By abolishing capital punishment on this account, and without waiting until you are interested in the question, you would accomplish more than a political act, you would do a social act.

But you have not even accomplished a political act, in trying to abolish it, not in order to abolish it, but in order to save four wretched ministers who put their hands upon state policies!

What happened? As you were not sincere, the populace became defiant. When they saw that you wished to fool them, they grew angry against the whole question, and, strange fact! they took sides and argued for that capital punishment, the whole burden of which they supported. It was your awkwardness that brought them to this. By not being perfectly frank, you compromised the question for a long time. You were playing a comedy, and they hissed it.

But some wits had the kindness to take this farce seriously. Immediately after the famous session, the order had been given to the attorney-generals by a keeper of the seals, an honest man, to suspend all capital punishment indefinitely. Apparently it was a great step. Those opposed to capital punishment breathed again. But the illusion did not last long.

The trial of the ministers was brought to a close. Some sentence, I do not know what, was pronounced. The four lives were spared. Ham was chosen as the happy medium between death and liberty. These various arrangements once made, all fear vanished in the minds of the statesmen; and with the fear, humanity disappeared. It was no longer a question of abolishing capital punishment; and once without need of her, Utopia became Utopia again; theory, theory; poetry, poetry.

There always had been in the prisons, however, some unfortunate convicts who, for five or six months, had walked about in the yards, breathing the air, calm, sure of living, taking their respite for their pardon. But wait.

The hangman had had a great fright. The day when he had heard our lawmakers speak of humanity, philanthropy, progress, he thought himself lost; and he hid, the wretch, he cowered down under his guillotine, ill at ease in the July heat, like a night-bird in daylight, trying to make himself forgotten, stopping up his ears, and not daring to breathe. He was not seen for six months. But he had been listening; and he had not heard the Chamber utter his name, nor any of those great expressions of which he was so afraid. No more commentaries on the “Treatise on Crimes and Punishment.” They were occupied with entirely different things, of great importance, such as a parochial road, a subsidy for the Opera Comique, or a payment of one hundred thousand francs on an apoplectic budget of fifteen hundred millions. No one thought of him, the hangman. Seeing which, he becomes calm, he puts his head out of his hole, and looks about on every side; he takes one step, then two, like the mouse in La Fontaine; then he ventures out suddenly from under his scaffold; he springs up, mends it, restores it, polishes, caresses it, makes it work and shine, and sets about oiling the old rusty machine that has become out of order through disuse. All at once he turns, seizes by the hair, from the first prison he reaches, one of the poor wretches who have been counting on living, drags him out, strips him, binds him down, and—behold! the executions are begun again!

All this is horrible, but it is history.

Yes, the unhappy captives had a respite of six months; but their punishment was gratuitously aggravated in this way. Then, for no reason or necessity, without knowing why, for pleasure alone, the respite was revoked one fine morning, and all these human beings were coldly submitted to a systematic execution. Well, great God! I ask you, what harm would it have done us had they lived? Is there not enough air in France for every one to breathe?

One day a miserable clerk of the chancellor, it matters not who, rose from his chair, saying: “Come! no one thinks any more about the abolishment of capital punishment. It is time to return to the guillotine!” The heart of that man must have been made of stone.

Moreover, never have executions been accompanied by more atrocities than since the revocation of the respite of July. Never has the story of La Grève been more revolting, never has it better proved the wickedness of capital punishment. This increased cruelty is the just punishment of the men who brought back the law of blood with a vengeance. May they be punished by their own deeds! It would only be right.

We must cite here two or three examples of the frightful and impious acts connected with some executions. It would make the wives of the public prosecutors nervous. A woman sometimes has a conscience.

In the South, toward the close of last September (we are not quite sure of the place, day, or the name of the condemned man; but they can all be found if proof is needed, and we think that it was at Pamiers)—toward the close of September, a man was found in prison, quietly playing at cards.