St. Landry democrat., 1885-02-21

So ClCdI G44oU ~ Wdo ttIlu1SlJuC6A3 10y
only reprieved from the gallows,
but allowed by the Home Secretary
to satisfy justice by simple deten-
ton for six months, and the MAORI
ty Of the public approve a decision
which is morally equivalent to par
don. In other words, the public
are not at all Mortified by the killing
of weak lad in order that he might
be eaten.
There is, we suspect, a very pow
erful cause at work which tends to
diminish sympathy for victims pro-
vided they are dead, and to develop
sympathy for their assassins. Of
the general growth Of sympathy no
one doubts it is the new and po-
tent force which is shaking institu-
tons and raising the dim multitudes
below; but few notice the inequality
with which it works. The sympa-
thy Of the many, to be strongly ex-
cited, requires a concrete object a
living being who can be watched,
and whose emotions can i'll a more
or less perfect way be shared. The
law by itself is, except to few, too
abstract thing to call up sympa-
thy; and though reason may, even
among the multitude, consent to the
punishment of the law-breaker,
sympathy is not aroused against his
act. Torture is abhorred:: but then
to feel torture the man must be
alive. 1t was noticed shortly after
Nine. Hughes had shot NORM that
there was a hull in the chorus Of
eulogy upon her and her act, and
that the eulogists seemed troubled
and ashamed and the reason as
signed was that Morin's agonies in
the hospital from the wound In his
head were so very terrible. They
had nothing to do with the matter,
being entirely outside the intention
of the shooter and not a necessary
consequence Of her act; but the on
lockers could realize them, could
sympathize with them, and could,
therefore, feel for the sufferer the
sympathy at first confined to the
slayer. # MORN had died at once
his side of the question would have
been simply overlooked. It was
not till MORN was dead that feeling
again took its misdirection, and
groups of ladies. promised gigantic
bouquets to Nine. Hughes. The
irrational and wicked sympathy
shown by so many among ourselves
with the guilty men Of the Migno-
nette proceeds from exactly. the
same cause. The spectators, filed
as so many of them are, with tales
of the horrors of the sea, realize
with painful acuteness the suferings
of the men in the boat, the gnaw-
ings Of hunger, the tortures of thirst,
the ever-deepening hopelessness,
and fail to realize that the unhappy
boy who persisted bore all these suf-
ferings like his comrades and a vio-
lent death besides. He escapes by
his death from the field of popular
vision and the abstract idea Of
law, which is so solemn to a few
that Sir w. Harcourt's decision
transported them with a kind of sa-
cred fury, was for the multitude
never fully within it. They see it,
we suppose, little, or society
would go to pieces, but it is by an
effort and strain which it is difficult
to keep up. The ordinary murder
er, again, is an interesting figure.
Men realize him and his danger and
his fear and the terrible nature of
his sentence, and feel for him the
pity which his unseen, because
buried, victim fails fully to excite.
That one is dead and past; this one
is living and here; and the public
fixes its eye on the latter, insists
upon gentle treatment, and some
times is clamorous for reprieve. 1t
is this sympathy for the living be-
cause he is living to which all oppo-
nents Of capital punishment habitu-
ally appeal.
It is Of little use scold1ng at the
action Of a multitude when it is
obeying forces Of whose operation it
is ignorant !; but if our view is cor
rect-and without it both French
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