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.

    80/258 page 76
    ESSAY VII. EFFECT OF ABOLISHMENT. Rome—Russia—Bombay—Belgium—Tuscany—Objection of Chee- ver—Singular confession of Buonaparte. ‘ Away with the executioner and the execution, and the very name of its engine! not merely from the limbs, but from the very thoughts, the eyes, the ears, of Roman citizens!—for not alone the occurrence and the endurance of all these things, but also the liability, the appre¬ hension, even the mere mention of them, are unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man! ’ Cicero. In various parts of our labor, we have endeavored to show that the punishment of death tended strongly to weaken the doctrine of the sacredness of human life, and to destroy the morals of society. We intend now to take still higher ground, and show that community is actually more prosperous and happy where the law has been abolished. A few examples from history must suffice. Rome.—We are told that, for two centuries and a half, through¬ out the better age of the Roman republic, that the infliction of the punishment of death was expressly forbidden by the famous Por- cian law, passed in the four hundred and fifty-fourth year of Rome, by the tribune Porcius Lecca.* It is true there were exceptions. The exile of Cicero turned upon the violation of this law, in his infliction of this punishment upon the Catilinarian conspirators. And in the case of Manlius, whose courage had delivered Rome, but who was precipitated from the Tarpeian rock when his ambi- * Livy, x. 9. Cicero pro Rabirio, iii. 4: In Verrem, v. 63; Sallust, Cat. 51. See Adam’s Roman Antiquities,
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