EXECUTION AT READINM—Winterborne, one of the three unhappy men left
for execution by Mr. Justice Park, suffered on Tuesday. He behaved with great firmness and propriety. Darling and Oakley have been respited, and their sentences will be commuted for banishment for life. This commutation of punishment was the result of an earnest ap- plication from some humane individuals of Reading, who were shocked at the notion of three men perishing at once by the handsof the execu. tioner for the same offence and in the same town. The intercessors be- tween the Throne and the Law, were, it is said, much gratified by the result of their application. It strikes us, that the death of one out of three or four, in such cases, goes farther to wound a truly humane breast than the perishing of the whole, We can easily imagine a case in which it may be necessary to execute' not three, but thirty individuals ; but when the whole have been found guilty by the proper tribunal, and are e unrecommended by it, it is difficult to perceive why, on the interposi- tion of those parties, who seek not for arguments in mitigation, but content themselves with humbly knocking at the door of Royal mercy; considerations of mitigated guilt, which Pormed 110 ground for judicial oecommendatien, should be taken into account by those who are not judges. If an art of grace be called for, why should it not be performed" without reservation ? 11 an act of justice be necessary, why should any petitions be allowed to stop its completion ? The public, whom it is sought at once to gratify and grieve, to soothe and alarm, by these partial examples, know only that three men have been condemned, and that one of them was not more guilty, but more unlucky than his Cont.: rades.
James Warner, who was convicted of setting fire to Mr. Frank's mill, at Albury, was executed on Monday, in front of Horsemoeger gaol. The miserable man was in so weak a state that it was necessary to carry him to the scaffold.
Previous page
