The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-22
sympathy for Criminals Fashion of the
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 6From Senator Lodges Speech on Brownsville.l,
 and of all classes has become the fashion of the time. and, although 1t springs from the better and gentler l impulses of our nature, it is capable.
 when unrestricted and misdirectod, of detng incaluable injury to- society In all the changes of the last 200 years none has been more marked than the alteration. both In practise and opinion, in relation to crime and criminals and to their trial and pun ishment. In the eighteenth century. when more was done than In any other pdriod to advance political lib- srty. to set free the human mind and break the shackles which had letter. ed the thought of manl5ind. criminal codes and the punishment of criminals. both in England and on> the Continent of Europe were Draconian in their severity and ferocfous in their execu- and the atrocities of the wars of reli- zion, If they still persisted in certain parts of Europe, had become less conn mon, and in England and her Ameri- the treatment of prisoners and the or dinary punishments of criminals were barbarous to the last degree. Even in less powerful the punishment of cri- minals was extreme in It's seY gritty, and Rs late as TAO many wretched DElH&8 were OuL1GQ aL IUG SLdkG III New York for real or supposed compli- city in what was known as the negro plot" Toward these punishments public opinion was not only. indifferent was a recognized sight" which all the world rushed to witness. Going to see the men, hanged, to, observe their demeanor. to listen to their last speech and confesaion was one of the amusements and excitments of daily life: Fine gentlemen. like Horace Malpole and his hiends. made this nj regular diversiones of tehir life. George Selwyn, member of Parliament and one of the great wits and men of fash ion of his time, made such speciality the jests and bywords of the day. He travelled to Paris to witness the hid- eous tortures and execution of Damien who was finally torn limb from limb by. horses attached to his legs and arms. and the story goes that he show ed so much interest in the proceedings that the executionef asked him if he was Qf the profession. To which selwyn replied that. unfortunately. he was only an amateur.
 The judge of great assiZe,
 Samuel Sewall, the good and wise.
 describes in his diary the crowds of Beacon Hill. in Boston. to witness atss.i The bodies. hung. in chains. were left swinging on the gallows-- another cheerful custom of the time. In England, as here the, bodies of gibbefs until they became mere wrecks of bones and rags. tainting the air, hideous objects from which the belat- ed wayfarer fled shuddering with a. verted face when night had fallen.
 The great movement for a larger political liberty which began with our Revolution and culminated in that of France. brought many reforms in It's train, and among others that of the criminal law; In England under the lead of Romilly. the criminal code as remember, some 150 offenses- great and small-was radically alter ed and made more humane. At a somewhat later time the revolting by Dickens and Thackeray in prose- and by Barham in the Ingoldshy I,e- gends in verse. and this demnFalizing spectacle was finally removed from the gaze of the crowd England and the United States were only the leaders in movement which went on through tion of humanity. of better manners and of purer laws. The history of the nineteenth century is. filled with the reforms which were directed not mere codes and the mitigation of punish ments for crime but to the better care of the insane. of .paupers and of pri- soneFs who had been treated in the mals.s Governed by the growth of altruism. the revulsion has gone far. In some of our States and in many countries Europe the death penalty has been abolished. even in cases of murder. But the change In public sentiment and It's manifestations has been even more marked. The pendu- lum has swung to the other extreme. Before the era of reform there was lit- tie or no public sympathy with the criminal. To-day we seem almost to have reached the point where the sympathy Is so strictly confined to the criminal that there is none left for the victim of the crime. The abolition of to have brought about the condition postulated by Talleyrand, who. when he was urged to support the abolition would If the murderes would by giv- ing up murder