In the earlier editions of this work, published at first without the
name of the author, the following lines formed the sole introduction to
the subject:--
“There are two ways of accounting for the existence of the ensuing
work. Either there really has been found a roll of papers on which
were inscribed, exactly as they came, the last thoughts of a
condemned prisoner; or else there has been an author, a dreamer,
occupied in observing nature for the advantage of society, who,
having been seized with those forcible ideas, could not rest until
he had given them the tangible form of a volume.”
* * * * *
At the time when this book was first published, I did not deem fit to
give publicity to the full extent of my thoughts; I preferred waiting to
see whether the work would be fully understood, and I find such has been
its fate.
I may now, therefore, unmask the political and social ideas which I
wished to render popular under this harmless literary guise. I avow
openly, that “The Last Day of a Condemned” is only a pleading, direct
or indirect, for _the abolition of punishment by death_. My design
herein (and what I would wish posterity to see in my work, if its
attention should ever be given to so slight a production) is, not to
make out the special defence of any particular criminal, such defence
being transitory as it is easy: I would plead generally and permanently
for _all_ accused persons, present and future; it is the great point of
Human Right stated and pleaded before society at large,--that highest
judicial court; it is the sombre and fatal question which breathes
obscurely in the depths of each capital offence, under the triple
envelopes of pathos in which legal eloquence wraps them; it is the
question of life and death, I say, laid bare, denuded of the sonorous
twistings of the bar, revealed in daylight, and placed where it should
be seen, in its true and hideous position,--not in the law courts, but
on the scaffold,--not among the judges, but with the Executioner!
This is what I have desired to effect. If futurity should award me the
glory of having succeeded,--which I dare not hope,--I desire no other
crown.
I proclaim and repeat it, then, in the name of all accused persons,
innocent or guilty, before all courts, juries, or judges. And in order
that my pleading should be as universal as my cause, I have been
careful, while writing “The Last Day of a Condemned,” to omit any thing
of a special, individual, contingent, relative, or modifiable nature, as
also any episode, anecdote, known event, or real name,--keeping to the
limit (if “limit” it may be termed!) of pleading the cause of _any_
condemned prisoner whatever, executed at any time, for any offence;
happy if, with no other aid than my thoughts, I have mined sufficiently
into my subject to make a heart bleed, under the _æs triplex_ of a
magistrate! happy if I could render merciful those who consider
themselves just! happy if I penetrate sufficiently deep within the Judge
to reach the man.
When this book first appeared, some people thought it was worth while to
dispute the authorship. Some asserted that it was taken from an English
work, and others that it was borrowed from an American author. What a
singular mania there is for seeking the origin of matters at a great
distance,--trying to trace from the source of the Nile the streamlet
which flows through our village! In this work there is no English,
American, or Chinese assistance. I formed the idea of “The Last Day of a
Condemned” where you all might form it,--where perhaps you may all have
formed it (for who is there that has not reflected and had reveries of
“the last day of a condemned”?)--there, on the public walk, the place of
execution!
It was there, while passing casually during an execution, that this
forcible idea occurred to me; and, since then, after those funereal
Thursdays of the Court of Cassation, which send forth through Paris the
intelligence of an approaching execution, the hoarse voices of the
assembling spectators, as they hurried past my windows, filled my mind
with the prolonged misery of the person about to suffer, which I
pictured to myself, from hour to hour, according to what I conceived was
its actual progress. It was a torture which commenced from daybreak,
and lasted, like that of the miserable being who was tortured at the
same moment, until _four o’clock_. Then only, when once the _ponens
caput expiravit_ was announced by the heavy toll of the clock, I
breathed again freely, and regained comparative peace of mind. One day
at length--I think it was after the execution of Ulbach--I commenced
writing this work; and since then I have felt relieved. When one of
those public crimes called _legal executions_ is committed, my
conscience now acquits me of participation therein. This, however, is
not sufficient; it is well to be freed from self-accusation, but it
would be still better to endeavour to save human life. I do not know any
aim more elevated, more holy, than that of seeking the abolition of
capital punishment; with sincere devotion I join the wishes and efforts
of those philanthropic men of all nations who have laboured, of late
years, to throw down the patibulary tree,--the only tree which
revolution fails to uproot! It is with pleasure that I take my turn to
give my feeble stroke, after the all-powerful blow which, seventy years
ago, Beccaria gave to the ancient gibbet, which had been standing during
so many centuries of Christianity.
