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Miscellaneous Papers by Charles Dickens
page 25 of 81 (30%)
for all secret and unwholesome thoughts. And when he struggles with
his victim at the last, "though he should be hanged for it", it is a
merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only, but with that ever-
haunting, ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, too; and with a
fierce defiance to it, after their long survey of each other, to
come on and do its worst.

Present this black idea of violence to a bad mind contemplating
violence; hold up before a man remotely compassing the death of
another person, the spectacle of his own ghastly and untimely death
by man's hands; and out of the depths of his own nature you shall
assuredly raise up that which lures and tempts him on. The laws
which regulate those mysteries have not been studied or cared for,
by the maintainers of this law; but they are paramount and will
always assert their power.

Out of one hundred and sixty-seven persons under sentence of Death
in England, questioned at different times, in the course of years,
by an English clergyman in the performance of his duty, there were
only three who had not been spectators of executions.

We come, now, to the consideration of those murders which are
committed, or attempted, with no other object than the attainment of
an infamous notoriety. That this class of crimes has its origin in
the Punishment of Death, we cannot question; because (as we have
already seen, and shall presently establish by another proof) great
notoriety and interest attach, and are generally understood to
attach, only to those criminals who are in danger of being executed.

One of the most remarkable instances of murder originating in mad
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