuel Romilly, Earl Russell, Lord Houghton, Lord Osborne, John Bright, Lord Hobart, Lord Kelly, Frederick Robertson, Prof. Fawcett, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Canning, Thomas Jefferson, and hundreds of other able, thoughtful and conscientious men. Their position was not only grounded on observation, but fortified by the experience of Tuscany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Bavaria, Belgium, San Marino, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island. “There is no passion in the mind of man,” said Lord Bacon, “so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief fleeth to it; fear occupieth it.” And if “the fear of the great future,” writes Bovee, “when painted with the horrors such as only a Milton or a Pollok could depict, produces no more marked effect on human action; it is hardly reasonable to suppose that the menace of death by human law, will be very effective in the repression of crime.”