dren. And then wasn't the Lion full fed, and wasn't his coa sleek and glossy with his good living? Poor beast! he has since been deprived of his breakfasts of babies,-and yet, my lord, when I saw him last he looked as fresh as a four-year old, and roared as loud as any average clap of thunder. But I repeat it almost every man who would hang for murder, thinks without that hanging there'd be somebody ready to murder him: and therefore he respects and praises Jack Ketch as the scarecrow that keeps the assassin from his own particular throat. His sheep are safe enough, although Jack Ketch is no longer their shepherd; but he himself deprived of such a friend to take a proper vengeance, would be the mark for every other knife-the target for every bullet. "No," Bill Dixon, that drives 942-"No," says he, "don't hang for nothing but taking life; for life," says he, "is a holy thing! says 'Xactly so," says I; "and being so holy, are we taught to think it so, when we see one man in cold blood-paid for the work, too -strangle another? Life, that Jack Ketch takes for so much money for mind, man-killing is a matter of trade to him; everything he eats is seasoned with the halter-can't be preached up as a very holy thing-(no, not though there's a parson of the 'Stablished Church on the gallows to preach it). What one man does for a salary, it may be thought by some can't be so very horrible to do when the blood 's up to have revenge!" And after this fashion, my lord, do they preach the holiness of life; and folks are found "Amen" to the preaching. to cry 66 "But I'll tell you what," said Bill Wigram to me; Bill drives chariot 72" I'll tell you what. If you didn't hang for murder, you'd have people take the law themselves. I hope I'm a peaceable man," said Bill-and he is, I must own that "but if anybody was to kill anybody as belonged to me, and the law wouldn't kill him, I would!" But William," says I, "the law wouldn't let you have that pleasure. The law, if it was worth anything. would itself lay fast hold of the murderer, and keep him from doing further mischief. And when you talk about following a man through the world"—for he did-" that wouldn't be called for at all, since he'd be found on Norfolk Island or some such pleasant resting-place. But the fact is, you 're one of the folks that think murder not much unlike French brandy; take away the halter from one, and all the duty from the other, and all the world would suddenly be wanting their bellyful of both." And when we think of the murders Jack Ketch has committed, 559 -hanging innocent folks! And I should like to know if a man mayn't still be hung innocent of murder, as men have been killed innocent of house-breaking and sheep-stealing. I read a pretty case in the papers a day or two ago. Perhaps, my lord, you saw it. It was about one Joseph Mason, "late of Clifton, Yorkshire, who was at the York Lent Assizes, 1843, unjustly sentenced to twenty years' transportation." Well, the man was found out to be innocent; and Mr. H. R. Yorke, M.P., doing his best for himhe was brought back from chains and slavery to his poor wife and children. "He arrived in London on the 29th of April," and would you think it? The man went to the Home Office, where they gave him money-at least some forty shillings-to take him home. And the innocent man went down to York, and his friends made a little feast for him-though I haven't heard that the Mayor was at the party, or that the jury that tried him, or the judge that He was sentenced him, sent to wish him joy of his happy return. robbed of only three years' time and labour-he was chained and made a slave of for three years, and the head (and heart) of the Home Office making capital reparation, paid Joseph Mason's fare (first class, of course) down to York! Well, all this is bad enough -but suppose Joseph Mason had been hanged; and a twenty years' sentence of our day would certainly have been hanging a few years back; the kind "unwearied exertions" of all the House of Commons could not have brought back to the world Joseph Mason, murdered by Jack Ketch! The Home Office might have offered even more than fifty or sixty shillings, and poor Joseph must have still slept in his grave-his wife robbed of her husband -his children of their father. And yet, my lord, is it not horrible to think and to know that many a Joseph Mason has been killed-innocently killed-in cold blood by the hangman, for "the protection of property" and the cannibal "majesty of the law?" I know, my lord, I am but a cabman, and not at all fit to dot the i's or stroke the t's of the writers in The Times; still I must The Times, for the have a little say upon this hanging matter. most part, had a mild, good-tempered piece of writing enough on the meeting at Exeter Hall; nevertheless, here's a little bit that I don't think quite fair, "The other alternative is imprisonment. The sentence, we presume, must be for life. The confinement, we also presume, will be, in part at least, solitary. The substitute, then, for death is to be solitary confinement. For a quick and painless execution we are to have a tedious life-long torture. The effects of this kind of punishment are now well known-idiocy, madness, incurable weakness of mind and body. To save a man's life you convert him into a beast. To give his soul time for repentance, you debase it until it ceases to be a human soul, and becomes a mere animating spirit of so much worthless clay. And this is your notable scheme of criminal reformation, your notable substitute for capital punishments, ye speech-making philanthropists, ye transcendental moralists! You say that the image of man is sacred, that it shall not be defaced on a scaffold, and hung up on a gibbet. But is not his mind more sacred still, and shall that be destroyed for the benefit of humanity? You call an execution judicial murder, but we call solitary confinement a life-long torture. You stigmatise the law of the land as sanguinary and opposed to the genius of Christianity; we say that your law is worse than sanguinary, and opposed to that spirit of mercy for which you so ostentatiously contend." " Now, my lord, if I've properly attended to your speeches and writings, and the speeches and writings of others on this matter of man-killing, I have never understood that it was proposed to convert the murderer "into a beast," to debase his soul "until it ceases to be a human soul," to destroy, his "sacred" mind "for the benefit of humanity." I may be wrong; but I have always thought that the murderer, whilst he was prevented from doing further mischief-whilst, indeed, he was kept apart like a human rattle-snake-should not be debased into a beast; it was never thought of, if his life was saved from the hangman, that his spirit should be murdered by his gaoler.