Four men were hung at Liverpool on Saturday, the 12th
inst., all murderers of the worst class. The execution was attended by upwards of 100,000 persons, and, contrary to custom, they seem to have been impressed with a beneficial feeling of horror. The men died quietly, but two of them tried to assume an air of sullen bravado. The execution of four men at once is unusual, and has been condemned, as tending, in French phrase, to "demoralize the guillotine." If it be right, however, to execute murderers, which we should strongly affirm, it is right to execute any number of them, and the impression on the spectators was far more terrible than four executions at intervals would have been. The objection to double executions, like the objection to the execution of women, arises from an instinctive feeling of dislike, not from any reason which will bear argument.
