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Show VENGEANCE NOT FOR SOCIETY By LORD BUCKM ASTER, Former British Chancellor Every single one of the arguments used today in favor of capital punishment as a deterrent was used, and for a long tine with success, in the early part of the Nineteenth century when capital punishment was a common penalty for civil offenses. . . . In each case you deny the sacredness of life. You have taken to yourselves, your-selves, either as individuals or as the state, the power to take away that which you can never give. . . . I am not satisfied as to capital punishment being a deterrent. I think that always assumes that a man creates a balance sheet when he is going to commit murder, and puts capital punishment on the debit side against anything he might get on the credit side. There are a few calculated calcu-lated cold-blooded murders, but the bulk of murders are nothing of the kind, but are crimes committed when a man loses control of himself. I don't think that society has any right to wreak vengeance upon anyone." any-one." Tt is my belief that the real deterrent against crime is social opinion. It is not the police nor the laws. It is the healthy public opinion which niTects and surrounds a man from his youth I am satisfied myself that it is to that more than anything else we owe the lessening in our criminal crim-inal characters. |