I have just said that the scaffold is the only edifice which revolutions
do not demolish. It is rare indeed that revolutions are temperate in
spilling blood; and although they are sent to prune, to lop, to reform
society, the punishment of death is a branch which they have never
removed! I own, however, if any revolution ever appeared to me capable
and worthy of abolishing capital punishment, it was the Revolution of
July, 1830. It seemed, indeed, as if it belonged to the merciful
popular rising of modern times to erase the barbarous enactments of
Louis the Eleventh, of Richelieu, and of Robespierre, and to inscribe at
the head of the code, “the inviolability of human life!” 1830 was worthy
of breaking the axe of 1793.
At one time we really hoped for it. In August, 1830, there seemed so
much generosity afloat, such a spirit of gentleness and civilization in
the multitude, that we almost fancied the punishment of death was
abolished, by a tacit and unanimous consent, with the rest of the evils
which had oppressed us. For some weeks confiding and credulous, we had
faith in the inviolability of life, for the future, as in the
inviolability of liberty.
In effect, two months had scarcely passed, when an attempt was made to
resolve into a legal reality the sublime Utopia of Cæsar Bonesana.
Unfortunately, this attempt was awkward, imperfect, almost hypocritical,
and made in a different spirit from the general interest.
It was in the month of October, 1830, as may be remembered, that the
question of capital punishment was brought before the Chamber of
Deputies, and discussed with much talent, energy, and apparent feeling.
During two days there was a continued succession of impressive eloquence
on this momentous subject; and what was the subject?--to abolish the
punishment of death? Yes and No! Here is the truth.
Four “gentlemen,”--four persons well known in society,[7]--had attempted
in the higher range of politics one of those daring strokes which Bacon
calls crimes, and which Machiavel calls _enterprises_. Well! crime or
enterprise,--the law, brutal for all, would punish it by death; and the
four unfortunates were prisoners, legal captives guarded by three
hundred tri-coloured cockades at Vincennes. What was now to be done? You
understand the impossibility of sending to the place of execution, in a
common cart, ignobly bound with coarse ropes, seated back to back with
that functionary who must not be named,--four men of our own rank,--four
“gentlemen”!
If there were even a mahogany Guillotine!
Well, to settle the matter, they need only _abolish the punishment of
death_; and thereupon the Chamber set to work!
Only yesterday they had treated this abolition as Utopian,--as a theory,
a dream, a poetic folly. This was not the first time that an endeavour
had been made to draw their attention to the cart, the coarse ropes, and
the fatal machine. How strange it is that these hideous details acquired
such sudden force in their minds!
Alas! it was not on account of the general good that they sought to
abolish capital punishment, but for their own sakes,--as Deputies, who
might become Ministers. And thus an alloy of egotism alters and destroys
the fairest social combinations. It is the dark vein in statuary marble,
which, crossing everywhere, comes forth at each moment unexpectedly
under the chisel!
It is surely unnecessary for me to declare that I was not among those
who desired the death of the Ministers. When once they were imprisoned,
the indignant anger I had felt at their attempt changed with me, as with
every one else, into profound pity. I reflected on the prejudices of
education of some among them; on the ill-developed head of their chief
(fanatic and obstinate relapse of the conspiracies of 1804), whitened
before its time, in the damp cells of state prisons; on the fatal
necessity of their common position; on the impossibility of their
placing a drag on that rapid slope down which monarchy rushed blindly on
the 8th of August, 1829; on the influence of personal intercourse with
Royalty over them, which I had hitherto under-rated: and finally I
reflected, above all, on the dignity which one among them spread, like a
purple mantle, over their misfortunes! I was among those who sincerely
wished their lives saved, and would have readily lent my aid to that
effect.
If a scaffold had been raised for them in Paris, I feel quite certain
(and if it be an illusion, I would preserve it) that there would have
been an insurrection to pull it down; and I should have been one of the
rioters.
