"Capital punishment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was Hagenbach's principal and he alone was responsible for his lieutenant's acts. The intrinsic incompetence of the court was hotly urged by Jean Irma of Basel, Hagenbach's self-appointed advocate, but his defence was rejected. Public opinion insisted upon extreme measures, and the sentence of capital punishment ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... bar, Nicholas Grabguy, guilty of the heinous offence of raising his hand to a white man, whom he severely maimed with a sharp-edged tool; and the jury in their wisdom, recognising the fact of their verdict involving capital punishment, have, in the exercise of that enlightened spirit which is inseparable from our age, recommended him to the mercy of this court, and, in the discretion of that power in me invested, I shall now pronounce sentence. Prepare, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... he is tempted; for with your true gamester the excitement seems to be in proportion to the value of the stake. Yet I hold as little with the humanity-mongers, who deny the necessity and lawfulness of inflicting capital punishment in any case, as with the shallow moralists, who exclaim against vindictive justice, when punishment would cease to be just, if it were ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... that its abolition would be equivalent to 'shutting the gates of mercy on mankind.' His language about the blundering tyranny of the English rule in Ireland would satisfy Mr. Froude, though he would hardly have loved a Home Ruler. He denounces the frequency of capital punishment and the harshness of imprisonment for debt, and he invokes a compassionate treatment of the outcasts of our streets as warmly as the more sentimental Goldsmith. His conservatism may be at times obtuse, but it is never of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... had received the day before from a man who called himself a merchant from Paris, but who was a police spy sent to entrap them. After giving up the bond of the Cardinal, the Emperor graciously remitted the capital punishment, upon condition that they should be ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... authorized to be appointed in Oregon with power to execute all process issuing from the courts of that Province, and to "sit and hold courts of record for the trial of criminal offenses and misdemeanors" not made the subject of capital punishment, and also of civil cases where the cause of action shall not "exceed in value the amount or sum ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... favour of capital punishment, and would do away with all judges and trials by jury, leaving the Press to fight out the criminal ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... were also sentenced to death, but their sentence was to be carried out in France. Duval was strangled at Quebec, and his head was placed on a pike which was set up in the most conspicuous part of the fort. This was the second example of capital punishment in New France. The first case recorded was at Charlesbourg Royal, or Cap-Rouge, near Quebec, in the winter of 1542-3, when Michel Gaillon, one of Roberval's companions, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... calculated to promote the views of those who advocate the abolition of capital punishment, it is the fact of a woman meeting her death at the hands of the common hangman. There is something abhorrent, especially to the mind of the stronger sex, in the idea of a female suffering the extreme penalty of the law. On the other hand, the crime for which ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... made the following edict, preserved in the Lombard law: "Whatever freeman, summoned to the defence of his country by his Count, or his officers, shall neglect to go, and the enemy enter the country to lay it waste, or otherwise damage our liege subjects, he shall incur a capital punishment." As the crimes of cowardice, treachery, and desertion were so odious and ignominious among the Germans, we find by the Salic law, that penalties were annexed to the unjust imputation ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... observed to enable us to take our unseen but doubtless vigilant enemy unawares. This was just then regarded as of especial importance, for at the time of which I am now writing the traffic in slaves was regarded as piracy, and rendered its perpetrators liable to capital punishment, in consequence of which almost every slaver went heavily armed, and her crew, knowing that the halter was already about their necks, resisted capture by every means which their ingenuity could devise, whenever they had ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of his courtiers, who shared the pleasures of the chase with him on the condition that they never ventured to let fly their weapons before he had discharged his. If they disregarded this rule they were liable to capital punishment, and might esteem themselves fortunate if they ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... sacrifices made in his behalf: gratitude is in his heart, and thanks fell from his lips. But, in one department of reformatory exertion he feels that he has been neglected. He has seen his pledged allies throw themselves into the hottest of the battle, to fight for the Abolition of Capital Punishment—for the Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic—for the Rights of Women, and similar reforms,—but he has failed to see a corresponding earnestness, according to the influence of Abolitionists in the business world, in opening the avenues of industrial labor to the proscribed ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... physical danger from mob violence. He