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![handle is hein.death/odethp0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
ON DEATH PUNISHMENT,
BY JAMES HAUGHTON.
[Read before the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,
August, 1861.]
I PRESUME that the subject of Death Punishment will be considered
a fitting one to bring under the notice of this association; I there-
fore beg leave to direct your attention to it for a brief period. It is
well known to most of the audience I have now the pleasure to
address, that this important question has long engaged the serious
consideration of many of the best and wisest men and the deepest
thinkers in every civilized country, both among men learned in the
principles of jurisprudence and among civilians ; who, in all such
countries, have felt that this extreme punishment had its origin in
the barbarism of early ages, and that as society advanced in its
various stages out of this barbarism into a higher condition of civil
ization, it should be superceded by a system more in accordance
with those principles of equity, benevolence, and christian feeling
which should govern society in relation to its criminal members.
Hence we find, that in the steady advance of society in these and
other lands the punishment of death became more and more abhor-
rent, so that it was erased from the statute book of some countries al-
together ; and in all countries professing the Christian name the pub-
lic voice not only sanctioned but demanded its abolition, except for
a few of the highest crimes of which man is guilty. In our own
country this punishment still rests on our statute book against some
six or seven crimes; but practically it is only carried into execution
on the person found guilty of murder. This amelioration of our
criminal code has in all cases-I believe without one single excep-
tion-been followed by good results. Punishments are intended to
guard society against the depredations of its criminal members, and
to deter others from pursuing a like course of life; and there is
abundant evidence to prove that those relaxations of our criminal
law which substituted, from time to time, milder punishments in
place of the death penalty, have in no degree tended to lessen the
security of life and property; but that greater security to both has
been the consequence of what experience has amply proved to be a
better system of jurisprudence. And yet, if we trace the history of
the various alterations in our law, from the severer to the milder](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.death/odethp0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)