not deter and that it tends, on the contrary, to increase criminality by the force of example and imitation, making the victim a sort of a hero in the imagination of the untrained and the uneducated, due to the somewhat dramatic character of public executions, may be easily disposed of, by making the execution of criminals strictly private to be carried out only in the presence of the necessary government officials, religious advisers and the members of the criminal's family and counsel. Then the dramatization of the execution would disappear, and with it its baneful influence. The argument that capital punishment does not diminish criminality; that it cannot stop its increase; that the most that it can do is to keep the number of capital cases stationary, is highly questionable; but statistics show that wherever it has been abolished or suspended, criminality has greatly increased, as in Belgium, Prussia, Italy and Switzerland (2); and that wherever it has been re-established or preserved criminality has diminished, or at least, it has become stationary, as in England and France. (27) We believe that such argument cannot be seriously taken into account. At least, it may be stated that the murderer who has been executed cannot again commit another murder, either on the person of a police officer or private individual trying to prevent his escape, or on the person of the prison officials having his custody. (28) That the death penalty is inhuman, demoralizing and revolting, and might cause irreparable loss and injury in cases of mistake and miscarriage of justice, is an argument that might have very much weight, if capital punishment were imposed systematically for the commission of offenses other than assassinations, parricide, and rape and robbery accompanied by murder; as, for instance, if the death penalty were to be imposed for the commission of such offenses as ordinary robbery or theft, as under the laws of England in the days of Bentham. In such cases, there being no reasonable proportion between the crime committed and the penalty inflicted, the offender would naturally receive and deserve pity and commiseration. But such is not the case, when the offender has committed any of the horrible deeds above indicated. The application of the death penalty will be but following the law of compensation, and the eternal principles of Justice. If execution is inhuman, is it not inhuman to commit cold blooded murder after honor or property has been robbed from the victim? Is not the act of depriving another of his life an act inhuman everywhere? If so, it is not more inhuman to make the offender pay for what he has taken. It is true that the methods now universally and generally used in carrying out executions, whether by strangulation or decapitation in different forms, and in public places are simply revolting and demoralizing; but this is a simple matter of procedure. Other means may be employed, such as electrocution and poison, and nay the criminal himself might be permitted and allowed the privilege of choosing the manner in which he shall die; and preferably it should be brought about by (26) Garofalo's Crimology, pp. 371, 379, 380. (27) Garofalo's Crimology, pp. 371, 379, 380. (28) Aschaffenburg's Crime and its Repression, pp. 265-6. himself. The death of Socrates is familiar to every educated man; the practice introduced by Marcus Aurelius of permitting the criminal to choose the manner in which he should die was not inhuman; and furthermore there is the practice in Servia of carrying out the executions of criminals by means of firing squads. But abolitionists say that there is a possibility of mistake and miscarriage of justice, and that irreparable loss and injury might be caused, (2) speaking as if it were possible in all cases to have and secure absolute certainty in the administration of justice. Proving one's case, by preponderance of evidence, or beyond reasonable doubt, does not imply absolute certainty. Besides, judicial errors, if committed at all, would generally be in favor of the accused. Furthermore, it is not easy to commit a judicial error against the accused. There are lawyers and appellate courts; and the natural feeling and tendency in man is not to cause any unnecessary injury or harm to another. Besides, prosecuting officers are not blood-thirsty officials; their sole duty is only so see that justice is done and no more. And in this case, we may ask, What about surgical errors and blunders? Yet they are hidden from the public view and very seldom the subject of public opinion and criticism. Mankind has been contradicting itself. It shrinks from the judicial executions of criminals; and yet it approves the conduct and act of a dishonored husband and woman who has taken justice into their hands. (30) It generally tolerates and approves the summary executions of pirates, spies, and dangerous thieves caught in the act and who assume a threatening attitude. In other words, Mankind approves extra-judicial executions, but not judicial executions; and the reason for this may undoubtedly be found in the revolting methods now employed. Lombroso's theory that capital punishment should be imposed only upon murderers who are recidivists is as questionable as the theory of Ferri that to make it effective, at least 1500 executions should take place every year in Italy; or that of De Flury and Tarde that executions should be frequent, that is, more frequent than what they are now. To make capital punishment effective, we do not believe that number and frequency always have decisive effect. We believe that its imposition should be permitted whenever and wherever the facts and circumtsances of the case demand such a measure, as in the cases of parricide and assassination, rape and robbery accompanied with homicide. We do not believe that a cold-blooded murderer should be given any further opportunity or chance of killing another, whether a private individual, a police officer or a prison official, before he could be compelled to pay the full penalty of the law. In this connection there is another question worthy of consideration. The courts of Spain and France and the Penal Code of the Argentine Republic, faithfully representing the gallant character of their people, do not permit the execution of (29) Tarde's Penal Philosophy, p. 539. (30) Tarde's Penal Philosophy, p. 547. any women; a rule worthy to be introduced into our system of penal legislation. Whether for sentimental reasons and greater regard and consideration for the gentler sex, or otherwise, we believe that such an attitude is a worthy one. (31) To summarize then, we believe in the justice and