-Certainly, he was to be made a slave for life; but the slavery was not to be made so dark, so lonely, that the wretch was not to catch glimpses of heaven through it. What say you, my lord? But the great point is this; the great bungling is to teach gentleness and mercy and kindness towards man and man by public killing! To make the hangman the schoolmaster! What should we say of a father who, to teach his children the sin of picking pockets, did nothing but what is called, I think,-for as I once heard one great author say of another, my "knowledge of flash is very superficial,"what is called "draw the salt-box?". that is, pull a handkerchief out, without letting the lid be heard. I think this would be about as wise a plan to teach a respect for other people's pockets, as it is wise in the employers of Jack Ketch to teach a respect for other people's throats. I think so. But then, as I often say, I'm only an ignorant cabman. But to go back a little to their "sickly sentimentality." Depend upon it, some folks, if they 'd have had the words would have used 'em to any chicken heart who 'd turned pale when the rack cracked the bones of the criminal-or the thumb-screw made the blood spirt from under the nails. He'd have been "sickly sentimental" then, as the enemies of hanging are now. The Morning Post leaves its flounces and its frills, and opens its bookmuslin mouth against sickly sentimentality;" and even the Gardener turns from his carnations and his roses, to squirt at the white-faced weakness. He says, 66 "We have not yet heard of any philanthropic persons having taken these marauders [wasps] under their protection. That is a stage of civilisation at which we have not at present arrived; though, considering how far sickly sentimentality is going just now, there is no knowing what may happen. In the meanwhile, until wasp-catching becomes penal, either legally or socially, we would advise those who are likely to have anything eatable next autumn, to look sharp now."-Gardener's Chronicle. Mr. Gardener, without ever dreaming it, has ranged himself along with the rope party of all times. For they have always punished criminals as if they were mere wasps; as if they were altogether different things from the working bees of the hive; as if they were sent here, with their stings ready made, to seize upon the honey, to kill the honey-makers,—and for such reason were to be got rid of by steel or rope. At this very moment, my lord, writing here at the Goat and Compasses for I'm obliged, like other writers I've heard of, to scribble in all sorts of pot-houses wherever my stand may be-at this moment, Jem Davis has read an account of the Old Boey. Here it is : "The grand jury, among many similar instances, have had before them the case of Thomas Miller (No. 34, Middlesex) a child of eight years of age, for stealing lead to the value of with a former con viction, and the case of two boys, of the age of sixteen (No. 119, Middlesex), for stealing to the value of one shilling, with a former conviction against one of them for stealing to the value of sixpence. The irrationality of moving the complicated and costly machinery of law for the legal punishment (and for such acts) of children, neglected and untaught, forcibly impressed itself on the minds of the grand jury.” Now Thomas Miller, a few years ago, would have been looked upon as a born wasp ; and after a few years' stealing about the town would have been killed, not by Mr. Gardener's "pair of entomological forceps," but by Mr. Ketch's rope. And what "wasps" have not been killed! Wasps of courts, and alleys; wasps hatched to pilfer and sting; wasps especially brought into the world to rob and murder the honest, hard-working creatures of the hive! Human insects, as different from decent people as wasp from honeybee! But now, my lord, we are beginning to find out our mistake; to discover the "irrationality" of punishing the growth of our own neglect. And therefore, I say, "sickly sentimentality" must protect these wasps; seeing it is not their fault if they are not turned into working-bees. Mr. Carlyle, however, is of a different mind. I've been reading bits of his Oliver Cromwell in the Times, and oh! how he does lay about the men of your party, my lord, the abolitionists! "But in Oliver's time, as I say, there was still belief in the judgments of God; in Oliver's time, there was yet no distracted jargon of 'abolishing capital punishments,' of Jean Jacques philanthropy, and universal rosewater, in this world, still so full of sin.' Mr. Carlyle is a great writer for certain; nevertheless—but then, I'm only a cabman-some of his passages remind me of a basket of eels; you can see there's wriggling and life in what's before you; but for all that, you are sometimes plaguily puzzled to make out the proper heads and the proper tails. So, according to Mr. Carlyle, these judgments of God ought to continue to be acted by Jack Ketch. With Carlyle to hang is divine ! "Only in late decadent generations, fast hastening towards radical change, or final perdition, can such indiscriminate mashing-up of good and evil into one universal patent-treacle, and most unmedical electuary of Rousseau sentimentalism, universal Pardon and Benevolence, with dinner and drink, and one cheer more, take effect in our earth. Electuary very poisonous, as sweet as it is, and very nauseous; of which Oliver, happier than we, had not yet heard the slightest intimation, [the author knows this] even in dreams." When I read this, Sam Biggs called it "very startling ;" and so the sound of it-just the sound-is very startling; in the same way that any man would be very startling, if he walked about the world with a speaking trumpet to his mouth, making a row with "how d'ye do?" "it's a fine day," "what's o'clock ? "things common-place enough when uttered like a Christian, but to some folks very startling, when turned inside out, and bellowed as though every syllable had been fished up from the well of truth, and was as great a discovery as North and South America. And so, my lord, I remain, Your obedient humble Servant, |