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It is by occurrences like this ; by extreme cases which call into exercise the dormant feelings, that those . investigations are excited which terminate in the reform of the most ancient and deep-rooted abuses. Evils which the barbarism of remote ages, or the pressure of immediate danger, has thrust into the system of government, and which have long in silence obstructed the progress of so- ciety, are regarded as necessary and proper, or wholly overlooked, merely, because they form a part of that order of things, which we have always been accustomed to admire. We admit all that power to be legitimate which we have always seen administered with mildness. We have acquiesced in the propriety of those inflictions which 535 never disturbed the circle in which we move. We over- look the causes which are secretly moulding the character of the state, while they do not interfere with our enjoy- ments, and while they affect those alone, whose fate ex- cites but little of our sympathy. But when power perverts its energy, and when its enactments, which merely oppressed the lowlier ranks of men, presg rudelv on those in whose fate we cannot but feel deeply concerned ; we suddenly perceive the mischief in its deepest foundations, and shake them by the awful voice of peaceful and enlighten;?d discussion. Thus evil is finally subversive of itself; its most dreadful examples facilitate its overthrow ; its excesses destroy the principle from which they arise. Thus the arbitrary extortions of Charles might have furnished a woeful precedent for our future kings, had not the levy of ship-money called into action the spirit of Hampden. The wanton cruelty of the tyrant of Switzerland awoke " the might that slumbered in a peasant's arm," to break the chains of its generous and noble mountaineers. By the illegal proceedings against Wilkes, general warrants have been abolished for ever. And the efforts of a late minister to atone for the reform- ing zeal of his youth, by dragging those men to a scaffold whom he had first seduced into remonstrance, made way for the immortal integrity and eloquence of Erskine, and gave a death blow to the sanguinary doctrine of construc- tive treason. Encouraged by such examples, with which history is abundantly prolific, we hope to make some practical im- provement of the sentence pronounced on Lord Cochrane, by directing the attention of our countrymen to the species of infliction at the instance of which they so generously revolted. We shall, in pursuit of this object, lay before them a few simple observations, n the principle upon I i! k>l m %m 536 which exposure in the pillory is founded ; the inequali* ty of its operation ; the uncertainty of its influence ; the impropriety of its attendant circumstances, and their gen- eral tendency on the feelings and hearts of the spectators, • ....■ \ . , - • . .. - , . ^ I. The punishment under our discussion has recei- ved a most important alteration from the refinement of modem times. When first introduced into Britain, it was uniformly attended with some infliction of corporeal suflfer- ing. The ears were frequently nailed to the wood of which the pillory was composed, and severed from the head of the culprit, or the cheek branded with burning iron. Its publicity then formed merely a slight ingredient in its terrors. But, now, when these barbarities are happily become obsolete, the old sting of this once terrible sen- tence is taken away j bodily pain is no longer denounced by the judge, however it may be inflicted by the multi- tude; and the emotions it is intended to excite in the suflferer are simply those of shame and confusion. He ig exposed to be covered with the execrations and the con- tempt of mankind ; to be set apart for ever as something polluted and debased ; and, as if his whole moral system were corrupted, is rendered unable to bear testimony as a witness. Now it cannot be disputed that shame, to a certain extent, is a feeling which should be excited by the penalty for every transgression ; but it is very dubious whether it is politic so far to arouse it as to make it the sole object of fear. A sense of it is always connected with something that is virtuous ; and as it is one of the last of our nobler feelings which forsakes us in the depths of iniquity, so it is that which all wise legislators are most anxious to pre- serve. When once this vestige of its original bloom is rubbed off the mind, it speedily assumes a hardened cha- racter of cool, deadly, unimaginative vice ; whereas paii> 537 restraint and fear may be applied without danger of cor- rupting the heart, which they are intended to soften and mature. Hence the tendt?ncy of Mr. Lancaster's new- invented punishments, those boasted pillories in miniature, is open to considerable censure. The cradles, the baskets, the hen-coup cages, the pillows for drowsy scholars, the delectable imitations of Jewish sing-song, and the original labels of " suck finger baby," if not laughed at as silly, or enjoyed as sport, must lamentably tend to render their subjects callous to shame by its perpetual exercise. If