The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-17 00:00:00

Public Executions in France.

The late execution of D.,tour for murder and that
criminal's revolting behaviour are commented on
in terms of great disgust by the Paris Nation,
which asks whether the scene witnessed at the final
moment is of a nature to produce any edification. in
the minds of the spectators. Far from such a result
arising, our contemporary considers the whole scene
of the execution as profoundly demoralising, and
founds on it an argument against capital punish•
ment being carried out in public, After describing
the conduct of Latour on the scaffold, the writer says,
" The crowd remained dumb with stupor, and could
not imagine a man insulting death when so near to it.
No jests were made to pass away the time, es re-
cently occurred on the Place de La Itcluette. The
gaiety of Latour disconcerted the curiosity of the
spectators, and filled them with a sort of terror, It
was not a lesson which they beheld before them, but
a scandal, a thing without a name, by which in a
few hours an entire population may see all the
bonds of its faith, morality, and sense of decency
torn asunder. Why were not the criminal and
the execution concealed from the public gaze ?
We demand closed doors for horrors of the kind.
Such blood does not purify—it sullies. Let it
be shed far from every eye, if you think it indis-
pensable that blood should be shed. In whatever
manner the condemned man may affront the last
punishment, whether in singing or turning pale
with terror, there is nothing in the spectacle of a
head falling. If the man turns pale, the people
say he is a coward ! It he is calm and collected,
they say he is courageous ! If he sings and swears
like Latour, the people no longer understand;
everything in their minds is confounded and mingled
together, and the only, impression they can feel
is the immoral one of that double outrage to
human life which is manifested in that argument
of the criminalists who say, in order to justify the
punishment of death, that all murderers fear it ?

'There are certainly murderers who fear it,
but we know of others now who are scarcely
moves by it. These latter must, however, be
put to death also; they have a right to the
same favour. Then it is that the scaffold becomes
the infamous tribune, in which the pinioned man
upon whom eternity is casting its shadow displays
its hideous infamy, and insults everything that the
world holds sacred—from the judge who has con-
demned him, to God who is about to judge him
also. 'What society gains by such a spectacle we
cannot say, but we know all that it may lose by it.
_ .

In the name of religion and morality, and in pre-
sence of the scandal which has just terrified the
populations of the Ariege, we demand that the
scaffold should disappear from our public place,
and that the last moments of the condemned man,
with his proseration before death or his supreme
raillery, should be concealed from all.

A SOLEMN PROTEST.

(From the Law Times of to•day.)

One of the cheap daily papers, the lowest happily in its
character of purveyor of news, although once it gave pro-
mise of better things, has adopted a new mode of drawing
a penny from the morbidly curious. At the news shops
we read, this week, placarded in the largest letters, "Inter-
view of our correspondent with Muller. Muller's state-
ment as to the night of the murder." From the paper itself,
so far as credit can be given to this kind of information,
it might be learnt that the correspondent led the pri-
soner Muller into a conversation about the nature of
his defence and about his possession of the watch and
chain, and other matters, including a cross-examina-
tion as to the mode in which ho procured his passage-
money. For any purpose of truth or justice such a con-
conversation is not worth ink and paper. But it is proper
to notice how, for the sake of pandering to the lowest appe •
tite for such exciting stuff, the humane principle of British
law where the commonest prisoner is concerned, much more
where one is on the way to a trial for his life, has been
slighted from vulgar motives of gain. According to law, a
prisoner is never invited to make any statement to any offi
car or any one concerned with him, or to any court where he
undergoes either his preliminary or his final trial, nor is he
allowed to make a statement without a caution that he may
be prejudiced by it in evidence. It is true that a statement
made to a newspaper correspondent is not likely, unless the
correspondent be sublcenaed, to be actually given in evi-
dence, but the publicity afforded to it causes it to operate
on the public, and consequently on the minds of the
jurymen. It is easy to caution jurymen to dismiss froea
their minds all that they heard or read before they come
into court, but as long as men are men the thing is impos-
sible. A great responsibility rests on those who increase
the juryman's difficulty by publicly prejudicing cases. All
newspapers which set humanity and lawfulness above
sordid pence carefully abstain from thus practically inter-
fering with the course of justice. When then shall we think
of a newspaper which, in the first days of a prisoner's arrest
on a capital charge, when his senses are scattered, before he
has even had an opportunity of taking counsel with his
legal advisers on his defence, or fur considering his
position, allcws its correspondent to thrust himself
into the prisoner's cell and question and cross-question
him on the vital points of his case, or which, at least,
instead of reprimanding a correspondent who has done so,
publishes conspicuously the disgraceful result. To take a
man at such a disadvantage for selfish ends is base and

cowardly.
There is another evil attending this new mole of pressing
prisoners into the service of journalism. The accused has
granted the correspondent the favour of an interview, which
is highly valued by the correspondent's pa} mas'.ers. Will
either they or he be slow to return the favour, if afterwards,
by leading articles, or in any other way, dust can be
thrown in the eyes of the public—for instance, as to the
character of circumstantial evidence brought forward by
the prosecution at the trial ? In case of an adverse;
verdict, commercial urati,u le will induce the jour-
nalist to play upon the sympathies of those who are
adverse generally to capital punishment. Jurymen will be
persuaded to sign pipers that, if they had kr-own so and
so at the trial, or if this or that fact were true, they would
have given a different verdict. Petitions will be advertised
gratis, and be written up before presentation at the Home-
office, and the Home Minister will be held up to indignation
and contempt for not listening to sophistries. The reaction
upon journal sm of an unwholesome craving for blood news
is capable of very dangerous consequences. We can only
trust that on this ground, as well as the ground of humanity,
the bad example of the present disreputable attempt to
increase circulation will find no tellowere in the decent
portion of the press,