Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/170

 

THE CRIMINAL LAW: WAS IT WRITTEN IN BLOOD?

Mild and humane as were many features of the Hebrew Law, it had one blot which cannot be effaced — its criminal law was the most harsh and cruel that ever stained the annals of mankind. So say its enemies, of whom there are many, for it stands in the way of many proposed changes and "reforms." The advocates of the abolition of capital punishment find it an obstacle, to remove which they must question not only the inspiration of Moses, but his wisdom and humanity. Forty years ago there was a movement in the State of New York to abolish the punishment of death, and its principal advocate made an elaborate report, some pages of which are devoted to the Hebrew legislation. The Mosaic history, he declares, "is impressed on every page with the stamp of the superhuman — the superhuman at times running into the inhuman." Like every man of intelligence who has made a study of history, he regards not only with curiosity but veneration the most ancient body of laws which has come down to us, while he considers it wholly unfitted to an age and a country so highly civilized as ours. Its punishments are so disproportioned to the offence, that "it would be a perfect insanity of ferocity and fanaticism to think of applying them at the