they have any effect at all, it must be to disarm the sufferer of his most sacred defence against the pollutions of the world ; to strike the ingenuous blush of modesty from hit cheek for ever ; and by inviting his companions to enjoy his anguish, excite in them the most unamiable and hard- ening emotions. So it is in the larger world with the infliction of the Pillory. To those who are already hard- ened, it threatens nothing which they are capable of feel- ing, while it degrades the man for ever in his own esteem, on whom wise discipline would have shed a salutary influ- ence. He cannot look upon himself vwthout shuddering. No matter how trivial his crime — how deep his anguish—- bow sincere his penitence — how elevated his capacities- he reads, or thinks he reads, contempt . he faces of all with whom he converses, and believing himself incapable of becoming respectable, he relaxes all his eflForts, and crushes his impulses to virtue. He is defiled with a stain which even his innocence, if subsequently brought to light, could not wash away. And it must not be forgotten, that this influence, which strikes so deadly a palsy into the " heart of hearts," is exerted for the purpose of rejbrrmng. It is not a process for excluding those from the world, whom the lawgiver imagines he can restrain only by death ; it is neither an expiadon, nor a sacrifice \ it sends back its mi 538 victims into society ** with all their imperfections on their head ; " attended with every circumstance of disgrace which can render them desperate. To take a man new to crime ; to expose him to the pitiless derision of the world ; to send liiin back into the walks of men impressed with a mark of indelible infamy ; cut oft' from those social ties which form the charm of existence ; and placed beyond the reach of those genial influences, those kindly affections, those heart-softening charities, which purify and elevate the soul ; to take from virtue its finest rewards, and exhibit the fatal penalty of the worst of crimes as a welcome re- pose : this is the process i of reform, dictated by human wisdom ! This is something beyond the fatal absurdity which punishes for the sake of avenging ; it is to inflict mise- ry, to render the suflerer more wicked. It is not merely to oppose, but to reverse the maxim which forms the only solid foundation of penal enactments ; that pain is to be used only as a means of increasing happiness ; for here evil is employed but to render evil more abundant. Thus the Pillory is the preparation for the scafl?bld, though a stormy interval of rapine and crime frequently elapses between them. * tt-^t M £t:ib t »*.'< IT. This punishment is exceedingly unequal : and in- stead of falling with the greatest weight on those who are most unworthy, it is far most intolerable to those whom we should be tremulously anxious to redeem. A man in the respectable walks of life ; one who has any remnant of character to lose, or any virtuous emotion clinging to his heart ; must feel such an exposure far more acutely than a hardened villain. One who has any thing of pub- lic character, who has been accustomed to the applause of the insulting populace, will be oppressed with a stupe- fying horror compared to which death must be a trifling 539 evil. But what a state of unimaginable agony, of tumult and torture in every nerve, and faculty, and sensation, what a myriad of dreadful reflections must crowd into his paroxysms of despair, who still alive to the nicest percep- tions of honor, full of the most chivalrous notions of ro- mantic greatness, allied to the aristocracy in birth and united with the people in affection, has faced death in a thousand forms, and plucked the brightest laurels from tke very centre of carnage, and is after all exhibited as a spec- tacle for the mob to gaze on, to pelt, or to pity ! It is obvious that to such a man, . unless armed with conscious innocence, this infliction is more terrible than a thousand deaths. If he be guiltless, indeed, he may lift his mind above all that man is able to inflict ; but the punishment supposes him guilty. And to this all are liable ; not only for crimes which shake society to its foundations ; but for misdemeanours of infinite variety ; for petty transgressions, into which the infirmity of human nature might betray the brave and the honorable ; and for overstepping the bounds of ordinary prudence in the expression of offensive opinions. There is a power entrusted to the judges who are appointed by the crown to visit the slightest offences, and in some cases, the noblest ebullitions of generous feeling with an intel- lectual torture, which convulses the soul with a more writhing anguish, than the rack inflicts on the body. There are many acts of a man's life for which they may stab the vital principle of his moral being, while they leave the shell and empty husk, which it once pervaded, to move about a little longer. Had not the awful voice of public opinion interposed, such would have been the case of Lord Cochrane. A gallant nobleman, one of the bravest even of his country's brave defenders, is accused of par- taking in a successful trick, and