was arrested, and, partly to save his life, was thrust into jail, where he remained for eight months. He was tried and, although acquitted, was really made the subject of capital punishment. Tuberculosis developed as the result of his ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... carnival; and from an expression used by Herodian, it is plain that masquerading had been an ancient practice in Rome.] which we have narrated in an earlier paper of this series. Another was set on foot by his eldest sister, Lucilla; nor did her close relationship protect her from capital punishment. In that instance, the immediate agent of her purposes, Quintianus, a young man, of signal resolution and daring, who had attempted to stab the emperor at the entrance of the amphitheatre, though baffled in his purpose, uttered a word which rang continually in the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... the time we write about, regular witch-finders, as in the time of James the First, still the feeling against witches, and the belief that they practised, existed. They were no longer handed over to summary and capital punishment, but, whenever suspected, they were sure to meet with very rough treatment. Such was the fate of Mr Vanslyperken, who was now seized by the crowd, buffeted, and spit upon, and dragged to the parish pump, there being, fortunately for him, no horse-pond near. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... possible event,—some hoped for it, others dreaded it. When I reflect on the state of feeling which then prevailed, I am certain that a movement in his favour would infallibly have taken place had judges more complying than even those who presided at the trial condemned Moreau to capital punishment. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... examination and an extensive trial. We have added to these pamphlets a brief work of Zschokke's, the venerable historian of Switzerland, on death-punishment, in order that we might extend our observations over this topic also. It is evident that the question of capital punishment, and the various questions relating to prison discipline, embrace all that is either very interesting or very important in the prevailing discussions on penal legislation. Transportation forms no essentially distinct class of punishment, as the transported convict differs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... jury, if there is a culprit here, it is not my son,—it is I!—I, who for these twenty-five years have opposed capital punishment,—have contended for the inviolability of human life,—have committed this crime for which my son is now arraigned. Here I denounce my self, Mr. Advocate-General! I have committed it under all aggravated circumstances; ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... leave you in the charge of the kindest of nurses, next to the wife of my bosom the best of women. Appreciate her, sir, or perish in my esteem. She is one whom not to love is to be guilty of an offence deserving capital punishment, and a bastinado to season the culprit for his execution. Have I not often informed her myself that a flower from her hand means more than treasures from the hands of others. Expect me absent for a week. The harangues will not be closely reported. I stand ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... parliament, can send any subject of England out of the land against his will; no not even a criminal. For exile, or transportation, is a punishment unknown to the common law; and, wherever it is now inflicted, it is either by the choice of the criminal himself, to escape a capital punishment, or else by the express direction of some modern act of parliament. To this purpose the great charter[n] declares that no freeman shall be banished, unless by the judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. And by the habeas corpus act, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Bishop of Ross, in his "History," praises the humanity of the nobles, "for at this time few Catholics were banished, fewer were imprisoned, and none were executed." The nobles interfering, the threatened capital punishment was not carried out. Mob violence, oppression by Protestant landlords, Kirk censure, imprisonment, fine, and exile, did their work in suppressing ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... attempting to appreciate the relations of government and climate. Hallam inclines to the opinion that he was a Jew, and attached Divine authority only to the Old Testament. But this was enough to furnish him with his chief data for the existence of witches and for their capital punishment; and in the account of his "Republic," given by Hallam, there is enough evidence that the sagacity which often enabled him to make fine use of his learning was also often entangled in it, to temper our surprise at ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... not many, actual instances of capital punishment for disregard of the edicts against duelling, and imprisonment was common. But the deterrent effect was very small. Montmorency-Bouteville was ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... eloquent, but he had a hopeless case. The defence he put up was that Helene was irresponsible, but the major part of the advocate's speech was taken up with a denouncement of capital punishment. It was a barbarous anachronism, a survival ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... cities, who had served certain magistracies in them, were enrolled among Roman citizens, with all the rights to which the citizens of the capital were entitled,— absolute authority over wife, children, and slaves, security from capital punishment except by a vote of the people, or under military authority in the camp, access to all the honors and employments of the state, the right of suffrage, and the possession of Quirinal property. They felt themselves to ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... a wall in the ruins of the abbey, a human skeleton was found, with a table, a book, and a candle-stick. It is supposed to have been the remains of the fourteenth abbot, who, it is stated, was for some crime sentenced to be immured—a mode of capital punishment not uncommon in monasteries. Four views of the abbey are given in Allen's History of Lincolnshire, vol ii., and some farther notices of its ancient state will be found in Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. vi. pl. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... burning in effigy when his L'Ecole des Filles was burnt at the foot of the gallows (1672). Lyser, who spent his life and his property in the advocacy of polygamy, was threatened by Christian V. with capital punishment if he appeared in Denmark, and his Discursus Politicus de Polygamia was ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... the abolition of capital punishment be effected in France, we hope you will be specially excepted as unworthy of mercy for this cruel plot to make Miladi Morgan expose herself thus to the sneers of an ill-natured world. We think we see you in conclave, laughing and joking over an epistle you have just concocted and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... even Sulla retained unchanged the people only, and not the jury-commission, could sentence to forfeiture of life or to imprisonment,(38) the transference of processes of high treason from the burgesses to a standing commission amounted to the abolition of capital punishment for such offences. On the other hand, the restriction of the pernicious special commissions for particular cases of high treason, of which the Varian commission(39) in the Social war had been a specimen, likewise involved an improvement. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... exceptions to the general law, "Thou shalt not kill"? Are there no cases in which it is allowed to take another's life? What about justifiable homicide? There are three cases of this nature, gentlemen; namely, self-defence, capital punishment inflicted by the state, and active warfare. With only one of these can a physician, as such be concerned or think himself concerned. He is not a public hangman executing a sentence of a criminal court; nor is he acting as a soldier proceeding by public ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... hence called "metamorphic rocks," as when a limestone is metamorphosed into a marble. To vary is to change from time to time, often capriciously. To commute is to put something easier, lighter, milder, or in some way more favorable in place of that which is commuted; as, to commute capital punishment to imprisonment for life; to commute daily fares on a railway to a monthly payment. To convert (L. con, with, and verto, turn) is to primarily turn about, and signifies to change in form, character, use, etc., through a wide range of relations; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... to mistake an unsupported charge of sinning, provided it be made violently enough, for actual proof and confession. What is more, he takes an intense joy in the mere chase: he has the true Puritan taste for an auto da fe in him. "I am ag'inst capital punishment," said Mr. Dooley, "but we won't get rid av it so long as the people enjie it so much." But though he is thus an eager spectator, and may even be lured into taking part in the pursuit, the average ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the bodies, of those upon whom capital punishment has been inflicted, to the hyenas and jackals, and leaving them to be devoured by these voracious brutes, the negroes give them a species of sepulture; and that is as described, by closing them up in vaults hewn in trunks of the baobab—and in my opinion a very comfortable kind of tomb it ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Emerson delivered an address at Harvard on the "Progress of Culture" (printed in his Letters and Social Aims), in which he enumerates optimistically the indications of social advance: "the new scope of social science; the abolition of capital punishment and of imprisonment for debt: the improvement of prisons; the efforts for the suppression of intemperance, vice, etc.," and asks: "Who would live in the stone age, or the bronze, or the iron, or the lacustrine? Who does not prefer the age ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... of America, white men as well as Indians execute this law with cruel severity against each other. Civilised communities adopt it in a mitigated form as applied to capital punishment, but the untutored inhabitants of the desert continue to practise it with the same rigour which belonged to the first ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Essex had forfeited all right to appeal, since it was himself who had first advised the same arbitrary mode of proceeding in the cases of the marchioness of Exeter, of the countess of Salisbury, and of several persons of inferior rank connected with them; on whom capital punishment had already ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Westminster Hall was obliged to borrow from the Star-Chamber, for the same reasons as the Star-Chamber had borrowed from the Roman Forum, because they had no law, statute, or tradition of their own. Thus the Roman law took possession of our courts,—I mean its doctrine, not its sanctions: the severity of capital punishment was omitted, all the rest remained. The grounds of these laws are just and equitable. Undoubtedly the good fame of every man ought to be under the protection of the laws, as well as his life and liberty and property. Good fame is an outwork that defends them all and renders them all valuable. