is a prevailing tendency with the mob, whenever any one at all above
their own condition is executed, to believe that he has been favoured
and allowed to escape. Even in the face of the most public execution,
such rumours are circulated. We understand that Mr Tawell is confidently
reported to be living at this moment in America. Such suspicions,
however ridiculous and absurd, must be cautiously guarded against.

After all, the mode of execution is but of secondary importance; arrange
it how you will, it is a lamentable business. Like all other
punishments, and still more than all other punishments, the actual
infliction of it is an evil to society. When the law passes from the
threat to the execution, it is a social disaster. The main point is,
that we present to the imagination of every man a great threat--that of
almost immediate extermination--if he lift his hand against his
neighbour's life.

That which renders the punishment of death peculiarly appropriate, in
our estimation, in the crime of murder, is not by any means its
retaliative character; the sentiment, that "blood must have blood," is
one which we have no desire to foster; and if some less grievous penalty
would have the same effect in deterring from the crime, we should, of
course, willingly adopt it. Our ground of approval is this, that it
presents to the mind an antagonist idea most fit to encounter the
temptation to the crime. As this temptation must generally be great, and
often sudden, that antagonist idea should be something capable of
seizing upon the apprehension at once--of exercising at once all its
restraining efficacy. Imprisonment for length of years--the mind must
calculate and sum up the long list of pains and penalties included in
this threat, before its full import is perceived. But death! And then
the after-death! For what makes the punishment of death so singularly
applicable to the case of murder is this, that it awakens whatever may
exist of religious terror in the mind of him who contemplates the crime.
On the one hand, he is about to commit a deed on which there are not two
opinions; it is not a crime made such by the laws; it is not even a
robbery, for which he may frame excuses out of his destitution, and the
harsh distinctions of society; it is murder, which heaven and earth,
rich and poor, equally denounce. On the other hand, his guilt will bring
him almost immediately before the tribunal of God, as well as the
judgment-seat of