pursued with insatiable animosity by those who " were daily attempting similar « •'U' 540 {mpofiitions, but who never had «o completely succeeded* Now, however, he is in the power of the court ; a misde- meanour has been proved against him ; justice array* herself in unusual terrors; and is determined to show that it is above feeling any undue partiality for the elevated and the noble. The pure feelings of the Chief Justice cannot endure the suspicion that there should be one law for the rich, and another for the poor; and he is resolved to convince the most sceptical that the honors of a court have fallen harmless around him. He can regard no error of a Peer as venial ; can look on no crime of a titled personage as a misfortune, which circum- stances might palliate. With him the offence is aggra- vated by the title. He can find no punishment so suitable to point the climax of his sentence as the pillory, when a nobleman is the culprit. His rank, his bravery, his hon- ors, all pleaded in vain ; not even his zeal in the cause of reform and of justice could soften the rigor of his inflexi- ble judge. This exceeding obduracy to rank and title must have alarmed the parasites of the court ; for if the chief justice was thus severe to the misdemeanours of a lord, how much severer would he have been to those of a Marquis ! The people, however, while they admired this heroic firmness, thought it was carried to rather too lofty an elevation. They were neither above feeling, nor expresr» ing their sympathy, with an unfortunate nobleman, but contented themselves with contrasting their silent indigna- tion with the zeal of Lord Ellenborough's virtue. They did not regard it as fitting that the man who had " fought nations' battles, and been crowned viith conquest," should be exposed to the ridicule of the foes into whose hearts he had so often stricken a deadly pa- nic. Those who censured him before, now only men- 541 tioned him with pity. The current of opinion was^ entirely changed by the severity exercised against him. The muhitude seemed to regard him with more favor in proportion as he was denounced by tlie court. He was accused — most men believed him guilty — an iuuictment was preferred — they began to waver — he was convicted 1— their doubts increased — he was refused a second trial •—the majority were anxious to acquit him — he was expelled the House of Commons — his constituents pronounced him innocent — he was sentenced to the Pillory — they covered his name with applauses as if he had returned from a fresh victory, and sent him back to Parliament triumphant. Whether this were a feeling merited by its object, we can- not positively ascertain, but it was honorable and generous and graceful, and peculiarly became the people^ since it abundantly proved how little they were dazzled by that specious revolutionary principle — that all ranks should be visited with similar punishments. This is surely the most insane of all republican maxims. It is so manifest that the circumstances of the party must determine the punish- ment, because what to one is sport, to another is death j that one would imagine it useless to attempt the refutation of a fancy, which must have been started by some vision- ary leveller. It is strangely mysterious then that we should hear it maintained on a bench, whose associations are ex- quisitely loyal ; yet nothing can be more certain than the paradox. Lord Mansfield informed a Jury in the case of the Duke of Cumberland, that a Prince should pay no more for his illicit amours, than a peasant ; and Lord EUenborough, no doubt with the noblest feelings of moral rectitude, a foe to unchristian distinctions, sees no reason why a naval commander should not be pelted as Well as a petty-fogging attorney. How delightful would it be to the advocates of the rights of man to wel- No. VIII. Pam. Vol. IV. 2 N 542 come the latter with a fraternal embrace, and to exalt the foimer to the pinnacle of their intellectual Pantheon ! III. A third reason why the Pillory is unfit for the pur- poses of legal justice is that it is in many cases ver/ nncertain whether it will be any punishment at all, or whether it will be the occasion of applause and of triumph. Its very essence consists in the expression of public feeling, and depends on the fluctuating sentiments of the spec ^ors. The judge can only sentence a convict to stand for a certain time exposed to the derision of the public ; but the public may choose whether they will deride ; there is no compelling them to hiss ; no statute to impeach them for silence. But they may go further ; they may sympa- thise, and cheer, and console ; and render the ^ lace in- tended by the law for the infliction of eternal disgrace, the scene of a prouder and more heartfelt triumpli, than the pageants which have been attended with trappings of the most dazzluig magnificence. Tb ) sentence is a virtual appeal from the judgment of the > ^urt to another tribunal, which may either confirm or re^ >rse it by the most intelligible of voices. It constitutes new court of appeal, whose judgment is both final and peedy, in the ** unwashed artizans " of Cheajside, and