Essays on the punishment of death / by Charles Spear.

  • Charles Spear
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    paired as might be possible, all our rights, which are all of them comprehended in the right to enjoy life, can we have agreed to forfeit that right to live while God shall spare our lives, which is the essential pre- cedent condition of all our other rights ? Property may be diminished, and afterwards increased. Liberty may be taken away for a time, and subsequently restored. The wound which is inflicted may be healed, and the wrong we have suffered may be atoned for; but there is no Promethean heat that can rekindle the lamp of life, if once extinguished. Can it be, then, that while property, liberty, and personal security are guarded and hedged in on every side, by the strict provisions of our fundamental constitution, that life is uncondi- tionally thrown into the common stock, not to be for- feited in a specific case, agreed upon beforehand at the organization of our society, but in all such cases as the popular voice may single out and make capital by ' law 1 Have we entered into any such compact ? ' The burthen of proof is wholly upon those who affirm that we have so agreed. Let it be shown that mankind in general, or the inhabitants of this Com- monwealth in particular, have agreed to hold their lives as a conditional grant from the state. Let it he shown that any one individual, understanding the bar- gain, and being free to dissent from it, ever voluntarily placed himself in such a miserable vassalage. Let there, at least, be shown some reason for supposing that any sane man has, of his own accord, bartered away his original right m his own existence, that his government may tyrannize more heavily over him and his fellows, when all the purposes of good govern- ment may be amply secured at so much cheaper a purchase. In no instance can this preposterous sacri-
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