quently inflicted for the most trivial offences. The knout is one of the most common punishments in that country. This instrument is a thong made of the skin of an elk or of a wild ass, so hard that a single stroke is capable of cutting the flesh to the bone. The following description is given by Olearius of the manner in which he saw the knout inflicted on eight men, and one woman, only for selling brandy and tobacco without a license. "The executioner's man, after stripping them down to the wast, tied their feet, and took one at a time on his back. The executioner stood at three paces distance, and, springing forward with the knout in his hand, whenever he struck, the blood gushed out at every blow. The men had each twenty-five or twenty-six lashes; the woman, though only sixteen, fainted away. After their backs were thus dreadfully mangled, they were tied together two and two; and those who sold tobacco having a little of it, and those who sold brandy a little bottle put about their necks; they were then whipped through the city of Petersburgh for about a mile and a half, and then brought back to the place of their punishment, and dismissed." That is what is termed the moderate knout; for when it is given with the utmost severity, the executioner, striking the flank under the ribs, cuts the flesh to the bowels; and, therefore, it is no wonder that many die of this inhuman punishment.The punishment of the pirates and robbers who infest the banks of the Wolga, is another act of savage cruelty common to Russia. A float is built, whereon a gallows is erected, on which is fastened a number of iron hooks, and on these the wretched criminals are hung alive by the ribs. The float is then launched into the stream, and orders are given to all the towns and villages on the borders of the river, that none, upon pain of death, shall afford the least relief to any of these wretches. These malefactors sometimes hang, in this manner, three, four, and even five days alive. The pain produces a raging fever, in which they utter the most horrid imprecations, imploring the relief of water and other liquors. During the reign of Peter the Great, the robbers who infested various parts of his dominions, particularly the banks of the Wolga, were hung up in this manner by hundreds and thousands, and left to perish in the most dreadful manner. Even yet, the boring of the tongue, and the cutting of it out, are practised in this Country as an inferior species of punishment. Such cruel punishments, publicly inflicted, can have no other tendency than to demoralize the minds of the populace, to blunt their natural feelings, and to render criminal characters still more desperate and hence we need not wonder at : See Hanway's "Travels through Russia and Persia"-Salmon's "Present State of all Nations," vol. 6. Guthrie's Geography, &c. what travellers affirm respecting the Russians, that they are very indifferent as to life or death, and undergo capital punishments with unparalleled apathy and indolence. Even among European nations more civilized than the Russians, similar tortures have been inflicted upon criminals. The execution of Damiens, in 1757, for attempting to assassinate Louis XV. King of France, was accompanied with tortures, the description of which is sufficient to harrow up the feelings of the most callous mind tortures, which could scarcely have been exceeded in intensity and variety, although they had been devised and executed by the ingenuity of an infernal fiend. And yet, they were beheld with a certain degree of apathy by a surrounding populace; and even counsellors and physicians could talk together about the best mode of tearing asunder the limbs of the wretched victim, with as much composure as if they had been dissecting a dead subject, or carving a pullet. Even in Britain, at no distant period, similar cruelties, were practised. Those who are guilty of high treason are condemned, by our law, "to be hanged on a gallows for some minutes; then cut down, while yet alive, the heart to be taken out and exposed to view, and the entrails burned." Though the most cruel part of this sentence has never been actually inflicted in our times, yet it is a disgrace to Britons that such a statute should still stand unrepealed in our penal code. The practice, too, of torturing supposed criminals for the purpose of extorting a confession of guilt, was, till a late period, common over all the countries of Europe; and if I am not mistaken, is still resorted to, in several parts of the continent. Hence, Baron Bielfeld, in his "Elements of Universal Erudition," published in 1770, lays down as one of the branches of criminal jurisprudence, "The different kinds of tortures for the discovery of truth." Such a practice is not only cruel and unjust, but absurd in the highest degree, and repugnant to every principle of reason. For, as the Marquis Beccaria has well observed, "It is confounding all relations to expect that a man should be both the accuser and the accused, and that pain shouled be the test of truth; as if truth resided in the muscles and fibres of a wretch in torture. By this method, the robust will escape, and the feeble be condemned.-To discover truth by this method, is a problem which may be better resolved by a mathematician than a judge, and may be thus stated: The force of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person being given, it is required to find the degree of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a given crime."* • See Beccaria's "Essay on Crimes and Punishments," p. 52. 