r is manifestly a ridiculous idea--and connect it with what
dreadful realities we may, the sense of the comic or absurd will
predominate in the minds of the populace, ever alive to the appreciation
of the preposterous or the discrepant, and never willingly disposed to
serious reflection. The vagabond kennel-raker, the nomadic coster, the
houseless thief, the man of the lowest order of intellect or of morals,
sees the majesty of the law descending to the punch-and-judy level, and
getting rid of its criminals by the same process as the hunch-backed
worthy adopts to get rid of his tormentor--and being accustomed from his
infancy to laugh heartily at the latter exhibition, he is not likely to
retain for any length of time a grave demeanor in presence of the former
one. A flogging in the army is allowed by all unfortunate enough to have
witnessed it to be a far more impressive spectacle than a hanging at the
Old Bailey. Strong men are known to faint at the sight of the one, while
boys and women find amusement in the other. If the object of either
exhibition be to deter the spectators from offending against the laws, why
is the discrepancy between the effects of the two all on the wrong side?
unless it be that the one exhibits the semblance at least of Justice
vindicating her violated authority with a deserved though terrible measure
of severity, while the other comes into view as a mere hasty and bungling
business of killing, the vulgar and beggarly details of which it is
impossible to connect in imagination with her divine attributes.

Some years before, I had witnessed in Paris the execution of two men for
assassination. The crowd on that occasion, in the Place de Greve, was as
great as now in the Old Bailey; but their decorum, I am bound to state,
was infinitely greater. I can only account for this difference in favor of
a population among whom human life is at a far greater discount than it is
with us, from the fact that among the French a public execution is a much
more impressive spectacle than it can be made to be in England. The
guillotine bears a higher character, perhaps, because it wears a more
serious and terrible aspect than the gallows; and the functionary who
controls its avenging blade does not, as with us, bear a name the synonym
of all that is loathsome and repulsive. It is the same class of men and
the same order of minds that flock together to gaze at public executions
wherever they take place; but I questi