PUBLIC EXECUTIONS. (From the Times, November 20.)

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 419, 20 April 1850, Page 2

PUBLIC EXECUTIONS. (From the Times, November 20.)

The question of capital punishments appear* likely to be closely associated with the questian of public executions. We do not conceeive, however, that this circumstance will either complicate the discussion or prejudice that view of it in which, after much deliberation, we still find ourselves steadily confirmed. We are willing, on the contrary, that the two questions should for all purposes of argument be identified, for we are convinced that the same considerations which warJant the assumtion of power over life and death do also imperatively command that the ezerciee of thia power should be a public solemnity. Upon this, as upon other points of the subject, the chief errors of opinion have arisen fiom a precipitate or wilful confusion of two different propositions. Those persons who start with the assumption that the end and staadard of all puniibments should be prevention, and that the penalty for a crime should be measured by the severity ltquisite to preclude the chance of its repetition, will pruaably find in the registeis of current history a good si ore of arguments for proving that hanging has not hitherto prevented murder, and that spectacles oi" public executions have failed in producing the specific effects anticipated from their opera* tion. But we do not admit that a man is therefore hand in the sight of d-iy in order simply that those who witness his death may be deterred from imitating his crime. We say that such drath was the due wages jof his sin— that it was a retribution exacted in pursuance of an express delegation of this awful power, and in conformity with the instinctive add eternal pnucij les of right. We say that a murderer has deserved death at the hand of his fellow men, even if it were certain that his guilt wou'd never find imitatutorsin future. This doctrine contains no unwarranted assumption. We do not believe that the principles on which it rests w»uld be thought questionable in any sound and unbiassed judgment. Apart from the impulses naturally originating in the incidents of particular examples, we do not believe that any reasoning person would, from his own feelings, impung ' the verity or jus' ice of the principle which asserts that life is due for life, and that blood in this instance shall be shed by man. All idea of vengeance, that is to aay of vindictiveness, is removed from the sentence by the very essence of the proceeding. The cognizance of the crime is taken from the bands of the parties concerned, apd is transferred to a tribunal which is made as perfect an embodiment of abstract justice as human nature will allow — such transfer being for the expresss purpose of substituting the solemn decisions of law for the criminal impulses of pauion. We must not pursue this topic, for our present object is less to justify the actual infliction of capital punishment than to show how incompatible it any privicy of execution with the essential character of that authority which in these acts is assumed. The infliction of death is the exercise of one of the most solemn and awful rights pertaining by Divins delegation and immutable law Jo a civil community, aud it is of the very essence of the act itself that liabilities so terrible as those incurred by the wilful shedding of man's blood should, before God and the people, be discharged. With these remarks we may proceed to the consideration of the letter addressed to vi by Mr. Diclceui, which appeared in our yesterday's impression. It follows directly from our premises, that from the two arguments brought against the publicity of executions, one only can be valid. To say that no salutary effect is wrought upon those who witness them, is to employ an argument which in the first place is incapable of adequate lubstantiation, and in the next place, affects only in a remote degree the question at issue. It is obviously almost beyond the power of indiviual or even collective observation to teach what these spectators do not do. We may note their failures, but we cannot detect their operation. No spectator on these occasions, whatever vre be tfie extent of his experience or the.accutcness of his insight iuto human nature, can possibly ascertain the full effects of the spectacle on the variety of cha-acters around him.— The facts therefore employed in this argument, of the ineffieacy of public executions, must necessarily be taken as not proven. But even suppoiing it could be demonstrated that no people were deterred from mur« der by seeing a murderer hanged, the reply would de, that he was not hanged for the purpose limply of producing this end. He is hanged for shedding man's blood, and he is hanged publicly because the visibleinvestiture of a community with this awful power is, in its nature one of the most solemn public acts which that community could pet form. The next consideration is that of the pobilive evil which public executions may be found to work— and here there are materials for sounder argument. When we hear that a spectacle is not salutary, or that a lesson is not instructive, it is enough to answer that neither a lesson nor a spectacle was the main object proposed ; but if we are told that an institution or practice does, either from the depravity of nature or the social conditions of the age, opeiate plainly and grievously to