56. The following is a brief summary of the principal punishments that have been adopted by men, in different countries, for tormenting and destroying each other. Capital punishments-be If the confined limits of the present work had admitted, I might have prosecuted these illustra tions to a much greater extent. I might have traced the operations of malevolence in the practice of that most shocking and abominable traffic, the Slave Trade- the eternal disgrace of individuals and of nations calling themselves civilized. This is an abomination which has been encouraged by almost every nation in Europe, and even by the enlightened states of America. And although Great Britain has formally prohibited, by a law, the importation of slaves from Africa; yet, in all her West Indian colonies, slavery in its most cruel and degrading forms still exists; and every proposition, and every plan for restoring the negroes to their natural liberty, and to the rank which they hold in the scale of existence, is pertinaciously resisted by gentlemen planters, who would spurn at the idea of being considered as either infidels or barbarians. They even attempt to deprive these degraded beings of the chance of obtaining a happier existence in a future world, by endeavouring to withhold from them the means of instruction, and by persecuting their instructers. "In Demerara alone there are 76,000 immortal souls linked to sable bodies, while there are but 3,500 whites; and yet, for the sake of these three thousand whites, the seventy-six thousand, with all their descendants, are to be kept in ignorance of the way of salvation, for no other purpose than to procure a precarious fortune for a very few individuals out of their sweat and blood." Is such conduct consistent with the spirit of benevolence, or even with the common feelings of humanity? heading, strangling, crucifixion, drowning, burning, roasting, hanging by the neck, the arm, or the leg; starving, sawing, exposing to wild beasts, rending asunder by horses drawing opposite ways, shooting, burying alive, blowing from the mouth of a cannon, compulsory deprivation of sleep, rolling on a barrel stuck with nails, cutting to pieces, hanging by the ribs, poisoning, pressing slowly to death by a weight laid on the breast; casting headlong from a rock, tearing out the bowels, pulling to pieces with red hot pincers, stretching on the rack, breaking on the wheel, impaling, flaying alive, cutting out the heart, &c. &c. &c. Punishments short of death have been such as the following. Fine, pillory, imprisonment, compulsory labour at the mines, galleys, highways, or correction-house; whipping, bastinading; mutilation by cutting away the ears, the nose, the tongue, the breasts of women, the foot, the hand; squeezing the marrow from the bones with screws or wedges, castration, putting out the eyes; banishment, running the gauntlet, drumming, shaving off the hair, burning on the hand or forehead; and many others of a similar nature. Could the ingenuity of the inhabitants of Tophet have invented punishments more cruel and revolting? Has any one of these modes of punishment a tendency to reform the criminal, and promote his happiness? On the contrary, have they not all a direct tendency to irritate, to harden, and to excite feelings of revenge? Nothing shows the malevolent dispositions of a great portion of the human race, in so striking a light, as the punishments they have inflicted on one another; for these are characteristic, not of insulated individuals only, but of nations, in their collective capacity. I might have traced the same malignant principle, in the practice of a set of men denominat ed wreckers, who, by setting up false lights, allure mariners to destruction, tha they may enrich themselves by plundering the wrecks-in the warlike dispositions of all the governments of Europe, and the enormous sums which have been expended in the work of devastation, and of human destruction, while they have refused to give the least direct encouragement to philan thropic institutions, and to the improvement of the community in knowledge and virtue—and in that spirit of tyranny, and thirst for despotic power, which have led them to crush the rising intelligence of the people, and to lend a deaf ear to their most reasonable demands. For, there is no government on this side of the Atlantic, so far as I know, that has ever yet formed an institution for promoting the objects of general benevolence, for counteracting the baleful effects of depravity and ignorance, and for enlightening the minds of the people in useful knowledge; or which has even contributed a single mite to encourage such institutions after they were set on foot by the people themselves. Knowledge is simply permitted to be diffused; it is never directly encouraged; its progress is frequently obstructed; and, in some instances, it is posi tively interdicted, as appears from the following barbarous edict, published in the year 1825."A royal Sardinian edict directs, that benceforth no person shall learn to read or write who cannot prove the possession of property above the value of 1500 livres, (or about 60%. sterling.) The qualification for a student is the possession of an income to the same amount."* Such is the firm determination of many of the kings and princes of Europe to hold their subjects in adject slavery and ignorance; and such is the despe rate tendency of proud ambition, that they will rather suffer their thrones to shake and totter be neath them, than give encouragement to liberal opinions, and to the general diffusion of know. ledge.-But, instead of illustrating such topics in minute detail, I shall conclude this section by presenting a few miscellaneous facts, tending to corroborate several of the preceding statements, and to illustrate the moral state of the civilized world. The following statement, extracted from "Neale's Travels through Germany, Poland, Moldavia, and Turkey," exhibits a faint picture of the state of morals in Poland. "If ever there was a country," says Mr. Neale, "where might constitutes right,' that country was Poland, prior to its partition." The most dreadful oppression, the most execrable tyranny, the most wanton cruelties were daily exercised by the nobles upon the unfortunate peasants.-Let us quote a few facts; they will speak volumes. A Polish peasant's life was held of the same value with one of his horned cattle; if his lord slew him, he was fined only 100 Polish florins, or 21. 16s. sterling. If, on the other hand, a man of ignoble birth dared to raise his hand against a nobleman, death was the inevitable punishment, If any one presumed to question the nobility of a magnate, he was forced to prove his assertion, or suffer death; nay, if a powerful man chose to take a fancy to the field of his humbler neighnour, and to erect a landmark upon it, and if that landmark remained for three days, the poor man lost his possession. The atrocious cruelties that were habitually exercised, are hardly credible. A Masalki caused his hounds to devour a peasant who happened to frighten his horse. A Radzivil had the belly of one of his subjects ripped open, to thrust his feet into it, hoping thereby to be cured of a malady that had tormented him. One of the most infallible signs of a degraded state of morals in any country, is the corrupt administration of justice. As specimens of Polish justice, Mr. Neale mentions the case of a merchant of Warsaw, whom it cost 1400 ducats to procure the conviction and execution of two robbers who had plundered him; and another case, still more flagrant, that of a peasant who had apprehended an assassin, and who, on taking him to the Staroste, was coolly dismissed with the prisoner, and the corpse of the murdered person which he had brought in his wagon; because he had not ten ducats-the fee demanded by the magistrate for his interference.