Is the death penalty scary or not? Does it reduce crime? Can the death penalty eliminate a certain type of crime?.. The author raises these questions when he traces the development of the problem of the death penalty over the centuries. Thus, the subject of the essay, touching on the main problems of state life, arouses the most lively public interest, and the proposed book, both in the nature of the material collected in it and in its processing, is as consistent with the scientific needs of a specialist as with the social needs of an ordinary reader.

Reproduced from the 1867 edition, Kyiv