Essays on the punishment of death / [Charles Spear].

  • Charles Spear
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on the punishment of death / [Charles Spear]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    We do not mean to say that those who advocate Capital Punishment are atheistical in their views; but we do mean, that, to be consistent, they must admit suicide to be justifiable; for, generally, they contend strictly for human governments, and that, becoming members of a government, we give up a portion of our rights. £ When we surrendered to society the smallest possible portion of our liberty, to enable us the better to retain the aggregate of rights which we did not sur¬ render, did we concede our title to that life with which our Creator has endowed us? Is it to be conceived that we have consented to hold the tenure of our earthly existence at the discretion or the caprice of a majority, whose erratic legislation no man can calculate before¬ hand ? While our object was to preserve, as little im™ ¥e should think, from the following statistics of suicide in France, that the people were not very slow to carry the reasoning of M. Urtis into practice:— ‘Increase of Suicides in France.—It appears, from official docu¬ ments contained in recent Paris papers, that the number of suicides in France increases each year. In the year 1839, they amounted to one thousand seven hundred and forty-seven, being one hundred and sev¬ enty-one more than in 1838, three hundred and four more than in 1837, and four hundred and seven more than in 1836. The department of the Seine figures for four hundred and eighty-six, nearly one fifth of the entire. Six hundred and eighty-eight females are returned among the suicides. Each period of life, from infancy to old age, has paid its tribute to this malady. There are two children of from eight to nine years of age, two of eleven, one of twelve, two of thirteen, three of fourteen, nine of fifteen, one hundred and forty-seven of sixteen to twenty-one, three hundred and thirty-five of sixty, one hundred and eighty-nine of seventy, and forty-one of eighty. The means most fre¬ quently used to destroy life are submersion and strangulation. Nine hundred and fifty-eight individuals drowned themselves, eight hundred and sixteen hung themselves, one hundred and eighty-nine suffocated themselves with the fumes of charcoal, which appears to be the principal mode resorted to by the Parisians.’
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