newconcept4 lesson60 参考原文

When In 18 centuries offences against the law that today would not earn one month in prison were punished with death penalty, the severity of the penal code made no serious effect on the prevalence of crime. When it made no difference to the fate of highway man whether he had killed his victim or merely robbed him of a few pieces of silvers, there were no more murders then than there were when man like Sir Franci Burddet succeeded in lightening the severity of the penal laws. In those days the sacredness of life on earth was not greatly regarded, because a life in the world to come was taken for granted except by a comparatively small minority of Philosophers.

Nor was the long drawn ordeal of the condemned cell inflicted upon the condemned man and his gaolers once upon a time. Those who believe in capital punishment may have arguments for its retention, but surely no reasonable argument can be found for the retention of sickening Mumbo Jumbo that accompanies it from the moment the judge dons the black cap with what looks like a pen-wiper balanced on the top of his wig, to the reading of the burial service over the condemned man before he is dead. Moreover, It may be more merciful to launch the condemned man into eternity 24 hours after he was sentenced than to keep him shivering on the brink of that dread gulf. Hanging is an atrocious archaic way for killing a human being, and the self-satisfied modernity of electric chair is just as atrocious. The administration of strong sleep draught to the condemned man every night from which one night he does not awake, maybe a civilized alternative to our present barbarous procedures, if the capital punishment through the influence of backward mind be retained.