CHAPTER XX. Blood-Revenge and Compensation--the Punishment of Death

BLOOD-REVENGE AND COMPENSATION--THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH

ACCORDING to early custom, a person who takes the life of another may himself be killed by the relatives of his victim, or some other member of his family, clan, or tribe may be killed in his stead. The custom of blood-revenge is found among a host of existing savages and barbarians, and has long survived among many peoples who have reached a higher degree of culture.

We meet with blood-revenge in the midst of Japanese civilisation, not as a mere fact, but as a legally permitted custom. The avenger had only to observe certain prescribed formalities and regulations: there was a regular official to whom he must announce his resolve, and he must fix the time within which he would carry it out. The way in which the enemy was killed was of no importance, except that, even in ancient times, the man who had recourse to assassination was reprehensible. Among the Hebrews blood-revenge continued to exist during the periods of the Judges and Kings, and even later; under the Old Kingdom, says Wellhausen, "the administration of justice was at best but a scanty supplement to the practice of self-help." It is a rule among {478} all the Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain person. Says the Koran:--"O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you for the slain." In ancient Eran blood-revenge survived the establishment of tribunals. There is evidence left of its prevalence in early times among the Aryan population of India, though no mention is made in the Sûtras of blood revenge as an existing custom. Among the Greeks it was only in the post-Homeric age that it was given up as a fundamental principle, the avenger being transformed into an accuser. In Gaul and Ireland, though justice was administered by Druids or Brehons, their judgments seem to have been merely awards founded upon a submission to arbitration, the injured person being at liberty to take the law into his own hands and redress himself. In the preface to the Senchus Mór we read that retaliation prevailed in Erin before Patrick, and that Patrick brought forgiveness with him. Among the clans of Scotland, as is well known, the blood-feud has existed up to quite modern times; in the Catholic period even the Church recognised its power by leaving the right hand of male children unchristened, that it might deal the more unhallowed and deadly a blow to the enemy. In England it was at least theoretically possible down to the middle of the tenth century for a manslayer to elect to bear the feud of the kindred of the slain, instead of paying the wer; and long after the Conquest we still meet with a law against the system of {479} private revenge. In Frisland, Lower Saxony, and parts of Switzerland, the blood-feud was practised as late as the sixteenth century. In Italy it prevailed extensively, even among the upper classes, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Corsica, Albania, and Montenegro, it exists even to this day.

Blood-revenge is regarded not only as a right, but as a duty. We are told that the holiest duty a West Australian native is called on to perform is that of avenging the death of his nearest relation. "Until he has fulfilled this task, he is constantly taunted by the old women; his wives, if he be married, would soon quit him; if he is unmarried, not a single young woman would speak to him; his mother would constantly cry, and lament she should ever have given birth to so degenerate a son; his father would treat him with contempt, and reproaches would constantly be sounded in his ear." Among the tribes of Western Victoria "a man would consider it his bounden duty to kill his most intimate friend for the purpose of avenging a brother's death, and would do so without the slightest hesitation." In his description of the Eskimo about Behring Strait, Mr. Nelson states that blood-revenge is considered a sacred duty among all the Eskimo, a duty incumbent on the nearest male relative; if the son of the murdered man is an infant, it rests with him to seek revenge as soon as he attains puberty. Among the Dacotahs "no one can escape this law of retaliation; public opinion would brand with disgrace whoever fled under such circumstances." The Brazilian aborigines {480} consider it a moral obligation, a matter of conscience, for a son, a brother, or a nephew, to avenge the death of his relative. Speaking of the Guiana Indians, Sir E. F. Im Thurn observes that, "in all primitive societies where there are no written laws and no supreme authority to enforce justice, such vengeance has been held as a sacred duty." Confucius affirmed, in the strongest and most unrestricted terms, the duty of avenging the murder of a father or a brother. In Japan "the man who was weak enough not to try to put to death the murderer of his father or his lord, was obliged to flee into hiding; from that day, he was despised by his own companions." The Lord said to Moses:--"The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer; when he meeteth him, he shall slay him." A similar rule, as we have seen, is laid down in the Koran. The idea that blood-revenge is a sacred duty incumbent on the kindred of the deceased was probably held by all so-called Aryan peoples. It still prevails in Albania, Montenegro, and Corsica. "Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as degrading. . . . Any one who shrinks from avenging himself . . . is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity."