tht jlegaiit inhabi- tants of Billingsgate. In short the jud^ ^ vacates the august chair of justice to the mob ; to the factious and unruly ; to the very class whom he rounds every pe- riod by denouncing. We need only glance at a very recent page in our history, in order to confirm our position. We have only to revert to that awful crisis, when a terrible attack was made on all that we esteem venerable and sacred ; when the whole system of Christianity seemed to totter to its foundation ; and all the dignities, and honors, and sine- ■ I >? ; T ,' 543 cures, which have been reared on its basis, trembled beneath the puissant arm of a bookseller in Amen-comer. The time indeed must be fresh in the memory of us all, from the anxiety which harrowed up our souls, till we saw our religion and the cause of our God, safely confided to the guardianship of a special jury. The objections against truth were proved to be fallacious, by the con- viction of Mr. Eaton, and nothing remained but prac- tically to demonstrate the veracity of Scripture, by a proof transcending all the miracles of the primitive times ; the setting the infidel in the pillory. So far all was smooth and easy, the sentence was very gravely pronounced, and the champion thus vanquished conducted to the scene of his infamy. The people were now to perform the rest, to show that they were Christians, by stifling him with mud, or by pelting him to death. But, strange to relate ! they were not so inclined, and the great victory of truth wanted its perfect finishing. They were unable to discern how the doctrines of him, who, in the agonies of death, prayed for his infatuated murderers, could be exalted by covering an unhappy unbe- liever with rotten eggs and derision. To maintain his precepts of universal charity, they thought stones and filth, however powerful, not the most characteristic of argu- ments. . While they entertained the sincerest veneration for the Chief Justice and the Attorney General, they fan- cied it was scarcely necessary for them to interfere in the defence of a religion which can boast of so many learned and reverend defenders. All their best and most powerful feelings, ind-ed, led them to desire the failure of the des- perate cause in which the victim of the court prosecution had embarked j but for that very reason they shuddered at defending it with mortal weapons ; they thought that truth rested on too sure foundations to need the interfe- I ' I [ !f pUf U &' il 544 rence of a special jury ; and that the cause of the Al- mighty would repel its assailants, without needing the assistance of the Attorney General. To them the sen- tence on Mr. Eaton appeared to be a bitter, though an unintentional libel on the faith it professed to defend ; as it opposed the mildness of its precepts, and confessed its inequality to an open combat with its strenuous and undis- guised op posers. Whether these feelings were correct or fallacious, we need not examine ; it is enough to remem- ber that they were loudly expressed ; and that the judg- ment of the King's Bench was made the occasion of an open triumph. Had Eaton been simply sentenced to im- prisonment, the people might have commiserated his fate, but could never have averted his sentence. By his expo- sure in the pillory, the storm of censure and disgrace was turned from him, and poured on the heads of his prose- cutors and his judges. And thus in every case, the ver- dict of the jury is liable to be reversed and the sentence virtually remitted. It is possible that the public may be correct in their opposition, as every enlightened mind feels they were in the case we have just alluded to, but the intention of solemn decisions is wholly frustrated by the appeal to them. The idea, if clearly examined, is of the wildest republican cast ; and would, if generally admitted into our system of jurisprudence, subvert its deepest and most sacred foundations. fi-f fc' i-'.i IV. Akin to this objection, which applies so strongly to the public exhibition under our notice, is another which arises from the same source, and is pregnant with yet more serious evils. The mob are not only invited to re- judge the criminal, to annul the sentence, and to frustrate every end of public justice by turning a judicial punish- ment into an antijudicial victory ; but they are permitted 545 to heighten the sentence, to change its nature, and lo avenge the transgression of the law by a violent infraction of its most obvious principles. A man who has merely been deemed worthy of an open disgrace, whose crime is only termed by the gentle name of a misdemeanor, is given up to the fury of the populace to be pelted until he is nearly expiring. They are to punish him according to their good pleasure. His ultimate judges are those who never heard his trial, who know nothing of the evidence on which he was convicted, and are wholly incapable of coolly estimating the magnitude of his offence. And not only are they entirely ignorant of the merits of the cause thus sum- marily brought under their cognizance, but liable to be blind- ed by prejudice, and wrought up to a frenzy by unhallowed passions. The