6. The abiding necessity of this _right of the sword_ is argued from
the strength and frequency of the provocations to deeds of bloodshed
and violence that must ever be encountered in human society. What
these provocations are, how many and how strong, may be left to the
reflection of the student who reads his newspaper, or even his novel.
Not the least appalling thing about crime, atrocious crime especially,
is the example that it gives and the imitators whom it begets. It is
not merely that it sets the perpetrator himself on the downward path,
so that, unless detected and punished, a man's first deed of blood is
rarely his last: it draws others after him by a fatal fascination.
Like the images which the Epicureans supposed all visible objects to
slough off and shed into the air around them, such phantoms and images
of guilt float about a great crime, enter into the mind of the
spectator and of the hearer, and there, upon slight occasion, turn to
actual repetitions of the original deed. The one preventive is to
append to that deed a punishment, the image of which shall also enter
into the mind, excite horror, and disenchant the recipient. This is
not to be done by mere banishment of the criminal, nor by his
perpetual incarceration. Exile and prison--particularly in view of the
humanity of a modern penitentiary--do not sufficiently strike the
imagination. One sweet hour of revenge will often appear cheap at the
price of ten years' penal servitude. There is nothing goes to the
heart like death. Death is the most striking of terrors; it is also
the penalty that most exactly counterpoises in the scales of justice
the commission of a murderous crime. All States need this dread figure
of the Sword-bearer standing at the elbow of the Sovereign.

7. But is not every capital sentence a trespass upon the dominion of
God, Lord of life and death? No, for that same God it is who has
endowed man with a nature that needs to grow up in civil society,