{481} The duty of blood-revenge is, in the first place, regarded as a duty to the dead, not merely because he has been deprived of his highest good, his life, but because his spirit is believed to find no rest after death until the injury has been avenged. The disembodied soul carries into its new existence an eager longing for revenge, and, till the crime has been duly expiated, hovers about the earth, molesting the manslayer or trying to compel its own relatives to take vengeance on him.

According to Yakut beliefs, a person who is murdered becomes a yor, that is, his ghost never comes to rest. The Cheremises imagine that the spirits of persons who have died a violent death cause illness, especially fever and ague. The Saoras of India seem to have most fear of the spirits of those who have died violent deaths. The Burmese believe that persons who meet a violent death become "nats "and haunt the place where they were killed. The Hudson Bay Eskimo regard the island of Akpatok as tabooed since the murder of part of the crew of a wrecked vessel, who camped on that island; "not a soul visits that locality lest the ghosts of the victims should appear and supplicate relief from the natives, who have not the proper offerings to make to appease them." The Omahas believe that the spirits of those who have been killed reappear after death, their errand being "to solicit vengeance on the perpetrators of the deed." According to Genesis, the voice of {482} blood shed cried for vengeance until the murderer was punished. A similar notion prevailed among the Bedouins, hence they thought they might escape the taking of revenge by covering up the blood with earth. One of the most popular ghost stories in folk-tales is that which treats of the ghost of a murdered person flitting about the haunts of the living with no gratification but to terrify them. According to Rohde, this belief was in full force at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ. Aeschylus attributes an Erinys to the heinous crime of a man's neglecting his duty as avenger of blood--in other words, the soul of the slain turned its anger against the neglectful relative. Traces of the same belief still survive in various parts of Europe. In Wärend, in Sweden, the people maintain that the unsatisfied ghost of a murdered man visits his relatives at night, and disturbs their rest; and it was an ancient custom among them that, if the murderer was not known, the nearest relation of the dead, before the knell began, went forward to the corpse and asked the dead himself to avenge his murder.

From one point of view, blood-revenge is thus a form of human sacrifice. Sometimes it even formally bears a strong resemblance to certain other human sacrifices which are offered to the dead. Among some Queensland tribes, when the assassin has been caught red-handed, the slayer and slain are buried together in the same grave; and among the ancient Teutons the avenger by preference slew the culprit at the feet of the murdered man, or at his tomb. Blood-revenge also resembles other kinds of human sacrifice so far that it serves as a safeguard for the sacrificer--in this case the avenger, who would otherwise expose himself to the persecutions of the revengeful spirit of the dead.

But the practice of blood-revenge is not exclusively {483} based on a desire to avenge the injury done to a fellow-creature and to gratify the angry passion of his soul. The act which caused his death is at the same time an injury inflicted upon the survivors. Hence, in many cases, a murder committed within the family or kin is left unavenged. Among the Iroquois, says Loskiel, any one who has murdered his own relative escapes without much difficulty, since the family, who alone have a right to take revenge, do not choose to weaken their influence by depriving themselves of another member besides the one whom they have already lost. Again, when the murderer belongs to an extraneous family, the injury inflicted on the relatives of the murdered man suggests not only revenge, but reparation.

The taking of life for life may itself, in a way, serve as compensation. It seems that, in some cases, the blood of the slain homicide is supposed to restore, as it were, to the family of his victim the loss of life which he has caused them. Such an idea probably underlies a custom which Burckhardt heard existed among the Hallenga, who draw their origin from Abyssinia. When the slayer has been seized by the relatives of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is brought into their midst. While his throat is then slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl and handed round amongst the guests, "every one of whom is bound to drink of it at the moment the victim breathes his last." Among various Arabic-speaking tribes in Morocco I have met with a practice which also, possibly, involves a vague idea of restoration. On the perpetration of his deed the avenger {484} licks off the blood from the blade of the dagger with which he killed his victim; and in one instance related to me, he bit off a piece of flesh from the dead body and sucked its blood. Mr. Trumbull even goes so far as to believe that, among the Hebrews, the primal idea of the goel's mission was not to wreak vengeance, but "to restore life for life, or to secure the adjusted equivalent of a lost life." But it is difficult to suppose that the exacting of blood-revenge ever could have been looked upon as an equivalent in the full sense of the term. If the loss of life is to be compensated some other practice must take its place.

