to his fellow-sufferer, when groaning with agony,' we were liable to one disorder more than another?' One malefactor, while under exhortation, and in the act of being pinioned, said, 'Look to your own sins, gentlemen; you have all enough to answer for,' addressing himself to those around him; 'mine are not heavier than your own; and if they should be found so, neither of you will answer for them.' In this temper and feeling he coolly walked to the scaffold, and there suffered the last penalty of the law.

But let us hear the testimony of one familiar with prisoners. He says, 'the valuable time of the malefactor is wholly wasted in encouraging vain hopes of pardon, in receiving visits, and in efforts to keep up a determined carriage to the last day, even on which he flatters himself that it may arrive, and therefore he must not confess. This is the state of mind of nine culprits out of ten until the eve of the fatal morning, when, fatigued, weak, and worn out with his efforts, the mind becomes suddenly depressed with disappointment, corresponding to the condition of the body; he then falls into a state of stupor and insensibility, from which it is almost a cruelty to attempt to rouse him, as it is too late now to make any beneficial religious impression on him. The next morning, when brought out of his cell to be pinioned, you behold a man already half dead; his countenance has fallen, his eyes are fixed, his lips are deadly pale and quivering, while his whole aspect, in anticipation of the reality, gives you the personification of death's counterpart.

Sometimes the affair takes quite another turn, and the malefactor is seized with a phrenzy for death, as being the only road to happiness, when he will smile and talk as if he were the happiest man in existence. This

effect is brought on by the operation of great excitement on weak minds.'

We have in this number taken only one view of our subject: The influence of Capital Punishment upon the prisoner himself. We have seen that no good influences have been produced upon his mind by his ignominious death.

In fact, public executions generally produce a sort of stupid brutality. Leadings, who was executed in Albany, is a remarkable illustration of the practical influence of the punishment of death. He went to the scaffold perfectly indifferent and reckless, and sunk in such a condition of stupid brutality, as to create on the part of many a disbelief of his soundness of mind. At the solicitation of some of the clergymen, who were laboring in vain to arouse him to some fitter state of preparation for the awful journey to which he was so soon to be despatched, the governor respited him twice, from week to week; but to no effect. On its being proposed to make an effort to procure a commutation of his sentence, Leadings expressed his hope that it would not be done, declaring his preference for execution over imprisonment in the State Prison. He was, in fact, desirous of having it over.’*

*Shakspeare has anticipated this picture. Its moral will readily suggest itself to the reader, when he reflects on the number of this class of men from whom these crimes of brutal violence proceed, and on their total insensibility to the terrors of death, which to them bear no comparison with those of a long imprisonment :

"Master Barnadine, what, hoa! your friend the hangman! you must be so good, sir, to rise, and be put to death: pray, Master Barnadine, awake, till you are executed, and sleep afterward."--Measure for Measure. Act 4, Scene 3.

'The wretch thus addressed is described as a "man that apprehends death no more dreadfully, but as a drunken dream ;-careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present or to come.""

ESSAY V.

EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE SPECTATORS.

Anecdote of a pick-pocket-Testimony of Dr. Dodd-Effect upon a celebrated banker—Description by an English traveller—Testimony of a witness-Testimony of a convict-Private executions-Execution of Lechler-Conduct of an executioner.

'What must men think, when they see wise magistrates and grave ministers of justice, with tranquillity, dragging a criminal to death, and, whilst the wretch trembles with agony, expecting the fatal stroke, the judge, who has condemned him, with the coldest insensibility, and, perhaps, with no small gratification from his authority, quits his tribunal to enjoy the comforts and pleasures of life?' BECCARIA.

It has been remarked, frequently, that the days of public executions, instead of being seasons of solemn reflection and sincere penitence, are seized on as days of obscene jesting, and coarse ribaldry. The loose and the abandoned, who attend, improve the opportunity to commit new depredations upon society. A pick-pocket, being asked by the chaplain of Newgate how he could venture on such a deed, at such a time, very frankly replied, that executions were the best harvests that he and his associates had; for, when the eyes of the spectators are fixed above, their pockets are unprotected below.'

In an account of the execution of two persons in England, forty arrests were made for the same crime. 'We constantly,' says the unhappy Dr. Dodd, in his sermon on this subject, himself destined at a subsequent period (1777) to suffer the same fate, 'hear of

crimes not less flagitious than those for which the criminal is to die, perpetrated even at the very place and moment of his punishment.' One of the jury that tried and convicted poor Dr. Dodd, was executed on the same gallows, (Tyburn,) for the same offence, (forgery,) within two years afterward. And so, too, it is said of Mr. Fauntleroy, the celebrated banker, who was executed for the same crime, that the idea of committing it first entered his mind while returning home from an execution which he had witnessed, while passing, one morning, along the street in front of Newgate. One grown man,' says Mr. E. G. Wakefield, 'of great mental powers and superior education, who was acquitted of a charge of forgery, assured me that the first idea of committing a forgery occurred to him at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing the execution of Fauntleroy.' The Rev. Mr. Roberts, of Bristol, England, presents the astounding fact, that he conversed with one hundred and sixty-seven convicts under sentence of death, one hundred and sixtyfour of whom had witnessed executions.*

Read the following description, given by a writer in his travels in England. After describing the usual preparations, he says:

There were present about two thousand persons, of both sexes, and of every age, rank, and character. There was the urchin, who, evidently, had played the truant, to see the man hanged.' There was the aged man, white with a succession of forgotten winters, and furnishing, in his collapsed and wasted exterior, only an index to the vital ebb within-he had come to treat his dotage with what had never blessed the vision of his youth or prime. He had requested his son to attend and protect him; but his son had been a

* See a valuable work entitled, 'Necessity of Popular Education.' Appendix, p. 183. By JAMES SIMPSON.-Boston, 1836.

rover, and had seen many such sights, and the old man wondered at his lack of gratitude and affection. There was the pedlar with his wares; the cake-and-pie man with his quaint cry; the ballad singer, and a blind man with his clarionet. There was the prostitute, with her foul mouth and unblushing flaunt, and troops of drunken sailors, carefully tended by London pick-pockets. Three of the latter class were detected at their trade, and taken to jail from the ground. There were plays and games too-pitch and toss and leap-frog; and anticipations crowning all! Such was the scene around the gallows.

After speaking of the appearance of the prisoner, his chains and his coffin, and the priest, 'with white robes and reverend mien,' he says:

The heart of the reader would sicken at the recital of the particulars; suffice it that I give an instance or two of the depravity exhibited on the occasion. On the floor of the wagon lay the shoes of the dead man. One of the hopeful class, for whose edification the hanging had been done, taking hold of them, observed,' Bythey're clumpers. How I wish I'd seen 'em before he was swung off; I'd a made him a bid at 'em.' 'They're a perquisite of Jack Ketch,' remarked a second, both of which sallies were hailed with decided approbation. While this was proceeding at the wagon, the body, itself, was not unmolested. A bumpkin, kneeling on the back of the frame, reached out his hand to that of the corpse, swinging it round so as to bring the face towards him. He then seized the wrist, and, after examining the cuff, discovered a pin, which he exposed aloft, exclaiming with an oath, This will do to pick my teeth after dinner.' Another, equally eager to signalize himself, twisted the body round, and examined the other hand. A cry of derision added chagrin to his disappointment; while the more fortunate explorator, sticking the trophy in the breast of his coat, was greeted with obstreperous plaudits. The dead man's legs were parted, and his manacles exposed; and one essayed even to lift the cap, but failed to reach it. Altogether, the scene was so disgustingly brutal, that I cannot choose but shudder at its remembrance, even after the lapse of nine years.

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