ABSTRACT: As the State represents the people's interests it must set an example regarding the ethical behaviour it requires of its citizens by law.

It cannot, therefore, inflict the death penalty

(WORLDWIDE PARLIAMENTARY CAMPAIGN FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY BY THE YEAR 200 - Radical party/International League for the abolition of the death penalty by the year 2000)

As a young writer, I have given a lot of thought to the laws created by Emperor Joseph II, son of Maria Theresa, who was what one might call an enlightened despot. He may not have abolished slavery completely but he did make the serf's lot a considerably happier one by issuing a decree of tollerance, which paved the way for the emancipation of Protestants and Jews. Furthermore, he abolished the death penalty throughout the monarchy.

Why did he actually do this? Was it out of indulgence or clemency? Not at all. Joseph II was - as I have described him in the monograph I wrote - a hard man, who was as exacting with his subjects as he was with himself, and a puritan - quite unlike his brother Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany, a statesman who was both jovial and extremely adaptable. Joseph II was against the death penalty because of his sense of justice. Or what he supposed to be a sense of justice. He maintained that for serious crimes, such as infanticide, parricide or high treason which were punishable by death - in keeping with the concept of vengeful justice adhered to then - the coup de grâce was not enough! He considered hard labour for life far more appropriate, and in keeping with the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill."

I am neither a monarchist nor a puritan, but I have studied Machiavelli's discourses enough to know the difference between ethics and politics. I know from experience that a laxist attitude is of no help to a society that has to defend itself against crime. The hard-won right to life and to one's own property, and personal safety, must be defended, and those people who violate it, must be punished. Certainly, one must combat crime in whatever way possible, with education, preventive measures and a re-structuring of society. But the act of acknowledging society's responsibility regarding the increase of crime we have witnessed recently, even in the most developed countries, does not justify impunity. If I am against the death penalty, it is primarily because I believe that the State - in that it represents the people's interests - must set an example as regards the ethical behaviour it requires of its citizens by law. The State must punish the guilty, render criminals harmless but refuse to inflict the death

penalty, which is inhuman - whatever the method chosen - and which profoundly disturbs our moral sensitivity. In a world in which those forms of hatred and violence that we believed to have disappeared continue to flourish and the progress made by civilization is threatened - in all countries - by a new wave of barbarity, I believe that the abolition of the death penalty, once and for all, on the part of the U.N. would be an act of faith in the sacredness of human life and in the values of brootherhood and freedom that it is our duty to defend.