The advocate of punishment is right in the belief that such a scene will produce a profound impression upon all who see or hear or know. The human being does not live who can witness such a tragedy or even know its details and not receive some impression that the rest of life cannot efface. The impression must be to harden and brutalize the heart and conscience, to destroy the finer sensibilities, to cheapen human life, to breed cruelty and malice that will bear fruit in endless ways and unknown forms. No parent who loved his child and who had any of the human sentiments that should distinguish man from the brute creation, would ever dare to trust that child to witness a scene like this. Every intelligent loving mother carrying an unborn babe would close her eyes and stop her ears and retire to the darkest corner she could find lest the unborn babe marked by the baleful scene should one day stand upon the same trembling trap with a rope about his neck. The true morality of a community does not depend alone upon the number of men who slay their fellows. These at most are very few. The true morality depends upon every deed of kindness or malice, of love or hatred, of charity or cruelty, and the sum of these determine the real character and worth of a community. Any evil consequences that could flow from a casual killing of a human being by an irresponsible man would be like a drop of water in the sea compared with a public execution by the state. It would probably not be possible to find a considerable number of men to-day who would believe that a public hanging could have any but bad results. This must be true because the knowledge of its details tends to harden, embitter and render cruel the hearts of men. Only in a less degree does the publication of all the details affect the characters and lives of men, but unless they are at least published to the world, then the example is of no effect. The state which would take life without any hope or expectation that the community would in any way be bettered could not rank even among savage tribes. Such cruelty could only be classed as total depravity. But the effect of other punishment is no whit different save in degree from that of hanging. Cultivated, sensitive people have long since deplored the tendency of newspapers to give full and vivid accounts of crimes and their punishment, and the better and humaner class of citizens shun those journals which most magnify these details. All of this has a tendency to familiarize man with violence and force, to weaken human sensibilities, to accustom man to cruelty, to blood, to scenes of suffering and pain. What right-thinking parent would place this literature before his child and familiarize his mind with violence practiced either by the individual or the state? And yet if punishment is a deterrent, the widest publicity should be given to the story of every crime and the punishment inflicted by the state.