The would-be king-killer, Lecomte, has been guillotined. The ceremony was
performed with unusual privacy ; thus stripping it of that theatrical display which has made punishment a pre- mium to such crimes. But it almost looked as if Ministers were ashamed of their severity, contrasted with the understood clement inclinations ot the Monarch himself. It is said that Lecomte re- pented before he died : but such repentance, after the act, proves nothing except that the morbid excitement had passed away. What is wanted is an efficient influence to check that excitement at its height; and the French Executive seem quite as much at a loss as ours to discover such an influence. They get no nearer to it by this empirical alternation of mercy and severity. Probably the most apposite correction, with men who become criminal, like Lecomte, through impulse and mad pride, would be some punish- ment in its nature derogatory and protracted. Set such fellows to work for life in the laundry of a convict establishment, and the fate would have more terrors for the melodramatic bravoes than the guillotine.
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