failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the
criminal uncaught will treat us to a quantity and quality of crime
notably augmented by the Christian spirit of the new _régime_.


IV

As to painless execution, the simple and practical way to make them both
just and expedient is the adoption by murderers of a system of painless
assassinations. Until this is done there seems to be no call to
renounce the wholesome discomfort of the style of executions endeared to
us by memories and associations of the tenderest character. There is, I
fancy, a shaping notion in the observant mind that the penologists and
their allies have gone about as far as they can safely be permitted to
go in the direction of a softer suasion of the criminal nature toward
good behavior. The modern prison has become a rather more comfortable
habitation than the dangerous classes are accustomed to at home. Modern
prison life has in their eyes something of the charm and glamor of an
ideal existence, like that in the Happy Valley from which Rasselas had
the folly to escape. Whatever advantages to the public may be secured by
abating the rigors of imprisonment and inconveniences incident to
execution, there is this objection: it makes them less deterrent. Let
the penologers and philanthropers have their way and even hanging might
be made so pleasant and withal so interesting a social distinction that
it would deter nobody but the person hanged. Adopt the euthanasian
method of electricity, asphyxia by smothering in rose-leaves, or slow
poisoning with rich food, and the death penalty may come to be regarded
as the object of a noble ambition to the _bon vivant_, and the rising
young suicide may go and kill somebody else instead of himself, in order
to receive from the public executioner a happier dispatch than his own