A letter has been published which the Home Secretary has
sent in answer to the many appeals on behalf of Daisy Lord, who, it will be remembered, was sentenced to death for the murder of her infant child. The capital sentence was altered to penal servitude for life, and the appeals were made against this punishment. The Home Secretary points out that there is " a tendency to underrate, and even to ignore, the seriousness of the crime of infanticide." He then explains the practice of the Home Office, which, he thinks, is not generally understood. The death sentence in cases like Daisy Lord's is always commuted, and "penal servitude for life " is regarded as an indefinite penalty, with which the Home Secretary can deal at his discretion. The prisoner is carefully brought under good influences, including that of a committee of ladies from outside the prison, and the term of imprisonment rarely exceeds three years. The authors of the appeals have spoken of the whole procedure as a kind of brutal farce and bullying ; but we are astonished and disconcerted to notice' that nothing is said on behalf of the infants who have been, or yet may be, murdered. We acknowledge fully the hardness of the lot of a woman like Daisy Lord, who is even more sinned against than sinning. But laws framed on hard cases are bad laws. The retention of capital punishment places murder as a thing apart, and this conception of it is at once a restraint upon easily tempted persons and a protec- tion to the public, which, it is necessary to point out, includes helpless infants. It is a sham humanitarianism which forgets these considerations.
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