Ambrose Gwinett Bierce Expediency Quotations

Capital Punishment, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons - including all the assassins - entertain grave misgivings

HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of the American States his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity have recently been ordered --the first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging Jerseymen.