The Albany Law Journal.

ALBANY, JANUARY 1, 1887.

CURRENT TOPICS.

YOVERNOR HILL has done well to reprieve the

murderer, Mrs. Druse, and not commute her sentence. He wisely gives the Legislature an opportunity to change the law in favor of the most brutal and deliberate murderer of modern times if they choose to make a permanent and general change in behalf of women on account of their sex. We are not in favor of capital punishment at all, simply because, as this case shows, it is so difficult to execute it. But we would not make any distinction on account of sex. Those who advocate this distinction are of two classes: the sentimentalists, whose tender natures are shocked by the hanging of women; and the women's rights people, who think that women ought not to be capitally punished because they have no voice in making the laws. There is no reasoning with the former class; but we see no reason why a woman who has the nerve to commit murder, who unsexes herself, should not be subject to the same punishment as men. It is said that the punishment is indecent and cruel. It ought in all cases to be strictly private with not more than twelve witnesses. In answer to the second class it may be briefly said, that the same argument would prevent any punishment of women, and so of minors. We have no doubt that if the Legislature should change the law in favor of women, or if it should once be understood that a commutation is always in order, there would be a large increase of female murderers. It seems to be well understood now that if a man kills another man to avenge the honor of his house he gets off scot free. A late number of the Criminal Law Magazine contained a leading article applauding this kind of murder, and saying that "this great power is safe from abuse in the hands of the husbands and fathers of America." This in the face of the fact that sometimes the wrong man is killed by mistake! What this country needs above all is VOL. Vol. 35 No. 1.

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a strict, impartial, speedy execution of criminal justice, without distinction of sex or emotions. Now if our Legislature choose to abolish capital punishment, well and good. We are rather in favor of the experiment, for if it does not work well we shall have less carping at the present measure. At all events it will save us from the accusation of relaxing our penalties for such a poor reason as sex. And yet doubtless if this change should be made the sentimentalists the people who are in favor of public flogging for wife beaterswould go in for pardon or for short terms of imprisonment for female murderers.

Judge Edward A. Thomas writes in the December Forum in favor of abolishing wills. His reasons are substantially, that a man's property ought to descend to his family; that men about to make wills are frequently feeble and subject to undue influence; and that wills induce a great amount of litigation. As to the first point we do not at all agree with the essayist. Most men will naturally leave the bulk of their property to their families, and the cases where they do not are comparatively rare; but to make such an inflexible rule would be extremely impolitic. In the case of an enormous fortune and a single child; or in that of dissolute and spendthrift or unworthy children; or in that of children already as rich or richer than their parents, it would work very unjustly. The essayist says: "If a man is given the right to dispose of his property, so that what he directs is to be carried out and enforced after his death, why should he be limited at all in that disposition? Or why should he be limited to less than four, six or eight lives? It is only a question of degree or extent. The very fact that it has been found necessary to place so firm and so strict a limitation upon the power to dispose of property by will, certainly tends to prove that the principle of disposing of all property in that manner is evil." This is very bad logic, for the essayist would substitute an invariable entail of property by allowing the children always to inherit. Experience has shown that property will naturally scatter, and that it is better so, but Judge Thomas would fix on this country a system of entail quite