The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-08-22
ELECTRICIANS CHANCE.
IN CHINA AND JAPAN THEY WANT
AN EASY DEATH.

Saving
From the Net0 York Advertiser.
It is said that the guillotine has recently
been introduced by the French into their
colony of Tonquin. Our neighbors, as all
the world is aware, have had, aud still have,
plenty of work to do in the way Of extermi-
natlug piracy in that vast and yet unre-
munerative possession. And the method by
which they endeavor to exterminate the
pirate when they catch him, which, as
rule, they do mott is that OF decaptation.
That ceremony has hitherto been performed
in the primitive and rather barbarous
native way.
The culprit, being placed IN q convenient
position, used to light cigarette and wait
for the executioner to take a shot at his neck
with big sword. Sometimes the heads
man aimed straight and sometimes he did
not and feeling has long existed among
gentlemen of the piratioal profession that
an execution thus executed was
distinctly an unpleasant process for
she patient. Consequently the intro
duction of the ''wood OF JUSTICE has
BY no means produced the effect which the
French authorities desired and expected.
Instead OF being impressed with the horror
of this mode of execution, the natives OF
Tonquin are said 10 be highly delighted with
it. In fact, they regard the guillotine as a
most ingenious article de Paris, and they
have already witnessed an execution with
every demonstrat alton of enthusiasm.
Dying, they say, is made delightfully."- easy
by this admirable invention Of the superior
European intelligence. The result is that
considerable satisfaction IL expressed IN
piraticaI circles, and it il confidently antioi-
pated that piracy will shortly increase very
considerably, as nobody in Tonquin would
mind being abbreviated instantaneously by
the guillotina Death, in short, has lost
most OF its terror, because the process OF
dying has been rendered so simple.
The pleasant legal fiction that all right is
founded on reason has been 80 often refuted
by appeals to the srbitrament of force that
practical philosophers have renounced the
hope in the definite abolition of war and
capital punishment and directed their at-
tention to the undeniAble possibility OF
mitigating the horrors OF both.
How considerably warfare has been
humanized may be inferred from the
established fact that the practice OF en-
shaving prisoners taken in battle should be
considered triumph OF olemency. since IN
more barbarous ages such captives were
generally slain and often eaten.
Nor is hanging, shat worst relic of bar
barism," denounced in she diatribes OF our
American philaDthropists. Murderers, pi-
rates and traitors were crucifed in Syria
] 100 years before the beginning OF our
chronological era, and the sentence Of the
cross was gradually extended to other
criminals, especially to ''rebsls," a term ad-
hitting OF rather unexpected definitions
since Alexander the Great nailed up several
thousand prisoners who had been guilty of
no other crime than OF defending besieged
city with unusual obstinaoy.
A hundred years after the death Of Ly-
curgus the Spartans still rid themselves OF
troublesome citizens by throwing them
from the summit cliffs OF a steep precipice.
and the Hebrews often convened mass
meetings, by no means confined to rowdies,
for the purpose of stoning a criminal; but
the criminal code of Athens was mild TO
strange degree, and, indeed, almost unpar-
allelled degree. Narcotic poisons (hemlock
and poppy juice were substituted for me-
chnnical oonFivauces of execution and
moreover, a defendant had the right to
avoid the risk OF a trial by voluntary
exile. Once published, the sentence Of
death was generally without appeal, but
the condemned was mostly granted respite
sufficient to arrange his family affairs, and
his friends were permitted to cheer his last
moments with entertaining discourses or
even with convivial assemblies.
In che latter respect the medieval Ger
mans wens q step further, and allowed a
criminal the privilege OF devoting the last
day Of his life to riotous feasts, ANY amount
Of meat which the condemned ard two
dozen friends can consume In day, to-
gether with any quantity Of ordinary wine, ~
says the Halls Gericht, or penal code, of
Strassburg. But the medieval methods Of
execution were still exceedingly barbarous.
In Bohemia poachers were often sentenced
to be torn by the hounds of the offended
game owner; timber thieves were thrown
into blaze kindled with the brush wood OF
the despoiled forests, and in Poland and
Russia unfaithful wives were occasionally
walled up and left 10 starve TO death.
IN the lOWAr Danuha hiChxaV rohhara
were impaled up TO the time OF Matthias
Corvinus, who abolished the barbarity in
1445, but in Turkey it seems to have con.
tinued a century longer, and a contempt.
rary OF Luther describes Bosnian brIgand
joking and drinking in articulo mortis, with
a stake protruding q foot and q half from
his ribs.
All such things, however, were trifes com
pared with the tnhumanities Of the inQuisi.
ton, and sentimental worshipers of the
romantic" middle ages should study the
statistics of Llorente, who computes that
ury $500 persons were consigned to
the flames 10 Spain and Portugal alone
besides the thousands Of witches and
heretics burned in France, Italy, Ger
many, Great Britain and afterward in
Spanish America The monster Toroue-
mazda signed 8, 200 such sentences, but was
perhaps surpassed by some of the colonial
inqusitors, who burned out the population
OF whole districts, suspected Of relapse into
paganism- On the Rio Piovas, on the island
ofPorto Rico, several thousand 'renegades'
were cremated in 1920 and the barbarities
practiced by the colonists under some legal
pretext or other seem actually the ne plus
ultra Of all the iuhumanitles of man to man
ever perpetrsted on this planet since in
less than forty years the native population
of 70U, 900 harmless Indians had become en-
tirely extinct
That age of mansiaughtar continued until
the aborigines of the West Indian Islands
had disappeared and the population of the
American continent had been reduced ONE
half nn Peru about two-thirds), and only
the fierce retributions Of the buccaneers
made the butchers think 1t worth while TO
mitigate their unpopularity by the enact
ment Of more humane laws.
The last American burned for heresy was
executed in Bogota in 1874, but other al
most equally atrocious penalties for religious
offenses were enforced up to the era OF the
republican revolt, aud in Brazil until after
the accession Of Dom Pedro, who at first
was rather in favor Of theocretic riRor, but
eventually became one Of the most humane
rulers of the nineteenth century, and could
rarely be persuaded to sign a sentence of
death under any circumstances
That Western Europe has not always
cnampiOned the cause Of mercy NAV ha n