Year: 1873

Once more the majesty of the Law has as
serted itself, and this time ii has been with
out any of those lOng-drawn delays and petit
fogging procrastInatiOns which have hardened
the hearts of criminals into careless audacity
and filed them with hopes quite inconsistent
with the energy, efficiency, and certainty of
Public Justice We have been accustomed to
depart as far as possible from the old, rude
notion of trying to-day and hanging tomorrow.
After the solemnity of judicial condemnation,
the convict had been taught by a concurrence
of cases that his chances of life were almost
as good as before. His lawyer, if lie were
well feed. or even il only inspired
by professional enthusiasm, might by
a succession of appeals and the employ
ment of hundred expcdients afforded by the
machinery Of the law, postpone the infliction
of the last penalty, until it seemed to be
shame to hang one who had been so often re-
spited. In this way. more than one man whose
crime fulfilled all the technical conditions of
homicide, has at last shirked the halter and
passed to the prison, only to become the sub
iect of mportunate Outcres for pardon. The
mischief which this shiftless and temporizing
method Of enforcing statutes has occasloned,
it would be almost impossible to exaggerate
One of our vilest criminals bOasted
in his own coarse way that Hanging
"was played out in New-York" The
cowardly street assassins always carrying con-
cealed weapons and always using them upon
the slightest prOvOcatiOn, or none at all save
that of his own wantOn cruelty and the help
lessness of his victim, came smilingly to his
ty
evidence, the arguments, and the charge, and
saw the jurors go out, almost sure that they
would not achieve verdict, and by no means
thoroughly disheartened even although they
returned with verdict Of guilty" VI this
class of thoroughly demOralized men, Nixon,
who was executed yesterday, was an example.
He did not believe that he would be hanged.
If some slight misgiyings disturbed his mind
in the solitude Of his cell, if In his waking
dreams he sometimes saw the last sad scene
or felt with nervous shudder the halter
tightening about his neck, yet he might rea-
sonably assure himself by thinking that the
dreadful day was uncertain and distant, and
that many in equal peril had escaped 1T alto
gether. IT was in this way that he probably
snatched few casual moments of serenity
Nobody will grudge him this insignificant con-
ISOLATION, for we should be tender of those
whom society is compelled to cast into the
grave. But there is lesson in the fate OF
this unhappy man which should not be, and
which probably will not be, lost upon those
who are like unto him. 1t may be sum-
marily stated He killed Daniel Phyfer on
the 5th day of last January. He was hanged
for so doing on the 10th day of May follow
ing. Such astonishing celebrity in the move
ments of justice may well appal the assassins
of New-York. To find not only that hanging
is not "played out" but that convicts are to
be hanged promptly after due conviction, may
render those cautious who are wont to be in
solently reckless, and may teach many man
of violence the discretion of exercising q Tea-
sOnable control over his temper.


If Christianity and its great law Of
brotherhood forbid us to hang, let us
hang no longer; but in the name of the eter-
nal veracties which are the foundation of all
jurisprudence, civil as well as criminal, let us
not leave the weapons which we affect to en-
ploy to grow rusty and to become ridiculous
through disusel If our laws are bad, let us
reform them. But let us not leave crime un-
punished and rampant, because we cannot
punish it our way. Let us not render our
judges mere scarecrOws, our jurors only pup
pets, our scaffolds cobwebbed specimens of
the antique, and our hangmen simply men of
strawl For this is to bring all law into shame
and to prepare the way for anarchy-this is to
surrender all the safeguards of order and of.
social peace-this is to risk the substance of
civilization while relying altogether upon those
social virtues which that substance can alone
promote and preserve.


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