One of the prominent Los Angeles daily newspapers,
acting in a sense as spokesman for the League, says:
"There is a practical unanimity of opinion in Los
Angeles in favor of the movement thus enthusiastically
launched for reform. Capital-punishment is simply
murder, whether committed by society or by an in-
dividual. It violates the law, 'Thou shalt not kill,'
and either hatred or revenge is invariably the motive
of the state and the individual. The worst use to which
society can put a man is to kill him, for death reforms
neither him nor others. Society's concern is not with
the individual, but with society itself. ' '

These examples of opinions are su£Scient to indicate
the kind of arguments now being repeated throughout
the United States. The word "reactionary" is in-
variably applied to those who maintain the present pre-
dominating system. To call capital-punishment a relic
of barbarism is usually deemed sufficient to confuse
its advocates.
Notwithstanding the assurance with which all sorts
of superficial, erroneous, and sweeping statements are
thus circulated, it may be maintained beyond all ques-
tion that the abolitionists have not discovered any new
and useful principle of penology, even if they do insist
on labeling their plan as "the conception of modernity
and humanizing penology. ' ' There is no short, logical.
22 BY EIGHT OP SWORD

and Christian route leading to such wisdom as the
devotees of the new idea pretend to have found and
tested.
PHILOSOPHEBS FAVOR CAPITAL-PUNISHMENT.
