IN this brief address, the object is to suggest--there being no time to present arguments at length. The subject has been chosen for the reason that it is one that should interest the legal profession, because that profession to a certain extent controls and shapes the legislation of our country and fixes definitely the scope and meaning of all laws.
Lawyers ought to be foremost in legislative and judicial reform, and of all men they should understand the philosophy of mind, the causes of human action, and the real science of government.
It has been said that the three pests of a community are: A priest without charity; a doctor without knowledge, and, a lawyer without a sense of justice.
All nations seem to have had supreme confidence in the deterrent power of threatened and inflicted pain. They have regarded punishment as the shortest road to reformation. Imprisonment, torture, death, constituted a trinity under whose protection society might feel secure.
In addition to these, nations have relied on confiscation and degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, and exposures to public ridicule and contempt. Connected with the court of justice was the chamber of torture. The ingenuity of man was exhausted in the construction of instruments that would surely reach the most sensitive nerve. All this was done in the interest of civilization--for the protection of virtue, and the well-being of states. Curiously it was found that the penalty of death made little difference. Thieves and highwaymen, heretics and blasphemers, went on their way. It was then thought necessary to add to this penalty of death, and consequently, the convicted were tortured in every conceivable way before execution. They were broken on the wheel--their joints dislocated on the rack. They were suspended by their legs and arms, while immense weights were placed upon their breasts. Their flesh was burned and torn with hot irons. They were roasted at slow fires. They were buried alive--given to wild beasts--molten lead was poured in their ears--their eye-lids were cut off and, the wretches placed with their faces toward the sun--others were securely bound, so that they could move neither hand nor foot, and over their stomachs were placed inverted bowls; under these bowls rats were confined; on top of the bowls were heaped coals of fire, so that the rats in their efforts to escape would gnaw into the bowels of the victims. They were staked out on the sands of the sea, to be drowned by the slowly rising tide--and every means by which human nature can be overcome slowly, painfully and terribly, was conceived and carried into execution. And yet the number of so-called criminals increased. Enough, the fact is that, no matter how severe the punishments were, the crimes increased.