The National Register. — 1820-05-14 (London, England)

THE LATE EXECUTIONS. We cannot avoid reverting with an expression of unmitigated horror to the scene lately exhibited at Newgate, so far as the execution of a part of the sentence of the unhappy men alluded to was concerned. Gracious Heaven ! do we live in a Christian country, and is the vengeance of the law thus, without any one object of utility to mankind, to exceed the limits of death ? Even for actual murder, the hanging in chains and dissection of bodies is surely a law of very doubtful propriety ! It is true, that the bloody stat'ite by which decollation is lawful, remains on the statute book, with all its horrible provisions of mutilations, as passed in the time of one of the Edwards, an age of barbarism, and it is this statute which Sir S. Romilly endeavoured to have repealed in a former Parliament, and which repeal a Tory, by the name of Charles York, we remember, too successfully opposed. But—ls this the spirit of the white man's heaven or, is it the spirit of the Indian Chief? With what consistency Lord Sidmouth could advise the remise Sion of the other mutilations, and retain thi► mails" that of the law, we cannot imagine. A surgeon with a knife, before an immense body of civilised Englishmen and Christians, to cut off five heads from the bodies of five malefactors just hanged, the blood yet reeking fresh in the veinal Was it meant for effect of terror ? It was not terror—it was horror ! We should have thought that the pangs which must have wrung a father's heart—(let a certain nobleman read this, and he wiU understand it I)—would have wrought a milder sentiment than to have any thing to do with the exhibition of blood ! The very seltolution of assassination confessed, removes all ' doubt as to the criminality and justice of the punishment of death for the conspirators in question, although an awful and most important part of the history, concerning Edwards, remains yet to be developed. But we protest, as Christians, against all insults and revenge upon the body of a fellowcreature whose spirit is departed, and gone before the tribunal of Him who judgeth the hearts!--And while the criminal code is about to undergo a gene=1 revision, we are surprised that any such a part of it as mutilations should be put into execution. We now return to the chief subject of our late Postscript, and in looking over the debates upon the King's speech, we observed that one Member of the lower House quoted a passage from Mr. Burke, intimating that " while men are allowedito attribute public calamities to the measures of Government, there can be no peace in a nation." Perhaps if we canvass Mr. Wilmot's speech, we may be sent to Newgate for a breach of privilege; but of Mr. Burke we may, and will speak—and first, we beg leave to remark, that nearly up to the time when this said Mr. Burke had his mouth stopped with a pension of 1,5001. per annum, he spent all his days in censuring the meastires of the administration ; and even after he seceded from the Whigs, he condemned the administration for not being more inveterate than they were (which could hardly be), against France. Witness his letters on what he cells a Regicide Peace. And pray, we must ask this conveniently minded man, whose real language is nothing short of what unjust men in authority have done in every age, via. " We will do what we like, and you shall hold your tongues." We would ask—To what are the decline and fall, or the rise and prosperity of nations to be attributed ? To the arbitrary and unconstitutional decree of Providence ? or, to the agency of Providence operating by causes permitted by Providence to be within human controul? If the latter, we go to the very fountain and well-head of civil liberty, implying among other things free discussions of public measures as necessary to operate wholesomely upon the agency of those causes affecting nations, the counsels by which they are governed, and the experienced or probable consequence of those counsels; and we see that, humanly speaking,