necessity of capital punishment in the cases we have enumerated, as justified by Nature and History as well, and for the improvement and defense of the individual and of the race; that it deters criminals and tends to reduce criminality; that women should never be executed; that executions should not be made publicly or in the view of the multitude; that other means should be employed such as electrocution or the use of poison; and that the criminal should be permitted to choose the manner in which he shall die, provided the one selected by him is one of the two; and that his death, if possible, should be brought about by himself. Then there would be no necessity for the executioner, and prison officials would be relieved of their most revolting and undesirable duty. (1) Tarde's Penal Philosophy, p. 557 LAND LEGISLATION A lecture delivered by Under-Secretary Rafael Corpus before the Law Forum, (Continued from November number) This Royal Decree was afterwards superseded by the Royal Decree of January 26, 1889, promulgated in Manila on May 2, 1889, which substantially reproduced the provisions of the preceding one; this is the same case with the Royal Decree of February 13, 1894, published in the Official Gazette of April 17 of the same year, this being the last one promulgated on sales during the Spanish regime. In regard to composition, the Royal Decree of June 28, 1880, in force in the Philippines on September 10 of the same year, superseded the provisions which were enforced previous to that year. Composition which, as the Decree itself explains has for its object the legalizing of the legal possession of state lands, has as much importance in the land legislation of the Philippines as the fact, to which I have already called your attention, that the people persistently clung to occupation as a mode of acquiring government land. "Ownership in the Philippines" said the Director General de Administración Civil in 1881, "may be said not to have existed. Except in very rare cases, occupation had been the only means employed for acquiring possession, and as this possession as well as the exercise of the same was not under the law, the possessor was simply an unlawful possessor or a usurper." Whether he was an unlawful possessor or a usurper, the Government of Spain observed toward him the most generous of considerations. Said a report approved in the Royal Decree of the 27th of November 1880: "It would not be equitable, and would perhaps bring about complications, to eject the unlawful possessors from the lands which they are enjoying"; and the "Dirección General de Administración Civil" in 1883 said, on its part, that those who had arbitrarily staked their claims to public lands should be maintained in their possession and enjoyment. It is because by the very Laws of the Indies, originally promulgated for Spanish America, composition was instituted before hand in these Islands, which composition is based on the principle of prescription, and the latter according to Manresa, "is a social necessity founded upon reasons of public order." The Royal Decree of June 25, 1880 above mentioned, drew a distinction between occupants with or without just title, and with or without good faith, and between cultivated and uncultivated lands, in order to classify the grants into gratuitous and onerous, and in order to establish the schedule of payment if the grant was onerous, because in the language of the report already referred to, of the Consejo de Filipinas, "the doctrines of the law can never countenance the placing of the possessor with title and the one without it on the same level, and the one who with his work has in some measure atoned for the vice in the acquisition, contributing moreover to the increase of wealth, should be rewarded." In virtue of this royal decree, the compositions of lands should be made till Sept. 10, 1881, but the composition of cultivated lands was indefinitely extended till April 17, 1894, the date on which the Royal Decree of February 13, 1894 was promulgated. But although this Royal Decree put an end to composition, the Spanish government again adopted a benevolent policy towards the legal occupants and granted a period of one year-till April 17, 1895-in order that by means of summary information, which is substantially based on that provided for in the Mortgage Law of 1889, said occupants may legalize their possession. But side by side with the summary information which was at bottom a composition, as has been said by our Supreme Court in the case of Cariño vs. Insular Government, 8 Phil. 150, the Mortgage Law which took effect on Oct. 15, 1894, provides for the "información posesoria", which opened the doors for all time to the legalization of possession. The last stage, to mind, of land legislation under the Spanish sovereignty, is the period of broad and liberal colonization, and belongs to the year 1884, when by the Royal Decree of the ........ of the same year, the Spanish Law of Agricultural Colonies of 1868 was extended to the Philippines. It coincides with the period when the Philippines fully enters upon its economic development. Freedom of commerce was in full swing, and capital from abroad flowed into the country. The Spanish Government responding to this general movement begins the year before, that is, in 1883, to authorize foreigners individually but not collectively to buy public lands from the State, but with rather heavy restrictions, although the "Ley Extrangería” of 1870 had already authorized foreigners to acquire and possess in the Philippines all kinds of private property, real and personal. As will be seen, the policy of Spanish legislation is one of full liberality. Peoples as well as government, being human as the members constituting them, upon seeing such vast stretches of land without the possibility of their being used by the small population, make haste to convert them into private property both for economic development and for financial reasons, although history shows that for economic purposes, intense cultivation is better, and that for revenue purposes, the nationalization of the soil is the most expedient method. The reason is that peoples as well as governments, in the infancy of their agrarian economy, in trying to solve the problem of economic development of a country, are also susceptible to that psychological prejudice of man who considers ownership as the greatest aim in regard to land, and therefore, in order to attract capital to the field, the best means that can be offered to it is an easy and cheap acquisition. To me, it has always been a question of difficult settlement beforehand whether these |