The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-02 00:00:00

VIC2OR HUGO ON CAPITAL PUNISH-

MENT.

At Paris, in 1818 or 1819, about noon one summer's day,
I was passing the Place du Palais de Justice. A crowd
had assembled around a post. I approached. Tied to this
post, a carcanet round her neck, and a placard on her head,
was a human being, a young woman, or a young girl. A
chafing-dish filled with live coals was before her at her feet,
an iron with a wooden handle was being heated in the em-
bers ; the crowd appeared contented. This woman was
guilty of what the law termed a domestic theft.
Suddenly, as the clock struck 12, behind the woman,
and unseen by her, a man mounted the scaffold ; I had
remarked that the woman's woollen dress had an opening
behind, drawn together by strings; the man quickly untied
the strings, drew aside the dress, bared the back of the wo-
man to the waist, seized the iron from the chafing-dish, and
applied the iron, loaning heavily on the bare shoulder. The
iron and the hand of the executioner disappeared in a white
smoke. After a lapse of forty years I still have in my ears,
and shall for ever have in my soul, the frightful cry of that
criminal. To my mind the thief had become a martyr. I
quitted the spot—l was then sixteen—determined hence-
forth to struggle against the evil deeds of the law.
Of these evil deeds, the punishment of death is the
worst. And what has not been seen, i❑ our time even, and
without leaving ordinary tribunals and ordinary misde..
meanours I On the 20th of April, 1849, a servant, named
Sarah Thomas, a girl of seNenteen, was executed at Bristol,
for having, in a moment of anger, killed her mistress who
had beaten her, with a blow by a log of wood. The con-
demned girl did not wish to die. Seven men were re-
quired to take her to the gallows. She was hanged by force.
At the moment when the cord was being adjusted, the exe-
cutioner asked her if she had anything to say to her father.
She interrupted him by replying—" Yes, yes; tell hint
that I love him." At the commencement of the can,
tury, in the reign of George 111., in London, three chil,
dren of the very poorest class were condemned to death for
theft. The eldest (the "Newgate Calendar" states the fact)
was only fourteen. The three children were hanged.

What idea have these men of murder ? What I I may
not kill in a coat ; in a long robe I may ! Like Richelieu' s
cassock, the robe covers everything. Public avenger 1 ah,
I beseech you not to avenge me I murder, murder, I tell
you. Except in cases of legitimate defence understood in
the strictest sense (for your aggressor once wounded by
you and fallen, you ought to assist him), is homicide ever
allowable ? Is that which-is prohibited to the individual
permitted to the mass ? The executioner, what a sinister
species of assassin 1 the official assassin, the patented as-
sassin, supported, salaried, sent for on certain days, work-
ing in public, killing by daylight, having for his tools
"the staff of justice," recognised assassin of the State !
The functionary assassin, the assassin who has his dwell-
ing-place in the law, the assassin in the name of all I he
has my proxy and yours, to kill. He strangles or kills,
then slaps the shoulder of society and says : I work for
you, pay me. He is the assassin cum privilegio legs, the
assassin whose act of assassination is decreed by the legis-
lature, deliberated on by the jury, ordered by the judge,
consented to by the priest, guarded by the soldier, contem-
plated by the people.—Frorn a Letter to the .People of
Geneva.—Social Science Review.

ADVENTURE TVI7 H A COBRA IN
MADRAS.

