Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/293

alty, society has distilled blood through every pore. The suppression of the penalty of blood in Saxe-Royal was followed by the great and bloody battle of May, which endangered the life of the state to such a degree that it could only be saved by foreign intervention. Merely its proclamation in Frankfort, in the name of the common country, placed the affairs of Germany in worse confusion and disorder than had existed during any other period of its turbulent history. The suppression of this penalty which was decreed by the provisional government of France, was succeeded by those frightful days of June which, with all their horrors, will live forever in the memories of men; and added to these, others would have followed in rapid succession if a pure victim, and one acceptable to God, had not offered itself in atonement for the sins of that guilty government and sinful country. How far the virtue of that innocent and august blood may extend no one knows, or can know: but, humanly speaking, it may be asserted without fear of being contradicted by facts, that blood will again flow abundantly if France does not again submit to the jurisdiction of that providential law which no people may safely neglect.

I shall not close this chapter without making a reflection which I consider as of the highest importance. If the abolition of the penalty of death for political crimes has been productive of such disastrous consequences, how terrible would be the effect if this suppression extended to crimes of the common order! For it is evident to me that the suppression of the first brings with it, in a given time, the suppression of the second; and it is capable of being demonstrated that from this double suppression proceeds the abolition of all human penalties.