The Sun. — 1856-04-15 (London, England)

CALCRA.FT, after s3venteen years of official Thug gism, falls into disgrace (if it be possible for a Hangman to "sink" any lower from the depth of his own primary and profound abasement !) by reason of 11i3 skulking, through fear, away from the gallows before the last wretch " turned off " by his terrible hands had been effectually strangled, the nerves of the hoary old hangman trembling under the threat of some anonymous correspondent. Consequent upon which frightful incident, and remem bering the dying throes of BOUSFIELD as some horrid sort of Nightmare, seen by many hundreds of people by broad day light in front of Newgate Prison, there is actually heard now a talk of CA ',CRAFT, the hangman, having a successor ! Is not this the very opportunity long felt to be most de,drable ? Simultaneously with the appointment of another executioner, might we not modify at once the very nature and the very locality of our executions—modifying both for the general public most advantageously ? Might we not? It is a question, we really think, worthy of instant and serious consideration.  Fl.i.)rarNu—Shall it be private, or shall it he abolished ? One Honourable Member wants to have our criminals under sentence of death, strangled within the walls of their prison, instead of the gibbet being made, as hitherto, a herriblu public exhibition. Another Honourable Member is anxious, on the contrary, to do away altogether with capital punishment. Which is it to be ? Either or neither ? Supposing we cannot persuade ourselves to arrive at the humane conclusions asserted by the benevolent arguinent of BEccann—supposing we cannot at all recognise the necessity of doing away with Death as the dread arch-penalty of Crime—supposing we still cling Pertinaciously to the belief that that penalty does really, after all, act, in some measure at least, as a preventive I—must1—must all murderers and poisoners, and such like horrible wretches, in this land of ours, still die like dogs by public strangulation ? Is an exe• cation of a miserable criminal at the hands of the common hangman in the midst of a crowded thorouglifare—necessary ?—is it advisable ? These are questions of a very momentous character—for they affect, in a rather serious way, the moral well-being or ill-being of the community. Upon the eantinuance of this terrible custom depends, to a considerable extent, the lesser or greater depravity of very many among There can hardly be any the eye- wi tn esses. doubt as to which direction the proportion takes in this rather frightful alternative.  Suppose—beyond what we have here already suggested—suppose we not only abandon at last this brutal and brutalising system of strangling our great criminals in the public streets, with all kinds of horrible accompaniments in the way of obscenities and blasphealies—suppose we seize this favourable opportunity for doing away with the office of Jack Ketch altogether, adopting, in lieu of the black beams of the Gallows, with its dangling noose, the scarlet apparatus, the inexorable Made, and the blood-stained basket of the Guillotine ? Suppos3 !—Might not the majesty of the law be vindicated then more humanely, more terribly, and with less chance of shame to us all--our condemned criminals "Dying the Death," not as hitherto by the hands of a fellow-mortal, but by means of a grimly piece of mechanism, a wood and metal NEMESIS, the material Antoros born of the French Revolution ?  The Great Observer of the Age has described in vivid words the appalling spectacle, as it was presented to him upon an occasion very memorable in the Annals of Atrocity. And that was no exceptional sight. It was one, the horror of which (as far as the execution went) Was about the average. The crime expiated was more than usually horrible no doubt—being the murder of the miserable caitiff, O'CoNNon, by those male and female monsters, the -I‘ir -