Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/640

 PUNISHMENT

568

PUNISHMENT

teaching of the Catholic Church, and the power of the State to visit upon culprits the penalty of death de- rives much authority from revelation and from the writings of theologians. The advisability of exercising that power is, of course, an affair to be determined upon other and various considerations.

Much less severity prevails in England at present than during the reign of George III, when Sir William Blackstone felt impelled to say in his "Commen- taries": "Yet, though . . . we may glory in the wisdom of the English law, we shall find it more diffi- cult to justify the frequency of Capital Punishment to be found therein, inflicted (perhaps inattentively) by a multitude of successive independent statutes upon crimes very different in their natures. It is a melan- choly truth, that among the variety of actions which men are daily liable to commit, no less than one him- dred and sixty have been declared by Act of Parlia- ment to be felonious without benefit of clergy; or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death" (bk. IV, c. 1).

The traditional method of capital punishment in England has been by hanging the criminal by the neck until dead, although during the Middle Ages behead- ing was customary. The English law in the time of Blackstone provided that a person convicted of trea- son of any kind should be drawn or dragged to the place of execution; that in case of high treason affect- ing the king's person or government, the person con- victed should be disembowelled while still alive, be- headed, and his body divided into four quarters. Murderers were not only hanged by the neck until they were dead, but their bodies were publicly dis- sected. A writ of execution upon a judgment of mur- der before the king in Parliament, delivered in May, 1760, recited the judgment: "That the said Lawrence Earl Ferrers, Viscount Tamworth, shall be hanged by the neck until he is dead and that his body be dis- sected and anatomized." This barbarous sentence was literally carried into effect. After death, the body was conveyed from Tyburn in his lordship's landau, drawn by six horses, to Surgeon's Hall in the City of London; and there, after being disembowelled and cut open in the neck and breast, was exposed to public view in a room on the first floor. The dissection of the bodies of criminals led to great abuse, and was abol- ished in 1832.

In England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the people seemed to have a passion for witnessing public executions. Many hired windows at a considerable expense for such occasions. George Selwyn was very fond of executions. His friend, G. Williams, writing to him of the condemnation of a man named John Wcsket (9 Jan., 1765) for robbery in the house of his master, the Earl of Harrington, says: "Harrington's porter was condemned yesterday. Cadogan and I have already bespoke places at the Brazier's. I presume that we shall have your Hon- our's company, if your stomach is not too squeamish for a single swim" (Selwyn's Correspondence, I, 323). The Earl of Carlisle, writing to Selwyn, speaks of having attended the execution of Hackman, a mur- derer, on 19 April, 1779 (ibid., IV, 2.5). Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, had a keen desire for witness- ing executions, and often accompanied criminals to the gallows. He had a seat in the mourning coach conveying Hackman to Tyburn, and in the same car- riage rode the ordinary of Newgate and the sheriff's officer. Visiting Johnson on 23 June, 1794, Boswell mentions that he has just seen fifteen men hanged at Newgate" (Boswell, "Life of Johnson", Croker's edi- tion, VIII, 331).

During the French Revolution, executions in Paris were witnessed by vast throngs including many female Jacobins. These' bliiinltliirsly women employ<>(l tliciii- selves with their knitting while attending daily at the Bcaffold, hence the familiar name les Iricoleuses (the

knitters). Those were the palmy days of the guillo- tine, the instrument which is still used for the decapi- tation of criminals in France. It was introduced by the National Convention during the progress of the French Revolution and was named after its supposed inventor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a physician. He was not the inventor, but was only the person who first proposed its adoption. It consists of two upright posts grooved on the inside and connected at the top by cross beams. In these grooves a knife, having a sharp blade placed obliquely, is allowed to fall with tre- mendous force upon the neck of the victim who is bound upon a board placed at the foot of the upright posts. It is said by some authorities that this machine was invented by the Persians. It was well known in Italy, and from the thirteenth century onward it was the privilege of the nobility to be put to death by a machine of this kind, which was called mannaia. Conradin of Swabia was executed by such a machine at Najiles in 1268. An instrument closely resembling the guillotine was employed for public executions dur- ing the Middle Ages. In Scotland, a machine called the " Maiden", very similar to the guillotine, was used. A like machine was also used by the Dutch in the eighteenth century for executing slaves in their col- onies. The ordinary mode in which capital punish- ment is performed in England and in the United States is by hanging. This was first established in England in 1241, when Maurice, a nobleman's son, was hanged for piracy. In the military service capital punish- ment is inflicted by shooting, except in the case of spies and traitors, who are killed by hanging; such punishment being considered very disgraceful and therefore suited to the offence. American civil and criminal procedure having been derived from the common law of England, legislation has generally been in close accord with that of the English in regard to the punishment of crime.

The punishment of death, universal in his day, was declared by the famous Marquess Beccaria to be abso- lutely without justification. In his famous work, "Crime and Punishment", he says (chap, xxviii): "The punishment of death is not authorized by any right; for I have demonstrated that no such right exists. It is, therefore, a war of a whole nation against a citizen, whose destruction they consider as necessary or useful to the general good. But, if I can further demonstrate that it is neither necessary nor useful, I shall have gained the cause of humanity. The death of a citizen can be necessary in one case only: when, though deprived of his liberty, he has such power and connexions as may endanger the security of the nation; when his existence may produce a dangerous revolu- tion in the established form of government. But even in this case, it can only be necessary when a nation is on the verge of recovering or losing its liberty; or in times of absolute anarchy, when the disorders them- selves hold the place of laws. But in a reign of tran- quillity; in a form of government approved by the united wishes of the nation; in a state fortified from enemies without, and supported by strength within; . . . where all power is lodged in the hands of the true sovereign; where riches can purchase pleasure and not authority, there can be no necessity for taking away the life of a subject."

The learned marquess makes a most impressive argument in favour of penal servitude for life as a substitute for the judicial killing of criminals. Vol- taire, in his commentaries on the treatise of Beccaria, emphasizes his opposition to capital punishment by saying, "It hath long since been observed that a man after he is hanged is good for nothing, and that punish- ments invented for the good of society ought to be useful to society. It is evident that a score of stout r(il>b<'rs, condemned for life to some public work, would serve the state in their punishment, and that hanging them is a benefit to nobody but the execu-