Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/18

 3 treated of at length, some thirty years before its suppression, by M. Boucher d'Argis. He attempted to find its origin in the custom (mentioned by Plutarch) of sometimes sub stituting a proxy effigy for the person des tined to be sacrificed at a triumph. He says that some execution by effigy was used by the ancient Greeks; but the Greek punish ment of Stele, to which he probably refers, consisted simply in engraving the name and the offence of the criminal in large letters upon a pillar. The French law vindicated its outraged honor upon the effigy of a criminal in cases of contumacy, that is, when the criminal ab sented himself or took to flight. It is not impossible that the condemned sometimes secreted himself in the crowd, and saw with comical relief his picture or his doll suffering in his stead. The usage first appeared in France in the time of Louis VI., at the be ginning of the twelfth century; and the most ancient example we have of such an execution is that of Thomas de Marne, the foe of the bishops, whom this royal favorite of the Church condemned for the crime of high treason. Passing over some centuries, we find in the Ordonnancc Criminelle of 1670, an attempt to regulate these histri onic executions. Punishments in effigy were only to be permitted when the criminal was condemned to death; when he was con demned to the galleys, perpetual banish-. ment, the whip, or the wheel, but could not be got at, his name only was to be written on a ticket, and fastened up in some public place, to put the people in mind of his crime, and make him infamous. When the crimi nal was condemned to death, but had man aged to escape from the grasp of the law, the arrest and punishment of the guilty seem to have been ludicrously carried out from point to point with his effigy. The "guy," as we should call it, of the defaulter was incarcerated in the prison; the execu tioner solemnly entered its cell with an es cort and all the apparatus of punishment; the picture or doll was given up to him, and

it was led to the place of punishment with pomp and circumstance, and made to un dergo the fate intended for the fortunate deserter whom it represented. Whether or not the Ordonname restricted the effigy to a single counterfeit presentment, it is cer tain that before this regulation effigies had been multiplied to a considerable extent. Thus, the Duke of La Villette, who was condemned to the block in 1639, was be headed in effigy in three different cities on the same day — Paris, Bordeaux, and Bayonne. The criminal himself was all the while safe in England. Although the Revolution abolished the legal executions by effigy, popular animos ity still continued to visit its dislike of its contemporary enemies upon their images. Burnings and hangings of stuffed dolls be came parts of the programme of the festi vals of the Republic. Popular vengeance upon the effigies of the unpopular always appears with the regular ity of a law in epochs of unusual excite ment, and even in the most enlightened countries we have striking instances of the absurd length to which political or re ligious frenzy will carry a usually soberminded and intelligent population. The moral of this punishment by effigy is indi cated about as distinctly as is possible in the argumentation of the citizen of Utica who visited Artemas Ward's show : " He walks up to the cage containin' my wax Ag gers of the Lord's Supper, and ceases Judas Iscariot by the feet and drags him on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard as he cood. 'What onder the son are you about?' cried I. Sez he: 'What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here for?' and he hit the wax figger another tremenjus blow on the hed. Sez I : ' You egrejus ass, that air's a wax figger, a reprensentashun of the false Postle.' Sez he : 'That's all very well fur you to say; but I tell you, old man, that Judas Iscarrot can't show hisself in Utiky with impunity! ' — with which observashun he caved in Judassis hed."