Here I must add that, in each social crisis, of all scaffolds, the
political one is the most abominable, the most fatal, the most
mischievous, the most necessary to extirpate.
In revolutionary times, beware of the first execution. It excites the
sanguinary passions of the mob.
I therefore agreed thoroughly with those who wished to spare the four
Ministers, both as a matter of feeling and of political reasoning. But I
should have liked better that the Chamber had chosen another occasion
for proposing the abolition of capital punishment. If they had suggested
this desirable change not with reference to those four Ministers, fallen
from a Palace to a Prison, but in the instance of the first
highwayman,--in the case of one of those wretches to whom you neither
give word nor look, and from whom you shrink as they pass: miserable
beings, who, during their ragged infancy, ran barefoot in the mud of the
crossings; shivering in winter near the quays, or seeking to warm
themselves outside the ventilator from the kitchens of the hotels where
you dine; scratching out, here and there, a crust of bread from the
heaps of filth, and wiping it before eating; scraping in the gutter all
day, with a rusty nail, in the hopes of finding a farthing; having no
other amusement than the gratuitous sight of the King’s fête, and the
public executions,--that other gratuitous sight,--poor devils! whom
hunger forces on theft, and theft to all the rest; children disinherited
by their step-mother, the world; who are adopted by the House of
Correction in their twelfth year,--by the Galleys at eighteen,--and by
the Guillotine at forty! unfortunate beings whom, by means of a school
and a workshop, you might have rendered good, moral, useful; and with
whom you now know not what to do,--flinging them away like a useless
burthen, sometimes into the red ant-heaps of Toulon, sometimes into the
silent cemetery of Clamart; cutting off life after taking away liberty.
If it had been in the instance of one of these outcasts that you had
proposed to abolish the punishment of death, oh, then your councils
would have indeed been noble, great, holy, majestic! It has ever
belonged to those who are truly great and truly powerful, to protect the
lowly and weak. How grand would be a Council of Bramins advocating the
cause of the Paria! And with us the cause of the Paria is the cause of
the people. In abolishing the penalty of death for sake of the people,
and without waiting until you were personally interested in the
question, you would have done more than a political work,--you would
have conferred a social benefit.
Instead of this, you have not yet even completed a political act, while
seeking to abolish it not for the abolition’s sake, but to save four
unfortunate Ministers detected in political delinquency. What has
happened? As you were not sincere, the people were distrustful; when
they suspected the cause of your change, they became angry at the
question altogether, and, strange to say, they declared in favour of
that condign punishment, the weight of which presses entirely on
themselves.
Immediately after the famous discussion in the Chamber, orders were
given to respite, indefinitely, all executions. This was apparently a
great step gained; the opponents of punishment by death were rendered
happy; but the illusion was of short duration. The lives of the
Ministers were spared, and the fortress of Ham was selected as a medium,
between death and liberty. These different arrangements once completed,
all fear was banished from the minds of the ruling statesmen; and along
with fear humanity was also banished. There was no farther question of
abolishing capital punishment; and, when they no longer wished to prove
to the contrary, Utopia became again Utopia!
There were yet in the prisons some unfortunate condemned wretches, who,
having been allowed during five or six months to walk about the
prison-yards and breathe the fresh air, felt tranquil for the future,
sure of life, mistaking their reprieve for pardon.
There had indeed been a reprieve of six months for these hapless
captives, whose sufferings were thus gratuitously aggravated, by making
them cling again to life: then, without reason, without necessity,
without well knowing why, the respites were all revoked, and all these
human beings were launched into eternity.
Let me add, that never were executions accompanied by more atrocious
circumstances than since that revocation of the reprieve of July. Never
have the “anecdotes” been more revolting, or more effectual to prove the
execration of capital punishment. I will cite here two or three examples
of the horrors which have attended recent executions. I must shock the
nerves of the wives of king’s counsel. _A wife is sometimes a
conscience!_
In the South, towards the close of last September, the following
circumstance occurred: I think it was at Pamiers. The officers went to a
man in prison, whom they found quietly playing at cards, and gave him
notice that he was to die in two hours. The wretched creature was
horror-struck; for during the six months he had been forgotten, he had
no longer thought on death; he was confessed, bound, his hair cut off,
he was placed in the fatal cart, and taken to the place of execution.