Sometimes the manslayer, instead of being killed, is adopted as a member of the family of his victim. Among the Kabyles of Algeria, for instance, a person who has killed another unintentionally, goes to the parents of the dead and says to them: "If you want to kill me, kill me, here is my winding-sheet. If not, pardon me, and I shall henceforth be one of your children." And from this day the manslayer is considered to belong to the kharouba, or gens, of the deceased. Among the Jbâla of Northern Morocco, again, a homicide sometimes induces the avenger to abstain from his persecutions by giving him his sister or daughter in marriage; and a similar custom has been noticed among the Beni Amer and Bogos. In other cases slaves are given to the relatives of the slain in order to atone for the guilt; but most commonly the compensation consists of cattle, money, or other property.

By giving presents to the relatives of his victim, the offender not only repairs the loss which he has inflicted {485} upon them, but also appeases their wounded feelings. The pleasure of gain tends to suppress their passion, and the loss and humiliation which the adversary suffers by the gift exercise a healing influence on their resentment. Sometimes the present is chiefly intended to serve as an apology. Among the Iroquois, according to Mr. Morgan, the white wampum which the murderer sent to the family of his victim and which, if accepted, for ever wiped out the memory of his deed, "was not in the nature of a compensation for the life of the deceased, but of a regretful confession of the crime, with a petition for forgiveness." Compensation, moreover, has the advantage of saving the injured party the dangers involved in a blood-feud, the uncertainty of the issue, and the serious consequences which may result from the accomplished act of revenge. Whilst the carrying out of the principle of "life for life" often leads to protracted hostilities between the parties, compensation has a tendency to bring about a durable peace. For this reason it is to the interest of society at large to encourage the latter practice; and this encouragement naturally adds to its attractions.

But in spite of its merits, the practice of composition has, in comparison with blood-revenge, various disadvantages. It is not equally calculated to satisfy a revengeful mind. It has to contend with the conservatism of ancient custom. It may be taken as a token of cowardice or weakness, whereas the blood-feud gives to its perpetrator an opportunity to display his courage and skill. It may be considered offensive to the dead kinsman. Finally, if it is to flourish, it presupposes a certain amount of wealth. {486} The importance of these difficulties depends on the circumstances in each special case. Vindictiveness, conservatism, the desire for fighting, and the estimation in which courage and martial ability are held, are naturally subject to variations, and so are people's wealth and their willingness to compensate. The ideas held concerning the spirits of the departed are likewise variable. The readiness with which blood-money was accepted among the Greeks of the Homeric age has been explained by their belief in the disembodied soul's dreamlike existence in Hades, without strong passions and without the power to molest the living; whilst the later custom of demanding life for life has been interpreted as the result of a change of ideas which attributed much greater activity to the dead. In other cases the deceased is supposed to be appeased by a mere ceremony, or by a vicarious sacrifice. The Ossetes believe that he often appears in a dream to some of his descendants, "tantôt pour exiger de lui la vengeance, tantôt pour lui permettre, au contraire, de la remplacer par un simple office des morts . . . . Revêtu d'habits de deuil, les cheveux épars, l'assassin Ossète vient sur la tombe de celui qu'il a tué, pour accomplir une cérémonie dont le but avéré est de se consacrer lui-même à sa victime. Cette cérémonie est connue sous le nom de kifaeldicïn: le meurtrier se livre spontanément au défunt, qui, en la personne de son descendant, lui pardonne son offense." In Eastern Central Africa, says Mr. Macdonald, "if one man slay another, the friends of the deceased are justified in killing the murderer on the spot. But if they catch him alive they put him in a slave-stick, till compensation be made by a heavy fine of from four to twenty slaves. When the fine is paid the life of the murderer is not demanded, but several of the slaves obtained in compensation are killed, to accompany the deceased." In other instances the dead is perhaps supposed to be appeased by the mere compensation {487} paid to his descendants, or his feelings are simply disregarded when they collide with the interests of the living. Generally speaking, the question whether compensation is to be accepted or not, must be settled by a balancing of advantages and drawbacks.

