A Cynic Looks at Life

The New Woman is against the death penalty, naturally, for she is hot and hardy in the conviction that whatever is is wrong.  She has visited this world in order to straighten things about a bit, and is in distress lest the number of things be insufficient to her need.  The matter is important variously; not least so in its relation to the new heaven and the new earth that are to be the outcome of woman suffrage.  There can be no doubt that the vast majority of women have sentimental objections to the death penalty that quite outweigh such practical considerations in its favor as they can be persuaded to comprehend.  Aided by the minority of men afflicted by the same mental malady, they will indubitably effect its abolition in the first lustrum of their political “equality.”  The New Woman will scarcely feel the seat of power warm beneath her before giving to the assassin’s “unhand me, villain!” the authority of law.  So we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals.  And the criminal uncaught will treat us to a quantity and quality of crime notably augmented by the Christian spirit of the new régime.