The Executioner took him from the Priest; laid him down and bound him on
the Guillotine, and then let loose the axe. The heavy triangle of iron
slowly detached itself, falling by jerks down the slides, until,
horrible to relate, it wounded the man, without killing him! The poor
creature uttered a frightful cry. The disconcerted Executioner hauled up
the axe, and let it slide down again. A second time, the neck of the
malefactor was wounded, without being severed. Again he shrieked, the
crowd joining him. The Executioner raised the axe a third time, but no
better effect attended the third stroke. Let me abridge these fearful
details. Five times the axe was raised and let fall, and after the fifth
stroke, the condemned was still shrieking for mercy. The indignant
populace commenced throwing missiles at the Executioner, who hid himself
beneath the Guillotine, and crept away behind the gendarmes’ horses: but
I have not yet finished. The hapless culprit, seeing he was left alone
on the scaffold, raised himself on the plank, and there standing,
frightful, streaming with blood, he demanded with feeble cries that some
one would unbind him! The populace, full of pity, were on the point of
forcing the gendarmes to help the hapless wretch, who had five times
undergone his sentence. At this moment the servant of the Executioner, a
youth under twenty, mounted on the scaffold, told the sufferer to turn
round, that he might unbind him: then taking advantage of the posture of
the dying man, who had yielded himself without any mistrust, sprang on
him, and slowly cut through the neck with a knife! All this happened;
all this was seen.
According to law, a judge was obliged to be present at this execution;
by a sign he could have stopped all. Why was he leaning back in his
carriage then, this man, while they massacred another man? What was he
doing, this punisher of assassins, while they thus assassinated, in
open day, his fellow-creature? And the Judge was not tried for this; nor
the Executioner was not tried for it; and no tribunal inquired into this
monstrous violation of all law on one of God’s creatures.
In the seventeenth century, that epoch of barbarity in the criminal
code, under Richelieu, under Christophe Fouquet, Monsieur de Chalais was
put to death at Nantes by an awkward soldier, who, instead of a
sword-stroke, gave him thirty-four strokes of a cooper’s adze.[8] But at
least it was considered execrable by the parliament of Paris, there was
an inquest and a trial; and, although Richelieu and Fouquet did not
suffer, the soldier was punished,--an injustice doubtless, but in which
there was some show of justice.
In the modern instance, nothing was done. The fact took place after
July, in times of civilization and march of intellect, a year after the
celebrated lamentation of the Chamber on the penalty of death. The
circumstance attracted no attention; the Paris papers published it as an
anecdote, and no one cared about it. It was only known that the
Guillotine had been put out of order by a dismissed servant of the
Executioner, who, to revenge himself, had taken this method of action.
Another instance. At Dijon, only three months ago, they brought to the
scaffold a woman (a woman!). This time again the axe of the Guillotine
failed of its effect, and the head was not quite detached. Then the
Executioner’s servants pulled the feet of the woman; and, amidst the
yells of the populace, thus finished the law!
At Paris, we have come back to the time of secret executions; since July
they no longer dare to decapitate in the town, for they are afraid. Here
is what they do. They took lately from the Bicêtre prison a man, under
sentence of death, named Desandrieux, I think; they put him into a sort
of panier on two wheels, closed on every side, bolted and padlocked;
then with a gendarme in front, and another at the back, without noise or
crowd, they proceeded to the deserted barrier of St. James. It was eight
in the morning when they arrived, with but little light. There was a
newly erected Guillotine, and for spectators, some dozens of little
boys, grouped on the heaps of stones around the unexpected machine.
Quickly they withdrew the man from the basket; and without giving him
time to breathe, they furtively, secretly, shamefully deprived him of
life! And that is called a public and solemn act of high justice!
Infamous derision! How then do the lawgivers understand the word
civilization? To what point have we attained? Justice reduced to
stratagems and frauds! The law reduced to expedient! Monstrous! A man
condemned to death, it would seem, was greatly to be feared, since they
put an end to him in this traitorous fashion!