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... executing the punishment of death, without a chance of escape, in all cases to which it should be found properly applicable; of course these occasions being diminished to one out of twenty to which capital punishment is now assigned. Our ancestors brought the country to order by kilting[135] thieves and banditti with strings. So did the French when at Naples, and bandits became for the time unheard of. When once the evil habit is altered—when men are taught a crime of a certain character is ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... month papers were read on "Three Comedies of Shakespeare," "Pope," and "Herodotus," and when no paper was produced there was a discussion on Capital Punishment. In another, the subjects were "The Brontes," "Macaulay as an Essayist," "Frank Buckland" (the naturalist) and "Tennyson." A pretty wide range of reading was called for from schoolboys in addition to their ordinary ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... June, 1567 Morton captured Dalgleish, one of Bothwell's men, who had helped to kill Darnley. In order to escape torture—he did not escape capital punishment—Dalgleish delivered up a silver gilt casket which had belonged to the queen's first husband, and which now contained papers, the property of her third husband. Among them were eight letters, not directed, or dated, or signed, but which were recognised by those who saw them to ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... formula "to devote his head to the gods," used to express the sentence of capital punishment, was derived from the human sacrifices anciently used in Rome; probably, because criminals were usually ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... by Valentinian and his colleagues in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... home until dawn the next morning, if he wishes to escape a severe flogging, or even the risk of losing his head. The laws and rules in this respect have not been very severely enforced of late years; yet one never sees even now a Corean male walking about the streets after dark. Though capital punishment might not be inflicted on the offender, a very sound spanking would very probably be the result of a native being caught flagrante delicto during a nocturnal peregrination. Wherefore, the Corean male is, a ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... I have opposed repressive measures and cruelty wherever I have met with them. I have always disapproved of capital punishment in all its forms; I have protested earnestly and repeatedly against the military commissions in the last reign, and have been out of favour on account of doing so. Up till now such influence and power as I have possessed have ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... did not object to capital punishment or war, or the industrial system or casual wards, or flogging of criminals or the Congo Free State, because none of these things really got hold of her imagination; but she did object, she did not like, she could not bear to think of people not having ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... to God that I never may, unless it is actually necessary."*** Sultans and doges have freely used assassination as a weapon, but it seems to have remained for the Mormon church under Brigham Young to declare openly its intention to make whatever it might call church apostasy subject to capital punishment. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... gentlemen. "He is under twenty and he looked so respectable at the enquiry. It is quite impossible that he should be condemned to death in this quiet village. You will see, he will not be sentenced to capital punishment." ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... Capital punishment had been banished long before, but there was neither room nor resources to take the growing number of criminals who crammed prisons everywhere. The world leaders finally decided to transport these criminals to a separate prison world, copying a system which the French ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... hardship was suffered by those who had to leave their private concerns. In every third month, the meetings of the court would also be the occasion for convening the successor to the colonial courts of the Quarter Sessions, at which criminal charges not involving capital punishment were tried. ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... employed in mischief; and that one magistrate alone, corrected the enormities of this numerous people, many years before I knew them, and twenty-five after." I add, that the ancient lords of Birmingham, among their manorial privileges, had the grant of a gallows, for capital punishment; but as there are no traces even of the name, in the whole manor, I am persuaded no such thing was ever erected, and perhaps the anvil ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... who abstract money from the person by cutting or opening the apparel. Manu, ch. 9, sl. 277; where the third offence entails capital punishment.] ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... greatly the chances of love-matches based on intimate acquaintance. If such a law had existed for generations and centuries, sanctioned by religion and custom and so strictly enforced that violation of it entailed the danger of capital punishment, a sentiment would have grown up in course of time making the inhabitants of Rochester look upon marriage within the city with the same horror as they do upon incestuous unions. This is not an absurd or fanciful supposition. Such laws and customs actually did prevail in this very section of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... impossible to see or even to think of what is here described without gravely meditating on its suggestions. Is capital punishment justifiable? This is the question I purpose to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... writer does not say nay. He protests most solemnly he is a Turk, too. He wears a turban and a beard like another, and is all for the sack practice, Bismillah! But O you spotless, who have the right of capital punishment vested in you, at least be very cautious that you make away with the proper (if so she may be called) person. Be very sure of the fact before you order the barge out: and don't pop your subject into the Bosphorus, until you are quite certain that she deserves it. This ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... uterus of an early ovum, of moles, hydatids, etc. Disease of the uterus and ovarian dropsy may be mistaken for pregnancy. Careful examination is necessary to determine the nature of the condition present. Pregnancy may be pleaded in bar of immediate capital punishment, in which case the woman must be shown to be 'quick with child.' A woman may also plead pregnancy to delay her trial in Scotland, and both in England and Scotland, in civil cases, to produce a successor to estates, to increase damages for ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... foot to do away with capital punishment," said he, to Ashton-Kirk. "What makes them think life ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... long order. For one thing, it imposes all kinds of penalties from capital punishment to fines. For another, it was in force up to the beginning of George the Third's reign, when the last case of a person being burned for witchery in England occurred, and since then it has ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... judgment; and am persuaded that the Council of Geneva has done right in putting to death this obstinate man, who would never have ceased his blasphemies. I am astonished, that any one can be found to disapprove of this proceeding." Farel expressly says, that "Servetus deserved a capital punishment." Bucer did not hesitate to declare, that "Servetus deserved something worse than death." The truth is, although Calvin had some hand in the arrest and imprisonment of Servetus, he was unwilling that he should be burnt ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Pas de Calais to read from the tribune his appeal in favor of the King. Drunau attempted to do it, but was hooted down. Paine persisted,—presented his speech again the next day. Marat objected to its reception, because Paine was a Quaker, and opposed to capital punishment on principle; but the Convention at last consented to the reading. After alluding to the all-important assistance furnished by Louis XVI. to the insurgent American Colonies, Paine, as a citizen of both countries, proposed sending him to the United States. "To kill Louis," wrote Paine, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... there is generally a moral, sometimes an inverted one, in the Rops etchings. Order Reigns at Warsaw is a grim commentary on Russian politics quite opportune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used by Socialists as a protest against capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies the impassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops had read Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runs from Bulicame to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and more than once he explored the frozen circles of Gehenna. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... "rooting out a nest of consecrated cobblers." Sir James Mackintosh, then in Bombay, wrote of a similar assault by Mr. Thomas Twining on the Bible Societies, that it "must excite general indignation. The only measure which he could consistently propose would be the infliction of capital punishment on the crime of preaching or embracing Christianity in India, for almost every inferior degree of persecution is already practised by European or native anti-christians. But it fell to Southey, in the very first number of the Quarterly Review, in April 1809, to ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... in such circumstances is always painful. I need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind. Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of individuals—chiefly of the Society of Friends—I petitioned ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... matter of instinct. They have colonies in which some of the latest principles of social organization seem to find analogues: slavery, sexual regulations, division of labour, centralization of resources, government distribution of food, capital punishment, etc. ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... himself, which was the reasoning of a man of nought and one of little sense. Being grown thus jealous, he kept such strict watch over her and held her in such constraint that belike many there be of those who are condemned to capital punishment who are less straitly guarded of their gaolers; for, far from being at liberty to go to weddings or entertainments or to church or indeed anywise to set foot without the house, she dared not even stand at ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Sir Thomas Armstrong, a person who had distinguished himself in youth by duels and drunken exploits. He was particularly connected with the Duke of Monmouth, and was said to be concerned in the Rye-House Plot, for which he suffered capital punishment, 20th ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... had been customary to inflict capital punishment by decapitating the victim with