“They’re both equally immoral,” remarked one of the guests, “because their purpose is the same, to take away life. Who is the more humane executioner, one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the life out of you incessantly, for years?” Execution kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by degrees. “I myself have experienced neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and more humane than imprisonment. Some of them thought that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.
They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. The guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment. They talked among other things of capital punishment. There were many clever people at the party and much interesting conversation. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the autumn fifteen years before.
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