Let us be just, however; the execution was not quite secret. In the
morning people hawked and sold, as usual, the sentence of death through
the streets. It appears there are people who live by such sales. The
crime of a hapless fellow-creature, its punishment, his torture, his
agony, forms their stock in trade--a paper that they sell for a penny.
Can one conceive anything more hideous than this coin, _verdigrised_ in
blood?
Here are enough of facts; here are too many. Is not all this horrible?
What can be alleged in favour of punishment by death?
I put this question seriously. I ask it that it may be answered; I ask
it of Legislators, and not of literary gossips. I know there are people
who take “the excellence of punishment by death” for a text of
paradoxes, like any other theme; there are others who only advocate
capital punishment because they hate so-and-so who attack it. It is for
them almost a literary question, a question of persons, and proper
names; these are the envious, who do not find more fault with good
lawyers than with good artists. The Joseph Grippas are no more wanting
to the Filangieri than the Torregiani to the Michael Angelos, and the
Scuderies to the Corneilles.
It is not to these that I address myself, but to men of law, properly so
called,--to logicians, to reasoners; to those who love the penalty of
death for its beauty, its goodness, its grace!
Let them give their reasons.
Those who judge and condemn say that “punishment by death is
necessary,--first, because it is requisite to remove from the social
community a member which has already injured it, and might injure it
again.”
If this be all, perpetual imprisonment would suffice. What is the use of
inflicting death? You argue that a prisoner may escape from gaol,--keep
watch more strictly! If you do not believe in the solidity of iron bars,
how do you venture to have menageries? Let there be no executioner
where the jailer can be sufficient.
They continue, “But society must avenge itself, society must punish.”
Neither one nor the other; _vengeance_ is an individual act, and
_punishment_ belongs to God. Society is between the two; punishment is
above its power, retaliation beneath it. Society should not punish, to
avenge itself; it should correct, to ameliorate others!
Their third and last reason remains, the theory of example. “We must
make examples. By the sight of the fate inflicted on criminals, we must
shock those who might otherwise be tempted to imitate them!”
Well, in the first place, I deny the power of the example. I deny that
the sight of executions produces the desired effect. Far from edifying
the common people, it demoralizes and ruins their feeling, injuring
every virtue; proofs of this abound and would encumber my argument if I
chose to cite them. I will allude to only one fact, amongst a thousand,
because it is of recent occurrence. It happened only ten days back from
the present moment when I am writing; namely, on the 5th of March, the
last day of the Carnival. At St. Pol, immediately after the execution of
an incendiary named Louis Camus, _a group of Masqueraders came and
danced round the still reeking scaffold_!
Make, then, your fine examples! Shrove Tuesday will turn them into jest!
If, notwithstanding all experience, you still hold to the theory of
example, then give us back the Sixteenth Century; be in reality
formidable. Restore to us a variety of suffering; restore us Farinacci;
restore us the sworn torturers; restore us the gibbet, the wheel, the
block, the rack, the thumb-screw, the live-burial vault, the burning
cauldron; restore us in the streets of Paris, as the most open shop
among the rest, the hideous stall of the Executioner, constantly full of
human flesh; give us back Montfaucon, its caves of bones, its beams, its
crooks, its chains, its rows of skeletons; give us back, in its
permanence and power, that gigantic outhouse of the Paris Executioner!
This indeed would be wholesale example; this would be “punishment by
death,” well understood; this would be a system of execution in some
proportion,--which, while it is horrible, is also terrible!
But do you seriously suppose you are making an example, when you take
the life of a poor wretch, in the most deserted part of the exterior
Boulevards, at eight o’clock in the morning?
Do not you see then, that your public executions are done in private?
That fear is with the execution, and not among the multitude? One is
sometimes tempted to believe, that the advocates for capital punishment
have not thoroughly considered in what it consists. But place in the
scales, against any crime whatever, this exorbitant right, which society
arrogates to itself, of taking away that which it did not bestow: that
most irreparable of evils!