the sword. At the opening of the Revolution a certain Dr. Guillotin recommended a new device, which consisted of a heavy knife sliding downward between two uprights. This instrument, called after him, the guillotine, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... site that promotes federalism in Uganda, http://federo.com, which N2H2 blocked as "Adults Only, Pornography"; "Fight the Death Penalty in the USA," a Danish Web site dedicated to criticizing the American system of capital punishment, http://www.fdp.dk, which N2H2 blocked as "Pornography"; and "Dumb Laws," a humor Web site that makes fun of outmoded laws, http://www.dumblaws.com, which N2H2 blocked under its "Sex" category. Erroneously blocked Web sites relating to health issues included the following: ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... he was chosen praetor, the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered; and while every other member of the senate voted for inflicting capital punishment on the accomplices in that crime [33], he alone proposed that the delinquents should be distributed for safe custody among the towns of Italy, their property being confiscated. He even struck such terror ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Satyavat said that the persons brought out for execution should not be executed. The power of kings did not extend over the lives of their subjects. In other words the prince argued against the propriety of inflicting capital punishment upon even ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... formed a not unimportant part of the Court's estates. Comparatively trifling offences were sometimes thus expiated. Thus, in A.D. 350, Aganoko, suzerain of the Saegi, being convicted of purloining jewels from the person of a princess whom he had been ordered to execute, escaped capital punishment only by surrendering all his lands; and, in A.D. 534, a provincial ruler who, being in mortal terror, had intruded into the ladies' apartments in the palace, had to present his landed property for the use of the Empress. These facts show incidentally that the land of the country, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... prosecution of the seminarist priests was not enough to put an end to it. With reference to the laity, the Lord Treasurer, however strict in other respects, recommends to his sovereign quite a different mode of proceeding. We should never proceed to capital punishment of such men: we should rather mitigate the oath imposed on them: in particular we should never force the nobles to a final decision between their religious inclinations and their political duties, never drive them to despair. But at the same time he gives a warning ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... commerce, Congress has enacted a great system of municipal laws, and extended it over the vessels and crews of the United States on the high seas and in foreign ports, and even over citizens of the United States resident in China; and has established judicatures, with power to inflict even capital punishment within that country. ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... little stealing but, in the forest districts where the woodcutters all carried long handled hatchets, a blow with which was invariably fatal, there was a good deal of slaughter, as in a quarrel a man struck with whatever was handy. Only if the attack proved to be cold-blooded and pre-arranged was capital punishment inflicted. Otherwise imprisonment up to twelve ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... succession of sleepless nights owing to the dust and rain storms, and overburdened days because of the heat, "What do the British want in this country? Is it the intention of the Government to do away with capital punishment and send all felons here? I am not surprised the camel has the hump. I would develop one here myself. What an accursed country!" Yes, it is not an elysium; and when one allows the dirt, heat, and discomfort to wither all power of endurance, the Soudan becomes a horror and anathema, particularly ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Billy. He arose and sat up very straight in the bed. "I tell you I am goin' to have no more nonsense. Gimme quinine, hell, a gold basis, and capital punishment! That's my platform from this on. I'm goin' to look up a good Sunday-school to-morrow, in a church with a steeple on it, and a strict, regular minister, and all the fixin's. Remember, mother, after this I travel on my muscle weekdays, and keep ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... some," he said, "to go contrary to my life-long principles. I'm a humanitarian by conviction and I'm opposed to capital punishment. It seems to me that the taking of human life is not justified, and that the advance of civilization, especially in the great republic of which I ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Ludamar, it was necessary when crimes were committed that examples should sometimes be made. On such occasions the offender was brought before Ali, who pronounced, of his sole authority, what judgment he thought proper. But I understood that capital punishment was seldom or never ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... flat, which still remained closed, whereas every other window of the lofty house was wide open. Although the Socialist deputy hated the Anarchists, those shutters were doubtless closed as a protest against capital punishment. Whilst the multitude had been rushing to that frightful spectacle, Mege, still in bed, with his face turned to the wall, had probably been dreaming of how he would some day compel mankind to be happy beneath the rigid ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... reserved for this class of mature