22 OCTOBER 1870, Page 14

THE VANITY OF EXPERIENCE.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

SIR,—Your severely logical and logically severe article of last week must mean one of two things. It may mean that if I saw a great many more people hanged, I should acknowledge my original horror to be sickly sentiment, and should learn to regard an execu- tion as an edifying spectacle. This was the opinion of an eminent official present at the time, who, like yourself, but more tersely, intimated that a little "experience" only leads to "vanity." Or your able article may mean that, before I saw Margaret Waters hanged, I had never given the subject of capital punishment any consideration at all, and so had "no belief upon the subject worthy of the name." With due deference to your better know- ledge of my own studies, I had considerd and studied the subject, "listening," as you most naturally suggest, "to able advice, and comparing the counsels obtained," for some years. All that I had to do was to see an execution.

My belief in the efficacy of capital punishment was grounded upon the notion that an execution produces in those who witness it a respect for the law thus terribly vindicated, an increased con- viction of the sanctity of life, and of the respect in which the law holds'that sanctity ; and lastly, a conviction of the justice of the sentence, and an abhorrence of the crime for which it has been awarded. This was "what I expected to see to confirm me" in what you "decline to call my belief" that capital punishment is desirable. All other arguments for capital punishment than those grounded upon its supposed salutary effect as a spectacle, I, whether rightly or wrongly, had long abandoned as untenable.

The hanging of a woman who had driven a systematic traffic in murder was a crucial instance. The sight did not inspire me with respect for our laws ; it has not heightened my conception of the sanctity of life, and of the respect in which our laws hold that sanctity. Instead of abhorrence for the crime, I felt nothing but pity for the criminal ; and I saw the truth of what I had often before heard,—that an execution is just by our laws alone, unjust by a higher and a broader law, which our laws, and with them perhaps the Spectator, will one day acknowledge.

While my impression of the scene was still vivid, I scribbled the letter which has so much amused you, wishing to catch the public ear before the Daily Telegraph and all our other teachers had, with yourself, demonstrated that the execution of Margaret Waters was an educational instrument of the highest order.

As, then, my belief in capital punishment rested upon the belief that it produces a certain definite effect upon the spectator, I fancy that I had a right—in utter default of such an effect—to change my belief between 9.0 and 9.10 a.m.

The Hon. G. Denman has more " experience " and leas " vanity " than I. He says, "we unnecessarily send out of the world every human being whom we execute." The Rev. J. Jessop has too much "experience" to be "vain." He says, "the sight of an execution demoralizes and brutalizes ; it counter- acts the objects of good government, and is an unmixed evil."

If you say that it is the idea and not the sight of an execution that is beneficial, you admit that the idea and the thing do not correspond, and you offer to your own notions of morality "the unclean sacrifice of a lie."

Lastly, the opinion that one murder (i.e., an execution) " un- does " another was never my own, and it may, or may not, be "insane." It is, however, the opinion of Hegel,—only that, quoting by memory from Mr. Sanders' paraphrase, I used the word " undoes " instead of the words "does away with."—I am, Sir, &c., "A SOMEBODY WHO WAS PRESENT AT THE EXECUTION OF MARGARET WATERS."