The alternatives are these: First, the man you destroy is without
family, relations, or friends, in the world. In this case, he has
received neither education nor instruction; no care has been bestowed
either on his mind or heart; then, by what right would you kill this
miserable orphan? You punish him because his infancy trailed on the
ground, without stem, or support: you make him pay the penalty of the
isolated position in which you left him! you make a crime of his
misfortune! No one taught him to know what he was doing; this man lived
in ignorance: the fault was in his destiny, not himself. You destroy one
who is innocent.
Or, Secondly,--the man has a family; and then do you think the fatal
stroke wounds him alone?--that his father, his mother, or his children
will not suffer by it? In killing him, you vitally injure all his
family: and thus again you punish the innocent.
Blind and ill-directed penalty; which, on whatever side it turns,
strikes the innocent!
Imprison for life this culprit who has a family: in his cell he can
still work for those who belong to him. But how can he help them from
the depth of the tomb? And can you reflect without shuddering, on what
will become of those young children, from whom you take away their
father, their support? Do you not feel that they must fall into a career
of vice?
In the Colonies, when a slave is condemned to public execution, there
are a thousand francs of indemnity paid to the proprietor of the man!
What, you compensate a master, and you do not indemnify a family! In
this country, do you not take the man from those who possess him? Is he
not, by a much more sacred tie than master and slave, the property of
his father, the wealth of his wife, the fortune of his children?
I have already proved your law guilty of assassination; I have now
convicted it of robbery!
And then another consideration. Do you consider the soul of this man? Do
you know in what state it is, that you dismiss it so hastily?
This may be called “sentimental reasoning,” by some disdainful
logicians, who draw their arguments only from their minds. I often
prefer the reasonings of the heart; and certainly the two should always
go together. Reason is on our side, feeling is on our side, and
experience is on our side. In those States where punishment by death is
abolished, the mass of capital crime has yearly a progressive decrease.
Let this fact have its weight.
I do not advocate, however, a sudden and complete abolition of the
penalty of death, such as was so heedlessly attempted in the Chamber of
Deputies. On the contrary, I desire every precaution, every experiment,
every suggestion of prudence: besides, in addition to this gradual
change, I would have the whole penal code examined, and reformed; and
time is a great ingredient requisite to make such a work complete. But
independently of a partial abolition of death in cases of forgery,
incendiarism, minor thefts, et cætera, I would wish that, from the
present time, in all the greater offences, the Judge should be obliged
to propose the following question to the Jury: “Has the accused acted
from Passion, or Interest?” And in case the Jury decide “the accused
acted from Passion,” then there should be no sentence of death.
Let not the opposite party deceive themselves; this question of the
penalty of death gains ground every day. Before long, the world will
unanimously solve it on the side of mercy. During the past century,
punishments have become gradually milder: the rack has disappeared, the
wheel has disappeared; and now the Guillotine is shaken. This mistaken
punishment will leave France; and may it go to some barbarous
people,--not to Turkey, which is becoming civilized, not to the savages,
for they will not have it;[9] but let it descend some steps of the
ladder of civilization, and take refuge in Spain, or Russia!
In the early ages, the social edifice rested on three columns,
Superstition, Tyranny, Cruelty. A long time ago a voice exclaimed,
“Superstition has departed!” Lately another voice has cried, “Tyranny
has departed!” It is now full time that a third voice shall be raised to
say, “The Executioner has departed!”
Thus the barbarous usages of the olden times fall one by one; thus
Providence completes modern regeneration.
To those who regret Superstition, we say, “GOD remains for us!” To those
who regret Tyranny, we say, “Our COUNTRY remains!” But to those who
could regret the Executioner we can say nothing.
Let it not be supposed that social order will depart with the scaffold;
the social building will not fall from wanting this hideous keystone.
Civilization is nothing but a series of transformations. For what then
do I ask your aid? The civilization of penal laws. The gentle laws of
CHRIST will penetrate at last into the Code, and shine through its
enactments. We shall look on crime as a disease, and its physicians
shall displace the judges, its hospitals displace the Galleys. Liberty
and health shall be alike. We shall pour balm and oil where we formerly
applied iron and fire; evil will be treated in charity, instead of in
anger. This change will be simple and sublime.