the prejudice of the. national morality, it becomes necessary to weigh well the reasons by which such atl allegation it supported ; and it is precisely at this point of Iris argument that we conceive Mr. Dickens to fail. In his first letter the cardinal and all-im-portant statement, that, "nothing which ingenuity could devise to be done in the tame compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution,' 1 was * purely unsupported assertion, doubilesi of a most sincere and conscientious belief, but still an aisertion only ; nor does he, in the present communication, attempt any further substantiation of the fact alleged than is contained in a private opinion. " I hold," sa\s he, " that no human being, not being better for such a sight, rould go away without being the worse for it " But who is to say how many went their way uno better ?" and who, after this, will show that ihe others "became vtorse?" From Mr. Dickens' own description it might almost be argued that worse than what he found there could not be ; so that any possible deterioration of character might ob excluded from the question. He even draws an argument from the uniform and desperate viciousness of the class which these speclacles attract, and we suspect that in this is contained the true explanation of the scene which so astounded him. There was a mob of the lowest order, and such mobs invariably comport themselves as Mr. Dickens saw. Our own report of the spectacle contained a descriptive touch in the accuracy of which we fully believe, " that the mob was neither better nor worse behaved than mobs -usually are." Mr. Dickens attributes to on execution what he should have attributed to a crowd. The spectacle was not the cause, but the occasion, of the display, and it was the contrast of the conduct and the occasion which added such horrors to au ordinary scene. Bad men are worse in great numbers, and worst to of all where, as as such terrible exhibitions, they have the scene almost wholly to themselves. But a prize right or a bullbaittng would have had just the same effect. " Doubtless," Mr. Dickens will probably say, " and for that one chief cause were bullbaitings and prize-fight* suppressed." But would he say that the question before us requires no stronger argument than the toleration or non toleration of a bullbait ? The adoption of one line of argument necessarily invalidates many of the pleas collaterally advanced on the other side. What Fielding says about the stage, effect of privacy and mystery, is undoubtedly true ; but stage-effect should not be the first consideration of a community in hanging a murderer. Nor can we here omit remarking — although the point, as he have now stated the ca-e, becomes less essential — that Mr. Dickens , in aguing for the effect of mystery from the minor operations of the law, forgets altogether the vital difference between all other penalties and the penalty of death. Death, it must be remembered in conducting these discussions, is not the greatest on a list of graduated punishments, but a punishment standing alone, and unapproached in its awful magnitude. What applies in other cases will not apply here. Men do not, it is very true, doubt about transportation or imprisonments, but thai is because neither imprisonments nor transportations are penalties suggestive of doubt. But there is no single point of which vulgar nature is so credulous as on the death or survivals of notorious persons. The whole history of pretenders aud impostors, in various ages, turns upon this strange propensity of the multitude. Even a« it is, a public execution is hardly sufficient to certify the facts ; and as one of many examples, we may may state of our own knowledge, that it is at this moment currently believed among the peasantry in the neighbourhood of Aylesbury, that Tawell, the Quaker, was not really hanged, but is alive still ; nor should we anticipate the smallest difficulty iv circulating at Norwich a report that Rush was never veritably executed on Castle-bill. These, however, are j but cursory remarks ; our main argument is based on other and higher considerations than the incidental effect of the spectacle. But, how does Mr. Dickens propose to give notoriety to an execution while he destroys its publicity ? Simply by empannelling a jury of twenty -four persons, selected from different classes of the community, who shall be compelled, whether they will or no, to witness the awful spectacle ! To have to sit iv a jury-box is a disagreeable duty at all times, but vre solemnly protest against the infliction of an outrage upon the feelings of mankind, more intolerable than the press-gang itself.