We may expect, then, to find the customs regarding blood-revenge and compensation to vary exceedingly among different peoples. Among many the rule of revenge is strictly followed, and compensation never, or rarely, accepted, at least for intentional homicide. This group includes not only tribes who are in a state of savagery, but peoples like the Beni Amer, Marea, Kabyles of Jurjura, and Jbâla of Morocco. Burckhardt says of the Bedouins:--"The stronger and the more independent a tribe is, the more remote from cultivated provinces, and the wealthier its individuals, the less frequently are the rights of the Thar commuted into a fine. Great sheiks, all over the Desert, regard it as a shameful transaction to compromise in any degree for the blood of their relations." Among the mountains of Daghestan and in parts of Albania it is likewise considered disgraceful to accept compensation for the murder of a relative.

In some instances the acceptance of compensation does not necessarily mean that the family of the slain altogether renounce their right of revenge. Among the Ahts, "though it is usual to accept large presents as expiation for murder, yet, practically, this expiation is not complete, and blood alone effectually atones for blood. An accepted present never quite cancels the obligation to punish in the breast of the offended person or tribe." Among the Somals, "after the equivalent is paid, the {488} murderer or one of his clan, contrary to the spirit of El Islam, is generally killed by the kindred or tribe of the slain." Among the Berbers (Shlu[h.]) of the province of Sûs, in Southern Morocco, a person who commits homicide immediately flees to another tribe, and places himself under its protection. His relatives then pay ddit, or blood-money, to the family of the victim, but this only prevents the offended party from taking revenge on any of them, and does not entitle the murderer to return; if he appears outside the tribe to whom he has fled for refuge, he is at any time liable to be killed. Among the Ossetes, again, it was formerly "a prevalent custom for a murderer to pay a fixed price for a certain time to the family of the murdered man, say for a year, during which time the blood-revenge remained dormant."

In many instances, on the other hand, custom allows the acceptance of compensation as a perfectly justifiable alternative for blood-revenge, or even regards it as the proper method of settling the case. Among the Indians of Western Washington and North-Western Oregon the principle of life for life, though fully recognised, is sometimes abrogated in favour of material damages. Among the Thlinkets "the murder of a relative can be atoned for by a certain number of blankets." Among the Californian Karok the murder of a man's nearest relative may be compounded for by the payment of money. The Kutchin demand blood-money for a slain kinsman, but avenge his death should such be denied. Among the Kandhs the custom of blood-revenge was modified by the principle of money compensation, the acceptance of such compensation being in no case considered disgraceful. In the Malay Archipelago, whilst the more ferocious tribes {489} insist, in many situations, upon a literal compliance with the law of retaliation, other tribes constantly accept a pecuniary compensation. Among the majority of the Bedawee tribes of Egypt compensation is generally taken in commutation for vengeance; and the same is the case among the Aenezes, though it would reflect shame on the friends of the slain person if they were to make the first overture. Among the Wadshagga, again, the acceptance of blood-money is obligatory. The Vendîdâd forbids the followers of Zoroastrianism to refuse the compensation offered for a deed of bloodshed. Among the Irish the public opinion of the village held that the quarrels between its members should be compromised in a certain manner. However, if the guilty party did not pay the amount awarded, the community did not compel him to do so, and the injured party was then at liberty to avenge his own wrongs by reprisals or levying of private war. Among the Teutons the kindred of the slain might, in early times, choose between taking revenge or accepting compensation, just as they liked; but later on they were expected by public opinion, and finally required by public authority, not to pursue the feud if the proper composition was forthcoming, except in a few extreme cases.

