USE THE LAST

Dunstan Times, Issue 1240, 4 December 1885, Page 3

USE THE LAST

The “Sydney Bubetiu” says : —Advo cates of the lash must grind their teeth at contumacy like this. Prisoner Rico was brought out to he flu 'ged in the ya-d of t.he Woolo nnoolno look-no a shore time hick. About a tioz j n police officials, a medical man, and some members of the Press were present. Rice was stripped and tie I to the triangles. Then he was asked by an official, “ Woo'd you like a glass of brandy ?” Advoca ea ot flogging should take an op porfunity of explaning why they offer brandy to a man about to bo flogged. Is it to quicken his sensibilities so that he shall have a keener consciousness of pain ? La it to dull them so that ho shall he less conscious? In either case there is no legal reason for the admioistrition ot the drug. It is bkely, however, thatit is administered under the conviction that it helo» to carry a man over a trying occasion. But there is a subsequent corresponding re'apse. Is it legal to raise a man into an abnormal state so as to run him through a punishment judically inflicted on him in his normal state? In Rice’s case the question was irrelevant. He decline 1 the nrandy. “It was drink brought, me here.” he said, “and I want no more of it.” The flogging went on. Blood oozed profusely from the red stripes on his back. The end came. He was untied. Another official approached and asked, “Will you have a drop of brandy ?” “ No,” replied Rice, “ I have ha 1 enough ot that.” Then he added, “Is that what you call a flogging ? I could stand that on my heal." The incident urges two n A ctions. Toe first makes the advocates of fluggng ona-h their teeth a‘ the way the victim scouts their fetish. The second drives the public mind to enquire whether inis legal, and. if legal, whether it is norm tl to whip a criminal with one hand and with the other hold to his mouth a bran ly fl isk from which, in every likelihoo the inspiration of the ci ime suffers for sprang. If a man before being flogged may hive bran ly, where is the logical reason for not giving him ether, or chloroform, or morphia ?