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Similarly, a bullying minority in a diet, parliament or skupshtina would be prosecuted for treason to the most sacred institutions when fists or flying inkwells replace rhetoric. That the mere suggestion of such alawsounds ludicrous shows how remote we are from civilized institutions, and hence how gradual should be our departure from the severity of judicial homicide.
同樣，在國會、議會或其他最高立法機關中若出現少數以拳代口、認力不認理的強橫不法分子的話，他們也會因叛逆罪而被起訴。只要一提出這樣的法律就會使人們覺得荒唐可笑。這種情形恰好說明，我們的社會距離真正的文明還很遙遠，因此，也就只能朝著擺脫嚴刑峻法的目標逐步前進。
I say gradual and I do not mean standing still. For there is one form of barbarity in our law that I want to see mitigated before any other. I mean imprisonment. The enemies of capital punishment - and liberals generally - seem to be satisfied with any legal outcome so long as they themselves avoid the vicarious guilt of shedding blood. They speak of the sanctity of life, but have no concern with its quality. They give no impression of ever having read what it is certain they have read, from Wilde's De Profundis to the latest account of prison life by a convicted homosexual. Despite the infamy of concentration camps, despite Mr. Charles Burney's remarkable work, Solitary Confinement, despite riots in prisons, despite the round of escape, recapture and return in chains, the abolitionists' imagination tells them nothing about the reality of being caged.
我說的逐步前進并不意味著停步不前。我認為在目前的刑罰方式中確實有一種是極其殘酷的，必須優先予以緩解。我這里提的是監禁。那些反對實行死刑的人--他們多半為自由主義鼓吹者--似乎以為只要他們能逃避流血的罪責，任何其他法律上的后果都盡可不計。他們只顧癡談人的生命的神圣性，根本不管那究竟是一種什么樣的生命。從王爾德的《慘痛的呼聲》到最近由一個同性戀者所作的對獄中生活的描述，他們似乎都沒有讀過，盡管事實上他們也可能都讀過。盡管集中營的聲名已人人皆知，盡管有查爾斯·伯爾尼先生寫的《單獨監禁》這樣一部影響突出的大作，盡管我們知道監獄中常常發生犯人暴動、越獄逃跑、再度被捕并重新入獄這樣的事實，廢除派卻絲毫想象不出被關在牢籠里究竟是個什么樣的滋味。
