Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/77

Rh has no right to take it, without my consent, to save the whole human race! I admit that society has tho right of eminent domain over my property, and my take my land for a street; may destroy my house to save the town; perhaps seize on my store of provisions in time of famine, can render me an equivalent for those things. I have not the same lion on any portion of tho universe as on my life, my person. To these I have rights which none can alienate except myself, which no man has given, which all men can never justly take away. For any injustice wilfully done to me, the human race can render me no equivalent.

I know society claims tho right of eminent domain over person and life not less than over house and land—to take both for the Commonwealth. I deny the right—certainly it has never been shown. Hence to me, resting on the broad ground of natural justice, the law of God, capital punishment seems wholly inadmissible, homicide with the pomp and formality of law. It is a relic of the old barbarism—paying hurt for hurt. No one will contend that it is inflicted for the offender's good. For the good of others, I contend we have no right to inflict it without the sufferer's consent. To put a criminal to death seems to me as foolish as for the child to beat the stool it has stumbled over, and as useless too. I am astonished that nations with the name of Christian ever on their lips, continue to disgrace themselves by killing men, formally and in cold blood; to do this with prayers—"Forgive us as we forgive;" doing it in the name of God! I do not wonder that in the codes of nations, Hebrew or heathen, far lower than ourselves in civilization, we should find laws enforcing this punishment; laws too, enacted in the name of God. But it fills me with amazement that worthy men in these days should go back to such sources for their wisdom; should walk dry-shod through the Gospels, and seek in records of a barbarous people to justify this atrocious act! Famine, pestilence, war, are terrible evils, but no one is so dreadful in its effects as the general prevalence of a great theological idea that is false.

It makes me shudder to recollect that out of the twenty-eight States of this Union, twenty-seven should still continue the gallows as a part of the furniture of a Christian