the man’s fault.  It is a dreadful thing in life that so much of atonement for wrong-doing is vicarious.  If it were possible in such a case to think only of the banker’s or county treasurer’s wife and children, any man would pardon the offender at once.  Unfortunately, it is not right to think only of the women and children.  The very fact that in cases of this class there is certain to be pressure from high sources, pressure sometimes by men who have been beneficially, even though remotely, interested in the man’s criminality, no less than pressure because of honest sympathy with the wife and children, makes it necessary that the good public servant shall, no matter how deep his sympathy and regret, steel his heart and do his duty by refusing to let the wrong-doer out.  My experience of the way in which pardons are often granted is one of the reasons why I do not believe that life imprisonment for murder and rape is a proper substitute for the death penalty.  The average term of so-called life imprisonment in this country is only about fourteen years.

Of course there were cases where I either commuted sentences or pardoned offenders with very real pleasure.  For instance, when President, I frequently commuted sentences for horse stealing in the Indian Territory because the penalty for stealing a horse was disproportionate to the penalty for many other crimes, and the offense was usually committed by some ignorant young fellow who found a half-wild horse, and really did not commit anything like as serious an offense as the penalty indicated.  The judges would be obliged to give the minimum penalty, but would forward me memoranda stating that if there had been a less penalty they would have inflicted it, and I would then commute the sentence to the penalty thus indicated.

In one case in New York I pardoned outright a man convicted of murder in the second degree, and I did this on the recommendation of a friend, Father Doyle of the Paulist Fathers.  I had become intimate with the Paulist Fathers while I was Police Commissioner, and I had grown to feel confidence in their judgment, for I had found that they always told me exactly what the facts were about any man, whether he belonged to their church or not.  In this case the convicted man was a strongly built, respectable old Irishman employed as a watchman around some big cattle-killing establishments.  The young roughs of the neighborhood, which was then of a rather lawless type, used to try to destroy the property of the companies.  In a conflict with a watchman a member of one of the gangs was slain.  The watchman was acquitted, but the neighborhood was much wrought up over the acquittal.  Shortly afterwards, a gang of the same roughs attacked another watchman, the old Irishman in question, and finally, to save his own life, he was obliged in self-defense to kill one of his assailants.  The feeling in the community, however, was strongly against him, and some of the men high up in the corporation became