Excerpt from Vacation Thoughts on Capital Punishments IN proposing to expunge from our statute-book the punish ment of death, I am not unaware of the opposition to be encountered. The same opposition has however met every attempt to mitigate the cruel severity of our penal code, and in every instance it has been overcome. There never yet was an error which could plead prescription, that had not its worship pers; or a proposed correction of it, which did not fill them With alarm. But the errors have been slowly and effectually exposed, and yet the world has gone on as usual, and men have lived to smile at the phantoms which formerly peopled the pathway of reform. Our penal code especially has been humanized, and capital punishments have all but disappeared from its enactments. This has been attained, however, but by slow and painful progress, against a dogged opposition in both houses of parliament, and, strange to say, amid the outcries and lamentations and minatory predictions of the Wise and good. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.