Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/436

 422 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

life to everything. The illusion of an absolute morality is that of forming general concepts and attributing to them a substantial reality.

Our study of the moral facts has led us to explain them as a function of the collective interest which serves and follows the moral as the effect the cause. The moral facts which manifest themselves wherever there is a social state, and which follow the same evolution as this, are found necessary cophenomena of all associa- tion. Varying on account of the conditions (size, density, etc.) of society, the moral facts are bound to these societies as the movement of rotation is inherent in the celestial bodies, of which it is a constant and constitutive attribute varying according to the conditions (reciprocal situation, size, and mass) of the stars. Back of the question of the origin of moral facts lies the interesting question of the origin of society, but for the present this is left an open question. ROLF LAGSPEORG, " La nature de la morale," in Revue Internationale de sociologie, May and June, 1903. T. J. R.

Letter to Governor Odell from Samuel J. Barrows about the Application for Clemency in the Van Wormer Case. Samuel J. Barrows, who served in the Fifty-fifth Congress with Governor Odell, and who represents the United States in the International Prison Commission, has written to Governor Odell a reply to Andrew D. White's letter to the governor on the Van Wormer pardon application, which appeared in the Evening Post of Wednesday, September 23. The letter is as follows :

" The Hon. Andrew D. White, who has served his country ably and devotedly in many public relations, and won the respect and gratitude of his fellow-citizens, has given to the press a copy of a letter addressed to your Excellency, thanking you ' for the manly, judicious, and patriotic stand you have taken in dealing with the applications for pardon of the brothers Van Wormer.' Dr. White, in communi- cating this letter to the press, says : ' It seems to me that this is a case in which right-thinking men of all parties should join in backing up the governor for what must have been the discharge of a most painful duty.'

" As a native and a citizen of the state of New York, and speaking wholly in a private capacity, I cannot, in this matter of life and death, allow Dr. White's letter to go before you and before the public without answer and protest concern- ing some of its positions. Silence might be construed as an admission that there is but one course open to you in this matter, and that to adopt any other would be to forfeit the gratitude and admiration of your fellow-citizens.

" Without opening at all the question whether it is right or expedient for the state to inflict capital punishment, concerning which there is a difference of opin- ion, it is an indisputable fact that the people of the state of New York have pro- vided in the constitution that when a person is judicially sentenced to death, there shall be three courses open to the governor. He may affirm the sentence of death ; he may commute it to life-imprisonment ; he may even if he sees fit, grant an absolute pardon. Between these extremes of death and absolute pardon the com- mutation of the sentence to life-imprisonment has been regarded by many thought- ful governors as a wise medium in which justice and mercy can be happily united, and in which three ends are subserved : society is protected by the incarceration of the criminal ; the prisoner has an opportunity under a firm and constant discip- line to grow into a better man ; and thirdly, the life of the criminal can be utilized by the state. The power thus conferred on the governor by the constitu- tion is an illustration of the overwhelming determination of the people of this state that the quality of mercy shall not be excluded from the administration of law, even in capital cases.

" I must, therefore, earnestly protest against the assumption of Dr. White that in this case you had but one course to pursue, and that you would have failed in your duty if you had taken any other. ' I can well understand,' says Dr. White, ' that you have been under severe pressure and many temptations to flinch from your duty ; that you have been beset by short-sighted persons who mistakenly think themselves humane.' As I am not one of those who have beset your Excellency in this case, I can say without personal feeling that Dr. White's descrip-