The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-22 00:00:00

EVENING SUN

LEGALISED MURDER.
(Prom the British Queen.)
such things be?"
Aye! can such things be ? and in the nineteenth
century, too, that the enlightened people of this country
should not only sanction a law which dooms a fellow-
creature to death, but congregate in thousands to wit-
ness his execution on the scaffold ? It is true that such
is the fact—it is true that a miserable wretch who had
been guilty, in a moment of maddened fury, of an enor-
mous crime, was doomed, alcording to law, to die the
death—it is true, that he was " hanged by the neck
until he was dead"—it is true, that 'there were -thou-
sands present, men and women, to witness the clenched
band, the convulsed limb, the blackened face, and the
heaving chest of the dying victim of an unwise, and
worse than an Ashantee barbarian law—nay, it is true,
that the last-svords that reached the ears of the " con-
demned," were either yells of execration, or sounds of
delight at the human butchery about to take place ;
last, and worst of all, a portion of the press of the
United Kingdom, has been found to defend the practice
of extinguishing a life, which God had giv en, and which
no man has a right to take away.
Tile crime for which Blakesley has suffered the last
extremity of a barbarous law is indefensible, so far as
punishment is concerned, both in law and in equity,
towards every member of society ; but that any man
or any body of men have a right to deprive a human
being of existence, we utterly deny. We take up a
new position upon this subject, and we urge as an
argument that the very fact of the miserable wretch
having fallen a victim to the baibarous law of his coun-
try, is a proof that murder is the greatest of crimes.
He committed an unintentional murder, so far as the
murdered person was concerned, and both law and re-
ligion say " Thou shalt do no murder.;" and yet by a
judicial process—a mere form of unnecessary proof—Me
murder is legalised by the deprivation of the victim of
life. The private individual—the subject of accusation
—stabs one of his fellow creatures to death ; the act is
proved ; the doom of death is pronounced'; but its
order that the right of taking away life may not be with-
out its exemplar, the law by its practice must commit
another murder, and thereby sanction that for whicls the
original murderer is doomed to death!
-Horror of horrors Only think of a human being,
possessing many of the feelings of our common na-
ture, imprisoned, tortured by the presence of others,
and strucg up, like a mad dog, for the amusement of
ruffians, while his father, aad mother, and relatives were
sittiug in sackcloth and ashes--mourning his fate,
broken-hearted, thrilling with terror—the hopes of the
family blasted, and doomed to an unacquired infamy._
But we can go no further ; for the more we;think of the
matter, the stronger is our disgust, and the greater our
abhorrence of the punishment of death.
It is years ago since, in a journal which we trust will
be conducted in a manner to command the respect of
its readers, we advocated the abolition of punishment
by death ; and it is with insuppressible pleasure 'that we
find it maintain an honourable consistency upon the
subject. We allude to the Morning Advertiser, from
which we make the following extract :
" Our hostility to the infliction of the extreme penalty
is grounded on a firm persuasion that such punishments
are at once barbarous, unjust, and inexpedient. Their
barbarity and injustice we have proved on repeated pre•
vious occasions—though their barbarity and inhumanity
stand not in need of any proof. Who can reflect on the
circumstance of a fellow•creature being hung up in the
public streets, and in the presence of thousands of the
most depraved of mankind—for the bulk of the spec-
tators consist of persons of this character—and not
shudder at the thought. And anything at which
the mind of the better class of society thus instinc-
tively revelte, must be of an essentially barbarous
nature. But public executions are not only bar-
barous, and the offspring and relicts of barbarous
ages, they outrage every feeling of decency ; for what
can be more indecent than ushering a rational and im-
mortal being into the presence of his Judge, from a pub-
lic scaffold, in the very centre of the city ? The law
does not allow an ox, or sheep, or pig, or any other ani-
mal, though without intelligence, and without a soul, to
be killed in the public streets, and yet it dooms human
beings to be slaughtered by the hands of a person spe-
cially appointed for the purpose, in the most centrical
locality in London, in the presence of tens of thousands
of individuals. On the abstract injustice of capital
puoishments we do not now touch. Wes have, we
trust, made that sufficiently rich on previoitsvecasions.
When the advoca:es of these punishments undertake to
show us by what right, revealed or natural, legislatures
or governments arrogate to themselves the right of tak-
ing away the life which the great Creator alone could
and did confer—rte shall be prepared to !Ilea them,
and to demonstrate that no Nislature or government,
either has or can have any such right. We shall then
find it no difficult task to prove that they who claim for
themselves the right to deprive a fellow-creature a life,
do in effect seek to
' Snatch from Heaven's hand the balance and the rod,
Usurp his righta, and be the God of God.'"
In these sentiments we cordinlly concur ; they breathe
the spirit of wisdom and humanity ; and although, for
the present, there is no hope of carrying them into
practical effect, we doubt not that the time is not far
distant when barbarism will give place to civilisation, and
legalised murder shall no longer be known in the land.