The Sun. — 1864-09-17 (London, England)

RAILRAILWAYS. Cash. Account. Orleans i...,.... 888 75 4 • 887 50 Northern .... Lyons and Mediterranean 920 .. 923 75 Southern 628 75 .. 631 25 Western eastern Sardinian 352 53 .. 347 50 Austrian Lorrbard North of Spain 4OO .. 398 75 Saragossa 487 50 .. 487 50 Ditto to Barcelona  It per Cents. 9O Do. ead month 3 per Cents 65 90 Do. end month Credit Mobilier 1005 Do. end month 102.) Bank Shares 3400  Credit Fonder ....  Roman  Public Executions in France.  The late execution of Latour for murder and tha criminal's revolting behaviour are commented on in terms of great disgust by the Paris Nation, which asks whether the scene witnessed at the final moment is of a nature to produce any edification in the minds of the spectators. Far from such a result arising, our contemporary considers the whole scene of the execution as profoundly demoralising, and founds on it an argument against capital punish• meat being carried out in public, After describing the conduct of Latour on the scaffold, the writer says, " The crowd remained dumb with stupor, and could not imagine a man insulting death when so near to it. No jests were made to pass away the time, es recently occurred on the Place de La Roquette. The gaiety of Latour disconcerted the curiosity of the spectators, and filled them with a sort of terror, It was not a lesson which they beheld before them, but a scandal, a thing without a name, by which in a few hours an entire population may see all the bonds of its faith, morality, and sense of decency torn asunder. Why were not the criminal and the execution concealed from the public gaze ? We demand closed doors for horrors of the kind. Such blood does not purify—it sullies. Let it be shed far from every eye, if you think it indispensable that blood should be shed. In whatever manner the condemned man may affront the last punishment, whether in singing or turning pale with terror, there is nothing in the spectacle of a head failing. If the man turns pale, the people say he is a coward I It he is calm and collected, they say he is courageous t If he sings and swears like Latour, the people no longer understand ; everything in their minds is confounded and mingled together, and the only impression they can feel is the immoral one of that double outrage to human life which is manifested in that argument of the eriminalists who say, in order to justify the punishment of death, that all murderers fear it? There are certainly murderers who fear it, but we know of others now who are scarcely moved by it. These latter must, however, be put to death also; they have a right to the same favour. Then it is that the scaffold becomes the infamous tribune, in which the pinioned man upon whom eternity is casting its shadow displays Iris hideous infamy, and insults everything that the world holds sacred—from the judge who has condemned him, to God who is about to judge him also. tiV hat society gains by such a spectacle we cannot say, but we know all that it may lose by it. In the name of religion and morality, and in presence of the scandal which has just terrified she populations of the Ariege, we demand that the scaffold should disappear from our public place, and that the last moments of the condemned man, with his proseration before death or his supreme raillery, should be concealed from all.  A