I am far from saying that no case can now be made out for capital punishment; what I am contending is that it is the outstanding example of the application of the retributory principle; and yet in practice it is usually defended on the ground that the culprit is so bad that he ought to be killed--another ground altogether. "What could you do with a man who would do that?" is the question addressed to those who assert that the worst use to which you can put a man is to kill him. Well, is he so bad as all that? I have seen a number of very tough specimens under sentence of death, and have watched the effect on warders of intimate association with them. They have had to be constantly in the company of the condemned, for although he has to be killed he must be given no opportunity to kill himself; and in almost every case the men had only one opinion after getting closely in touch with the criminal, and that opinion was that, in spite of all the evil in him, he was not such a bad creature after all. In some cases the opinion of his character was much more favourable; but in all cases the opinions were the result of seeing the man when he was under the sentence of the law. That is as true an observation as that the sentence was the result of conduct when he was running wild. It was the same man who had done the wicked act who impressed men favourably, though their official bias was against him; and he could not have done so if the qualities had not been in him. There may be men among us who are so utterly bad that all the State can do with them is to kill them in order to secure the safety of others, but I have not seen them. There are men so riddled with disease that no cure for them can be held out, and the disease may be of such a character that it is likely to infect or affect injuriously those who attend them, but doctors are not permitted to kill them. In these cases as strong an argument could be adduced in favour of capital punishment as in the case of criminals; and there are those who advocate the lethal chamber for certain classes of the diseased and "unfit." In every case the advocates of the proposal should be the first to go there, for their very advocacy shows that they are themselves unfit to take a sufficiently wide view of the good of the State.