One fine morning I had preceded the dubash, who was
busy entering the cook's morning market account, and en-
tering the store, walked across it to the further end in search
of some hermetically sealed viands and vegetables, which
were not procurable in the place at that season of the year
for lcve or money. The place was lighted only by the
entrance-door, through which, however, there entered a
sufficient flood of brilliant daylight to answer all my pur-
poses. I had just laid my hand upon a tin case of green
peas, and was speculating upon the best means of opening
it, when a sudden scuffling, squeaking, and hissing, close
behind me attracted my notice ; and turning
abruptly round, I saw that a huge cobra and
an angry rat had tumbled just by the door of the
entrance, and were engaged in deadly combat. The former
had in all probability intruded upon the latter's nest of
young ones somewhere in the rafters of the roof, and met
with a hostile reception. Springing up with all the agility
of fear upon a strong projecting shelf, for I durst not make
a rush at the door under peril of my life, I became an un-
willing spectator of this unequal contest. The rat for some
time, conscious of the venomous foe it had to contend with
kept leaping round and round, like an agile prize-fighter,
availing itself of every opportunity to rush in and bite the
snake, which had worked itself into a frenzied state of rage,
and hissed and darted at the rat with its protruded forked
tongue in a manner that was truly awful to witness, whilst
its little venomous eyes sparkled again in the sunlight with
rage. At last the cobra succeeded in inflicting a deadly
wound upon the brave little animal, who, apparently con-
scious that soon all would be up with her, put aside all pre-
vious caution, and rushed boldly in upon its adversary,
fixing itself firmly close under the left eye of the snake, and
never letting go its hold, notwithstanding all the desperate
lashing about of the tail and body of its much more power-
ful opponent, till the convulsions of death forced it to let
go, and fall prostrate before the snake. The cobra, who had
evidently received a severe if not motel wound, to my ter-
tor trade its way direct to the shelf where I had taken
refuge, and was wriggling up one of the
posts that supported it. I had nothing in
the shape of a weapon of defence of any kind cr description.
But there chanced to be on a shelf over my head some
heavy bags of a rare kind of rice, grown somewhere in the
interior of Bengal. I clambered up to this shelf, and seizing
a heavy bag, waited until my ugly aggressor had wriggled
itself half way across the shelf below, when I let drop the
sack, and so completely crushed the snake. I was not long,
you may be sure, before I retreated from the storehouse.

I caused every article in it to be removed (displacing and
killing in the operation a whole family of young cobras), to
a more commodious warehouse, where such venomous rep-
tiles could easily be discovered, and as quickly despatched.
—Dublin University Magazine.

GOE7HE'S _RELIGION.

The versatility of comprehensiveness which he exhibited
in his studies and in his effective and creative labours aris-
ing from the synthetic nature of his intellect, characterizes,
also, the poet-philosopher in his speculative and religious
aspect. His credo was eclectic, uniting something of the
physical worship of Paganism with the moral worship of
Christianity, and recognising as genuine only that which
stands in harmony with the purest nature and reason, and
which ministers to the highest development of being.
" If I am asked," he once said, " whether it is my nature to
pay Christ devout reverence, I say—certainly ; I bow before
him as the divine manifestation of the highest principle of
morality. If I am asked whether it is my nature to revere the
sun, I say, again, certainly ; for he also is a type of the High-
est Being and the most powerful we children of the earth are
permitted to behold ; I adore in him the light and productive
power of God, by whom we and all creation live, and move,
and have our being." A profound conviction in the eternal
duration of the soul, naturally followed from his view of the
eternal vitality of the universe, and thus to him death
formed but:the point:de depart to other spheres of activity
and development. One evening, in his old age, returning
with his secretary from a drive through the wooded valley
cf Rudolstadt, he caused the carriage to stop at a place
where four roads met, to enjoy the prospect of the red sun
sinking over the river and distant hills, and shedding his
tranquil light through the splendid avenue of black Italian
poplars. After viewing the descending orb for some time,
turning to Eckerman, he said, cheerfully, " When one is 70
years old one cannot fail at times to think of death. Tbo
subject I contemplate in the most perfect peace, for 1 have
a firm conviction that the soul is an existence of an indes-
tructible nature, whose working is from eternity to eternity.
It is like yonder sun which, to our eyes, indeed, seems to
set, but properly speaking never sets—shining in unchange-
able
immortalitysplen d
flowed
o nr ; "
from adding
that
tt
of
fo
thims
activity,th e idea, offo ther if
Is soul's
pro-
gress in intellectual activity in tho same proportion as my
bodily tenement weakens, nature thereby seems to pledge
herself to bring me into a state of existence more suitable to
the ripe state of my inward man. Dublin University
Magazine.