“In Kent, in the year 1838, the sentences of _nine_ convicts for murder were commuted, the commitments for that crime in the same year being seventeen. In the following year the commitments for murder were only two, showing a decrease of fifteen. In this last case, however, we cannot in fairness press the argument in favour of the _salutary_ effect of discontinuing capital punishments to the extent that the arithmetical table would show. That year, if we recollect right, was the year of the extraordinary outbreak headed by the madman Courtenay or Thom. That event swelled the commitments for murder to an unprecedented height. The fall in the commitments from seventeen, in that year, to two in the year following, is not a fall under _equal_ circumstances, and it would be illogical to make it an argument for more than this: that society received _no detriment_ because the deluded followers of the frantic Courtenay _were sent to a penal settlement, instead of being strangled on the scaffold_. “Looking to the table of EXECUTIONS, we find that in the _three_ years ending the 31st of December, 1836, the number _executed_ was 85, while during the _three_ years ending the 31st of December, 1839, the number was only twenty-five. The _commitments_ in the former period were 3,104, in the latter 2,989, showing a _decrease_, though a small one, in the number of _commitments_, while there is exhibited an _increase_ in the number of _convictions_; namely, from 1,536 to 1,788, showing the _centesimal_ proportion of convictions to commitments in the two periods, to be represented by the figures 49·48 and 59·48 respectively. “These returns, as far as they go, are highly satisfactory as the testimony of experience to the _safe_ policy of ABOLISHING CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS ALTOGETHER, and thus getting rid of the barbarous and brutalizing exhibitions of cold-blooded cruelty and deliberate slaughter which they present to the people.” _Morning Herald_, 1840. From this statement of facts, and indeed from all that has taken place regarding crimes where capital punishment has been remitted, there can be little doubt that it is inexpedient; there can be none that it is unnecessary. But if any still persist that the Divine sanction is given by “He who sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” then the tyrant who engages in a war of aggression, the general who sanctions one effective shot being fired, should alike bear the penalty with the midnight assassin. Nay, does not the man who accidentally “sheds the blood” of him who is “made in the likeness of God,” literally come within the pale of the command, if _command_ it be?