The Russellville Democrat., 1877-05-17
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
ANCIENT AND MODERN.

10 lEc dlnOuu1 oi poih Vi oohoibS which he had inflicted on others. Hence arose the retaliatory principle of punishment, which demanded an eye for an eye, tooth for q tooth, etc. But now it is considered vindictive proceeding, contrary to the spirit of the age, and that if a person is to be deprived of life, it should be done in the manner which will cause the least pain.
 Blackstone has enumerated one hum dred and sixty offences for which, only 3 century back, the law provided the punishment of death. Four-fifths of these excluded the "beneit of clergy" as it was called. It no longer exists, and the death punishment in England, as with us, is now narrowed down almost to the two crimes of murder and treason.
 Cruciixion was very ancient pun ishment. The Syrians, Jews, Egyp- tians, and especially the Carthaginians, used it. But in no part of the ancient world was this punishment so generally resorted to as in the Roman empire, where it was regarded as the most in- famous of deaths. By the Roman law, she culprit was scourged previously to the cfiicifizion, either in the prato- mum or on the way to the place of exo cution. On his arrival there he ws stripped of his garments, and then either nailed or tied by the hands and feet to the cross, or, as sometimes hap pened, only fastened to 1t by ropes. In order to hasten death, 1t was the practice to break the legs or to pierce the body of the sufferer with spear. By the Jewish law, it was ordained that the body of the culprit should be removed from the cross on the day of his execution; but the Romans fre- quently allowed it to hang until it dropped piece-meal to the ground.
 Among the Greeks capital punish. ment was inflicted by regular killing, or, as in the case of Socrates, by or dering that the victim should drink a bowl of hemlock, which is poisonous. The ancient Israelites stoned their cul. prits to death, and in Rome certain criminals were destroyed by throwing them from the Tarpeian rock.
 In England during the middle ages death was the ordinary punishment for all felonies but, if the culprit could read, he escaped with life, on a first conviction. In the British army and navy, within the present century, soldiers and sailors have been literally fogged to death with cat-o-nine-tails. Sometimes 1000 lashes were ordered. The infiction, though much mitigated, is still continued in the British mili. tary and naval service. In the Amer ican it has been humanely abolished within the last thirty years.
 During the first French revolution what was facetiously called "republi- can marriages (where two persons of different sexes, bound together by strong cords. were cast into the river Rhone at Lyons and left to drown) were outrages upon humanity.
 Formerly, in Scotland, culprits' heads were chopped off by the maiden. It was an old contrivance revived, having been used in Persia in early times. In Italy its name was mannaja, and culprit-nobles had the privilege of being decapitated by it, and a similar instrument had been previously used in Germany. In France, in 1632, a Due de Montmorenci had been exc cuted by similar instrument at Tou- louse, and century back the Dutch employed it in executions. There fore in October, 179O, when Joseph Ignace Guillotin, physician of Paris, proposed to the national assembly there the use of the beheading instru. ment which perpetuates his name, he only improved on an old idea. The guillotine consists of two upright pieces of wood fixed in horizontal frame; sharp blade of steel moves up and down by means of pulley in grooves in the two uprights; the edge is oblique instead of horizontal. The criminal is laid on his face, his neck immediately under the blade, which sewers it at blow from his body. Louis XVI. perished by it. Guillotin was imprisoned during the reign of terror, but was released at the revolu. ton of July, 1794, and died in March, 1874, at the age of seventy six.
 Throughout Europe, with the excep. ton of Spain, hanging and beheading are the only methods of execution. In England there was a punishment called "pressing to death" When the accused refused to confess his guilt he was made to die by the peine forte ct dure. In the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, one Mrs. Margaret Middleton, wife ofa rich citizen of York, accused of harboriDg a schoolmaster, refused to plead guilty, because she considered that such plea would be equivalent to falsehood. She was divested of all her clothes and robed in a long linen habit. She lay down on the ground, her face covered with hand. | kerchief. Then door was placed upon her, and her extended hands |