Thus the exaction of life for life, from being a duty incumbent on the family of the dead, becomes a mere right of which they may or may not avail themselves, as they please, and is at last publicly disapproved of or actually prohibited. Among the circumstances by which this process has been brought about there is still one which calls for special attention, namely, the pressure of some intervening authority, the elders of the tribe, or {490} the chief, inducing the avenger to lay down his weapon and to accept money for blood. I do not say that the practice of compensation has originated in such an intervention; we meet it among peoples who know nothing of courts, judges, or regular arbitrators. But when we hear of chiefs making efforts to check the blood-feud by persuading the injured party to accept remuneration in money or property, it is impossible to doubt that some connection exists between the system of compensation and the judicial power of the chief. Among the Indians of Brazil, when blood is shed, either designedly or accidentally, by one of the same tribe, the chief not seldom insists upon the acceptance of compensation by the family of the deceased. Of the people of Nias, amongst whom the offender may suffer death at the hands of the avenger, we read that even grave cases, when brought before the chief, are often punished by fines only. Among the Dooraunees, in Western Afghanistan, "if the offended party complains to the Sirdar, or if he hears of a murder committed, he first endeavours to bring about a compromise, by offering the Khoon Behau, or of price of blood." The Teutonic nations, as Kemble observes, in the course of time made the State the arbitrator between the parties "by establishing a tariff at which injuries should be rated, and committing to the State the duty of compelling the injured person to receive, and the wrong-doer to pay, the settled amount. It thus engaged to act as a mediator between the conflicting interests, with a view to the maintenance of the general peace."

We have previously discussed the important measure of substituting punishment for revenge by transferring the judicial and executive power of the avenger to a special authority within the body politic, commissioned with {491} the administration of justice. The system of compensation was only one or the methods adopted by such an authority for the settling of disputes; and, on the whole, it was a sign of weakness. Speaking of the Rejangs of Sumatra, Marsden observes that the practice of expiating murder by the payment of a certain sum of money "had doubtless its source in the imbecility of government, which being unable to enforce the law of retaliation, the most obvious rule of punishment, had recourse to a milder scheme of retribution, as being preferable to absolute indemnity." When the central power of jurisdiction is firmly established, the rule of life for life regains its sway. Thus, in the mature legislation of semi-civilised and civilised peoples, up to quite recent times, murder has almost invariably been treated as a capital offence--unless, indeed, committed by some person belonging to a specially privileged class, such as the Peruvian Incas, the Brâhmanas of India, or, in England, all who had the benefit of Clergy, that is, every man who knew how to read, with the exception of those who were married to widows. But among many of the lower races, also, manslayers are subject to capital punishment, in the proper sense of the term--to death inflicted, not by an individual avenger, but by the community at large or by some special authority.

It is not only by the slaying of a fellow-creature that a person may forfeit his right to live. Among various peoples custom allows, or sometimes even compels, the offended party to kill the offender in cases which involve {492} no blood-guiltiness, especially adultery; and we hear of capital punishment being inflicted not only for homicide, but for treason, incest, adultery, witchcraft, sacrilege, theft, and other offences. We have seen that among semi-civilised and civilised nations, particularly, the punishment of death has been applied to a great variety of offences, many of which appear to us almost venial. And we have discussed both the origin of the idea that justice requires life for life, and the circumstances that have led to the infliction of punishments the severity of which, apparently at least, bears no proportion to the magnitude of the crime.

But whilst, among peoples of culture, capital punishment has been inflicted far beyond the limits of the lex talionis, we meet, on the other hand, among such peoples with opinions to the effect that it should not be applied even in the most atrocious cases. The old philosopher Lao-tsze, the founder of Taouism, condemned it both as useless and as irreverent. The people, he argued, do not fear death; to what purpose, then, is it to try to frighten them with death? There is only one who presides over the infliction of it. "He who would inflict death in the room of him who presides over it may be described as hewing wood instead of a great carpenter. Seldom is it that he who undertakes the hewing, instead of the great carpenter, does not cut his own hands." Nor does Confucius seem to have been in favour of capital punishment. When Chî {493} K'ang asked his opinion as to the killing of "the unprincipled for the good of the principled," Confucius replied:--"Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good." The early Christians generally condemned the punishment of death, as well as all other forms of shedding human blood; but when the Church obtained an ascendency, the condemnation of it was modified into the doctrine that no priest or bishop must take any part in a capital charge. Later on, from the twelfth century at least, the priest might assist at judicial proceedings resulting in a sentence of death, if only he withdrew for the moment, when the sentence was passed. And whilst ostentatiously sticking to the principle, "Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem," the Church had frequent recourse to the convenient method of punishing heretics by relegating the execution of the sentence to the civil power, with a prayer that the culprit should be punished "as mildly as possible and without the effusion of blood," that is, by the death of fire. In modern times the views of the early Christians regarding capital punishment have been revived by the Quakers; but the powerful movement in favour of its abolition chiefly derives its origin from the writings of Beccaria and the French Encyclopedists.