law wisely gives them an opportunity of reveng- ing all their private wrongs, of gratifying all their low malig- nities, and of embodying their untutored prejudices in deed^ which may possibly be fatal to their victim. Had one of the advocates of the com bill incurred the penalty denounced on Lord Cochrane, and that penalty been-, inflicted at the crisis of the popular discontents, which attended that mistaken proposition, it is probable his life would have been placed in imminent danger. A person convicted of perjury ; the worst and most hardened of villains, might have excited some sympathy ; but nothing is too bad for him who has opposed the fancies of the multitude. Let the Chief Justice bring the matter home to his own bosom, and suppose that some political friend of his Lordship's, who unfortunately might not share in his fame, some unhappy proposer of a new tax, or some obnoxi- ous antagonist of Lord Cochrane, were to be convicted on a similar charge with that of the gallant and unfortunate officer. The supposidon is, it is true, very improbable, for we are too well acquainted with the purity of his Lordship's If Ui\^ 546 elevated connexions, to suppose it possible that any of them should be addicted to gaming, and especially to any trickery or unfairness in the pursuit. Still we have a right to make the supposition ; and we have surely a right also to suppose that no partiality arising from the connexion would in the slightest degree alter the sentence. And what, on such an occasion, must be his feelings, when he remembered that he was resigning his acquaintance, not to the sure measure of legal punishment adequate to the offence, but to the* ven- geance of the Westminster electors for his attacks on their pockets and their favorite. It may indeed be said that some of the crimes thus visited are well deserving the utmost fury of an enraged people, and that there is no punishment de- nounced against them by our penal code at all equal to the darkness of their guilt. Be it so. Tha^ lords no reason why the defects of the law should be made up by the assis- tance of popular tumult, or its necessities supplied by violence and outrage. In short, the pillory is in direct opposition to the principle upon which all laws are founded, and must serve, as far as its influence extends, to undermine the foundations of their authority. They were erected to control the unbridled passions o{ man, to take from individuals the power of revenge, to render punishm^-nts the determinate effect of firm and substantial enactments, instead of fluctu- ating with the rage and the sympathies of individuals, to prevent parties from being judges of their own injuries, to humanize society by taking from the strongest the power of inflicting arbitrary penalties by which it was reduced to a state of perpetual warfare, and to impress the mind with awe by the weight and the solemnity of their decisions. But this strange infliction actually reverses all these benign intentions which the collective wisdom of ages has gradually matured, it proceeds on antisocial principles, and tends to bring us back to our state of original barbarism. We have 547 , I! aill been taught that the sacred throne of justice should be exahed far above the passions and the ever-fluctuating sympathies of man, that its voice should be as certain as it is awful, and its sentences untainted with any of the gross- er particles which move in a lowlier atmosphere. We have learnt that while increasing wisdom should improve our laws, their actual dictates should be received during their existence with a noble and generous obedience. But here, in opposition to all these maxims, 'we see in them a principle which tends to their own destruction, a secret cancer which by insensible degrees is eating away the vital principle on which their vigor and their majesty depend. A judgment of pillory is the worst of their enemies. If the mob applaud, they are set openly at defi- ance, and if on the other hand they break out nto violence, the peace they should preserve is broken, the personal feelings they should subdue are excited, and the barbarous spirit of man unsoftened by civilization which they were formed to repress, is aroused by their powerful sanction.. In the former case, the best emotions of the heart are inju- diciously arrayed against their authority ; and a competition is excited where it is the noblest policy to conciliate. In the latter, the people act the part of unauthorized executioners, and become familiar with the most brutal of pleasures — ^the delight in pain, the horrible laugh of demoniac exultation at the sufferings of a fellow being. Our societies for the suppression of vice, if any such now exist, should turn their eyes to such a spectacle, if they can bear to censure any evil which they may not allege in their Qui Tarn informations to be '* against tJie form of the statute in such case made and provided " They who look on tho tortures inflicted at a bull-baiting or a cock-fight with a virtuous horror, unless they measure out their disgust according to law, should feel much stronger indignation at the sight of » I I ' h\'<\