"
At a session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer held at Norristown,
Pa., for the county of Montgomery, Oct. 11, 1786, we are furnished
with a case in point. "A bill was presented against Philip Hoosnagle
for burglary, who was convicted by the traverse Jury on the clearest
testimony. He was, after a very pathetick and instructing admonition
from the bench, sentenced to five years' hard labour, under the _new_
act of Assembly. It was with some difficulty that this reprobate
was prevailed upon to make the election of labour instead of the
halter, ... a convincing proof," the report says, "that the punishments
directed by the new law are more terrifying to idle vagabonds than all
the horrors of an ignominious death."
Probably there are many more cases on record where criminals preferred
death to imprisonment. Burglary and forgery were once punished by
death. We have all noticed on the old Continental currency these
words: "Death to counterfeit this."
On the 17th June, 1791, Samuel Cook, in the eighty-fourth year of his
age, was executed at Johnstown, N.
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