An Under-Sheriff of London and Middlesex, writing to Wednes- day'
s Times, makes the occasional awkwardness of the hangman, and the consequent suffering of the victim, a plea for abolishing capital punishment altogether. A plea it may be, but it is a very, very weak one. These sensational scenes, seldom more than a few seconds in dunation, are most repulsive, and most unfortunate in their general effect ; but you might just as well determine the rightness or wrongness of war by the incidental horrors of a battle. field, and the rightness or wrongness of using wood in housebuilding by the incidental horrors of a great fire, as deter- mine such a question as capital punishment by arguments of this class. If capital punishment is right, it is right because it alone expresses adequately the horror of the community for a special class of crimes, and because it alone inspires a certain exceptional awe and dread in the minds of brutal men.
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