Page:The Inner House.djvu/156

152 In reply, I pointed out that, as regards our Administration, we were not then considering it at all: that as for the mode of punishment, he had not only to consider the criminals, but also the People, and the effect of the Punishment upon them: we were not only to punish, but also to deter. I therefore begged the Court to go back to one of the former methods, and to one of the really horrible and barbarous, yet comparatively painless, methods. I showed that a mere report or announcement, made in the Public Hall, that the Arch Physician had been executed for Treason, would produce little or no effect upon the public mind, even if it were added that the two women, Mildred and Christine, had suffered with him: that our people needed to see the thing itself, in order to feel its true horror and to remember it. If Death alone were wanted, I argued, there were dozens of ways in which Life might be painlessly extinguished. But it was not Death alone that we desired; it was Terror that we wished to establish, in order to prevent another such attempt.

"Let them," I concluded, "be taken forth in solemn Procession to the open space before the Public Hall; we ourselves will form part of that Procession. Let them in that place, in the sight of all the People, be publicly decapitated by the Porter of the House, John Lax."

There was a good deal of opposition, at first, to this proposition, because it seemed barbarous and cruel; but the danger which had threatened the Authority—nay, the very existence—of the College, caused the opposition to give way. Why, if I had not been on the watch, the Secret would have been gone: the College would have been ruined. It was due to me that my proposals should be accepted. The sentence was agreed upon.

I am bound to confess that, on being brought back to receive the sentence of the Court, the Prisoners behaved