quietly, by an appeal to public opinion through you, than by such an
exposure of names as would follow an appeal to Bow Street; which last
appeal, however, if this should fail, I must positively resort to. For it
is scandalous that such things should go on in a Christian land. Even in a
heathen land, the toleration of murder was felt by a Christian writer to be
the most crying reproach of the public morals. This writer was Lactantius;
and with his words, as singularly applicable to the present occasion, I
shall conclude: "Quid tam horribile," says he, "tam tetrum, quam hominis
trucidatio? Ideo severissimis legibus vita nostra munitur; ideo bella
execrabilia sunt. Invenit tamen consuetudo quatenus homicidium sine bello
ac sine legibus faciat: et hoc sibi voluptas quod scelus vindicavit.
Quod si interesse homicidio sceleris conscientia est,--et eidem facinori
spectator obstrictus est cui et admissor; ergo et in his gladiatorum
cædibus non minus cruore profunditur qui spectat, quam ille qui facit:
nec potest esse immunis à sanguine qui voluit effundi; aut videri non
interfecisse, qui interfectori et favit et proemium postulavit." "Human
life," says he, "is guarded by laws of the uttermost rigor, yet custom has
devised a mode of evading them in behalf of murder; and the demands of
taste (voluptas) are now become the same as those of abandoned guilt." Let
the Society of Gentlemen Amateurs consider this; and let me call their
especial attention to the last sentence, which is so weighty, that I shall
attempt to convey it in English: "Now, if merely to be present at a
murder fastens on a man the character of an accomplice; if barely to be a
spectator involves us in one common guilt with the perpetrator; it follows
of necessity, that, in these murders of the amphitheatre, the hand which
inflicts the fatal blow is not more deeply imbrued in blood that his who
sits and looks on: neither can _he_ be clear of blood who has countenanced
its shedding; nor that man seem other than a participator in murder who
gives his applause to the murderer, and calls for prizes in his behalf."
The "_præmia postulavit_" I have not yet heard charged upon the Gentlemen