put out of the way

Yet some worried that people did not know enough about electricity to use it effectively for execution, nor, as one author writes in the first issue of the now-defunct Belford’s Magazine, should the criminal “be put out of the way in the easiest possible manner for him.”

In 1320 France had seen another assemblage of the Pastoureaux, when the dumb population arose, armed only with banners, for the conquest of the Holy Land, and an innumerable multitude wandered over the land, peaceably at first, but subsequently showing their devotion by attacking the Jews, and finally manifesting their antagonism to the hierarchy by plundering the ecclesiastics and the churches, until they were dispersed with the sword and put out of the way with the halter.

Such of the Orleans clergy as threatened trouble were put out of the way by false accusations and exiled, and the remainder not only submitted, but even made a jest of the fact that the election took place on the Feast of the Innocents— “Elegimus puerum, puerorum festa colentes, Non nostrum morem sed regis jussa sequentes.”

So the Lord chose Da-vid to be king when Saul should be put out of the way.

The bridge was then to be burned, the train attacked, and Mr. Lincoln to be put out of the way.