offenders in society who have otherwise lived reputable lives. Just how far exemplary punishment should be used in society as a deterrent to crime is a disputed question among penologists. Whether, as in cases of homicide, it should ever go to the extent of capital punishment or not depends very much upon the civilization of the group. In a civilization like ours, where blood vengeance is so often demanded by mobs, it is probably unwise, for the present at least, to seek the abolition of capital punishment for murder ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... on the other hand, they may call our life noble and honour its memory. We've abolished torture and capital punishment, we live in security, but how much suffering there ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... forward in due order, with counsel for defense and ample opportunity to call witnesses. There were no more capital punishments. It was made known that the Committee had set for itself a rule that capital punishment would be inflicted by it only for crimes so punishable by the regular law. But each outgoing ship took a crowd of the banished. The majority of the first sweepings were low thugs—"Sydney Ducks," hangers-on, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... brought before him; and after having dwelt upon the enormity of our offence, and denounced duennas, their characters, their evil ways and worse intrigues, laying to the charge of all what I alone was guilty of, he said he would not visit us with capital punishment, but with others of a slow nature which would be in effect civil death for ever; and the very instant he ceased speaking we all felt the pores of our faces opening, and pricking us, as if with the points of needles. We at once put our hands up ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the jury. Maryland goes Pennsylvania one better in extending the professional privilege to newspaper reporters; that is to say, we find a statute that they may not be compelled to disclose their sources of information, an excellent statute for the yellow journal. In 1897 California abolishes capital punishment; there has been a general tendency in this direction, of recent years, although some States, having tried the experiment, have returned to it again, as has the Republic of France. In 1899 the privilege ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... pay the respect to our Constitution and laws which is due from good citizens to the public authorities of the society. These circumstances have induced me to pardon generally the offenders here referred to, and to extend forgiveness to those who had been adjudged to capital punishment. For though I shall always think it a sacred duty to exercise with firmness and energy the constitutional powers with which I am vested, yet it appears to me no less consistent with the public good than it is with my personal feelings to mingle ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... Zululand, of New Zealand, of the Iroquois League, or at a savage society like that of the Kanekas, or of those Australian tribes about whom we have very many interesting and copious accounts. If we begin with the Australians, we observe that society is based on certain laws of marriage enforced by capital punishment. These laws of marriage forbid the intermixing of persons belonging to the stock which worships this or that animal, or plant. Now this rule, as already observed, made the 'gentile' system (as Mr. Morgan erroneously ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... which I heard of him was that he had undergone capital punishment by order of the king; to whom he had written, when in prison, saying that he was punished by the just judgment of God, because he had loved the king more than God; and that out of deference to his sovereign he had caused many innocent ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... Bug-Jargal itself; the other, Claude Gueux, contents itself with thirty pages. Both are pieces with a purpose—manifestos of one of Hugo's most consistent and most irrational crazes—the objection to capital punishment.[95] There is no need to argue against this, the immortal "Que MM. les assassins," etc., being, though in fact the weakest of a thousand refutations, sufficient, once for all, to explode it. But it is not irrelevant to point out that the two pieces themselves are very battering-rams against ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... suffered through hatred of his co-pastor. One old man, scorning the accusation, and refusing to plead at his trial, was, according to the law, pressed to death for his contumacy. Nay, even dogs were accused of witchcraft, suffered the legal penalties, and are recorded among the subjects of capital punishment. One young man found means to effect his mother's escape from confinement, fled with her on horseback, and secreted her in the Blueberry Swamp, not far from Taplay's Brook, in the Great Pasture; he concealed her here in a wigwam which he built for her shelter, provided ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... brief casuistry and jesuitry. Vergniaud himself says, Death; justifying by jesuitry. Rich Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau had been of the Noblesse, and then of the Patriot Left Side, in the Constituent; and had argued and reported, there and elsewhere, not a little, against Capital Punishment: nevertheless he now says, Death; a word which may cost him dear. Manuel did surely rank with the Decided in August last; but he has been sinking and backsliding ever since September, and the scenes of September. In this Convention, above all, no word he could speak would find favour; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... child's fancy to be put in a serious work on "Animal Intelligence"! The dead birds we now and then find hanging from the nest, or from the limb of a tree, with a string wound around their necks are no doubt criminals upon whom their fellows have inflicted capital punishment! ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the throne he was engaged in a number of petty wars, none of which requires specific mention. The only unpopular measure associated with his name was the creation of a Grand Council of Eunuchs, to which was referred all questions of capital punishment, and this body soon acquired a power which made it resemble the tyrannical and irresponsible British Star Chamber. After five years this institution became so unpopular and was so deeply execrated by ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... treading the soil of America. In his debating society he had good practice in public speaking, and on all questions took what we may justly call the Quaker side, i. e., the side which he thought had most in it of humanity and benevolence. He sided against capital punishment, against the established church, and defended the principle of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... were great disorders among the Norman clergy, and crimes were of frequent occurrence. These were often punished more lightly than the same offenses when committed by a layman, as church courts could not inflict capital punishment. Henry undertook to bring the clergy under the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. In this attempt he was resisted by Thomas a Becket, who had been his chancelor, and whom he raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury (1162), in the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... found it. The fall need not necessarily have been fatal, especially to one insensible and opposing no resistance, but even supposing that death had not resulted, in those Draconian days, the intent to murder was equally subject with its full accomplishment to capital punishment. Still, as Colonel Archfield could plead with all his heart that he had left home with no evil intentions towards young Oakshott, the lawyers agreed that to prove that the death of the victim was uncertain would reduce the matter to a mere youthful brawl, which could not be heavily ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unconstitutional, was not taken until one hundred years after his time. With the advice and assistance of some of those who were going out to his colony he prepared a code of laws which contained many of the advanced ideas of the Quakers. Capital punishment was to be confined to murder and treason, instead of being applied as in England to a host of minor offenses. The property of murderers, instead of being forfeited to the State, was to be divided among the next ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... i. 10. The law is made for manstealers. This crime among the Jews exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment. Exodus xxi. 16. And the apostle here classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word he uses, in its original import comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or in retaining them in it. Stealers of men are ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... ultimate control of Saru, though the relations between their respective inhabitants were not close and intermarriages were avoided. The functions of judge were not entrusted to these chiefs; an indefinite number of a community's members sat in judgment upon its criminals. Capital punishment did not exist, nor was imprisonment resorted to, beating being considered a sufficient and final penalty, except in the case of murder, when the nose and ears of the assassin were cut off or the tendons of his feet severed. Little ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of theorists; one of the phantoms of that manifold, monstrous, phantom deity called Liberty, which has been so often invoked by the pseudo philanthropists and reckless reformers of the present day to subvert not only the law of capital punishment, but also other institutions and laws which have received the sanction of both God ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... began his political career by entering the Chamber of Deputies. Some one said of him that he formed a party by himself,—a party of one. He pleaded for the abolition of capital punishment, for the amelioration of the poorer classes, for the emancipation of slaves in the colonies, and for various other social reforms; but he was never known as ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... careless shrug. "I doubt if the assertion would hold water. At the same time Buddha has an enormous number of followers in China, Tibet, India, and Ceylon; they, too, have traditions of a Holy Mother and Child, of a fast in the wilderness, and here, even now, crucifixion is the form of capital punishment." ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... to the beneficent rule whereby money multiplies itself, did not have to squeeze a living out of the tillers of their land. The lord of the manor held court leet and baron at the house of a tenant, and sometimes even inflicted capital punishment. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... frequent collusion with the pages of DE QUINCEY and COLERIDGE, whose wild lives and turbulent experiences possess a peculiar charm for the Triton of the Tribune. When Mr. GREELEY wishes to write against capital punishment—which he does about every time the moon changes—he naturally turns over a few pages of Thirty Years in Washington. When he purposes to tempt the bounding bean of the kitchen garden of Chappaqua, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various |
