“Capital Punishments.”

“Capital Punishments.”
I
To teach the sanctity of human life
By taking it, upon the barb’rous plea
Of “blood for blood,” shows small fidelity
To justice: such a course is but the strife
Of one wrong with another; for it is rife 5
With anger and revenge. We err who call
That “punishment” which leaves no room at all
For reformation. They who’d draw the knife
To harm their fellows, may be kept by fear
At times from using it; but none can dwell 10
Safely with those who only fear of hell,
Or strangling on the gallows, only here
Keeps from the crime of murder. Nor hate nor gain
Can tempt the good to play the part of Cain.


II
No tortures e’er inflicted on the vile 15
Will make them virtuous. We with care must train
All in the love of Good, or we in vain
May look for men and women free from guile
And brutal feelings. Those who never learn
To keep their passions under Reason’s rein, 20
Are sure to cause themselves and others pain:
The rightly train’d will ever seek to earn
That happiness which ever bless those
Who love and serve their Maker. To be good
Is to be happy: be it understood 25
God ever blesses all those that keep His laws.
Whilst crime exists, our prisons ought to be
Each in itself a true reformatory.

III
E’en as a mere machine, Man is too good,
If able-bodied—however vile he be 30
In all that constitutes humanity—
To be destroy’d. Our code was soak’d in blood
From end to end, till true Reformers rose
To cleanse it from injustice. We must seek
Ever to find protection for the meek 35
And peaceable, from violence of those
Who are the madden’d slaves of tyrant Sin.
No wrong is done in taking ev’ry care
The violent are kept in durance where
They cannot injure others; and within 40
Will guarded prisons, they should compensate,
Far as their labour could the injury done the State.

IV
If we regard this life as pilgrimage
Unto a holy heaven—which only they
Who have the Creator’s laws obey 45
Need seek to enter—we should surely wage
War with whatever shortens human life,
And all that leads our Souls away from God;
Should teach all goodness; and they who have trod
In evil paths, with ev’ry misery rife, 50
We ought incessantly to strive to win
To righteousness. We must in love embrace
The meanest outcasts of the human race,
Howe’er defiled by ignorance and sin:
Their own and others good requires that we 55
Should keep them safe—not hang them on “the gallows-tree.”

George Markham Tweddell
p. 38-40 [in Miscellaneous Sonnets]