The great motive force of this movement has been sympathy with human suffering and horror of the destruction of human life--feelings which have been able to operate the more freely, the less they have been checked either by the belief in the social expediency of {494} capital punishment, or by the notion of a vindictive god who can be conciliated only by the death of the offender. It has been argued that the punishment of death is no more effective as a deterrent from crime than are certain other punishments. According to Beccaria, it is not the intensity of a pain which produces the greatest effect on the mind of man, but its continuance; hence the execution of a culprit, occupying a short time only, must be a less deterring example than perpetual slavery, which ought to be the penalty for the greatest crimes. Moreover, the circumstances which unavoidably attend the practical application of the punishment of death are such as excite the sympathy of the public in favour of the perpetrator of the crime and thereby seriously impair the efficacy of the punishment as an example. An execution is regarded as less degrading than many other forms of punishment; when a man dies on the scaffold there is a counterpoise to the disgrace in the admiration excited by his firmness, whereas there is no such counterpoise when a man goes off in the prison van to be immured in a cell. Statistical data prove, it is said, that, where capital punishment has been abolished either for certain crimes or generally, crime has not become more frequent after the abolition, whilst the re-enactment of capital punishment, or greater strictness in its execution, has nowhere diminished the number of offences punishable with death. And the punishment of death is no more required by the dictates of abstract justice than it is requisite for the safety of the community. It is quite an arbitrary assumption, based on the rude theory of talion, that death must be inflicted on him who has caused death; such an assumption can be refuted simply by showing that there are many degrees of homicide. Nay, far from being postulates of the highest justice, laws which {495} prescribe capital punishment may lead to the highest injustice. As Bentham observes, "the punishment of death is not remissible"; error is possible in all judgments, but whilst in every other case of judicial error compensation can be made, death alone admits of no compensation. And not only may the innocent have to suffer an irreparable punishment, but the criminal easily escapes his punishment altogether. Experience shows that the punishment of death has the disadvantage of diminishing the repressive power of the legal menace, because witnesses, judges, and jurymen exert themselves to the utmost in order to avoid arriving at a verdict of guilty in many cases where an execution would be the consequence of such a verdict. Finally, the punishment of death almost entirely misses one of the most essential aims of every legitimate punishment, the reformation of the criminal. Nay, by putting him to a speedy death we actually prevent him from morally reforming himself, and from manifesting the fruits of sincere repentance; and we perhaps deprive him of the opportunity of making good his claim to mercy at the hands of another and a higher Tribunal, on which we are arrogantly encroaching in a matter of which we are wholly unfit to judge.

Under the influence of these and similar arguments, but chiefly owing to an increasing reluctance to take human life, the legislation of Europe has, from the end of the eighteenth century, undergone a radical change with reference to the punishment of death. In several European and American States it has been formally abolished, or is nowadays never inflicted, whilst in the rest it is practically restricted to cases of wilful murder. But it still has as strenuous advocates as ever, and receives much support from popular feelings. It is said that the abolition of capital punishment would remove one of the {496} best safeguards of society; that it definitely prevents the criminal from doing further mischief; that it is a much more effective means of deterring from crime than any other penalty; that its abolition would have the disadvantage of crimes widely differing in their nature being placed on the same footing; that a person criminally disposed, if he knew that he would only be punished with imprisonment for life, would, instead of merely perpetrating robbery, commit murder at the same time, being aware that no higher penalty on that account would be inflicted; and so forth. As usually, religion also is called in to give strength to the argument. Several writers maintain that the statements in the Bible which command capital punishment have an obligatory power on all Christian legislators; we even meet with the assertion that the object of this punishment is not the protection of civil society, but to carry out the justice of God, in whose name "the judge should sentence and the executioner strike." But I venture to believe that the chief motive for retaining the punishment of death in modern legislation is the strong hold which the principle of talion has on the minds of legislators, as well as on the mind of the public. This supposition derives much support from the fact that capital punishment is popular only in the case of murder. "Blood, it is said, will have blood, and the imagination is flattered with the notion of the similarity of the suffering, produced by the punishment, with that inflicted by the criminal."