-" During the reign of Stanislaus Poniatowsky, a petty noble having refused to resign to Count Thisenhaus his small estate, the Count invited him to dinner, as if desirous of amicably adjusting the affair; and whilst the knight, in the pride of his heart at such unexpected honour, assiduously plied the bottle, the Count despatched some hundreds of peasants with axes, ploughs, and wagons, ordering the village, which consisted only of a few wooden buildings, to be pulled down, the materials carried away, and the plough to be passed over the ground which the village had occupied. This was accordingly done. The nobleman, on his return home in the evening, could find neither road, house, nor village. The master and his servant were alike bewildered, and knew not whether they were dreaming or had lost the power of discrimination; but their surprise and agony were deemed so truly humorous, that the whole court was delighted with the joke!" How depraved must be the state of moral feeling, when the injustice inflicted upon fellow-creatures, and the miseries they endure, become the subjects of merriment and derision!" The morals of the people of Poland," says Mr. Neale, "were, and continue to be, nearly at the lowest point of debasement. Female chastity is a phenomenon ; while the male sex are proportionally profligate. Drunkenness, gluttony, and sensuality, prevail 21 to a degree unknown in other countries in Europe." The following extract from Mr. Howison's "Foreign Scenes and Travelling Recreations," will convey some idea of the state of morals in the island of Cuba. "Nothing can be worse," says Mr. H., " than the state of society in Havana. The lower classes are all alike dissolute and unprincipled. Assassinations are so frequent that they excite little attention; and assault and robbery are matters of course, when a man passes alone and at night through a solitary quarter of the town. Several assassinations take place in the streets every week." This depraved and lawless state of things may be ascribed to three causes: the inefficiency of the police; the love of gaming and dissipation which prevails among the lower orders; and the facility with which absolution of the greatest crimes may be obtained from the priests. In fact, the Catholic religion, as it now exists in Cuba, tends to encourage rather than to check vice. We shall suppose, for example, that a man makes himself master of 100 dollars by robbing or by murdering another; and that the church grants him absolution for half the sum thus lawlessly obtained; it is evident that he will gain 50 dollars by the whole transaction, and think himself as innocent as he was before he committed the crime. No man need mount the Havana scaffold, whatever be his crime, if he has the means of ministering to the rapacity of the church, and of bribing the civil authorities. A poor friendless criminal is executed in a few days after sentence is pronounced upon him; but a person of wealth and influence generally manages to put off capital punishment for a series of years, and at last get it commuted to fine and imprisonment. Of these depraved practices, Mr. Hewison states several striking examples.-Those statements of Mr. H. in reference to the moral state of Cuba, I find corroborated by a short account of this isl and in the Monthly Magazine for March, 1820, page 120. "They act here very frequently those sacred mysteries which so delighted our good forefathers. I have witnessed (says the writer) the triumph of the Ave Maria, a tragi comedy, which closes with the sudden appearance, in the midst of a theatre, of a chivalrous worthy, mounted on a real horse, shaking at the end of a lance the bloody head of an infidel. This horrid exhibition excited a titter of enjoyment in all the spectators. The ladies, in particular, seemed to be highly entertained,-no fainting fits, no nervous attacks. How could a mere fiction agonize the blunt feelings of women, hardened by the spectacle of bull-fights, and almost every day meeting with the dead body of some human being who has been assassinated?" There is no situation in which human beings can be placed, where we should more naturally expect the manifestation of benevolent affections, than in those scenes of danger where all are equal- Even in pened in modern times, which so strikingly displays the desperate malignity of human beings in the midst of danger, as the conduct of the crow of the Medusa Frigate, while tossing on the raft by which they endeavoured to save themselves, after that vessel had been shipwrecked. The Medusa was stranded, in the month of June, 1816, on the bank of Arguin, near the western coast of Africa. A raft was hastily constructed, which was but scantily supplied with provisions. There were five boats, which contained in all about 240 persons; and upon the raft, there embarked about 150 individuals. The boats pushed off in a line, towing the raft, and assuring the people on board that they would conduct them safely to land. They had not proceeded, however, above two leagues from the wreck, when they, one by one, cast off the tow lines, and abandoned the raft to its fate. By this time the raft had sunk below the surface of the water to the depth of three feet and a half, and the people were so squeezed one against another, that it was found impossible to move; fore and aft they were up to the middle in water. Night at length came on; the wind freshened; the sea began to swell; about midnight the weather became very stormy, and the waves broke over them in every direction. Tossed by the waves from one end to the other, and sometimes precipitated into the sea; floating between life and death; mourning over their own misfortunes; certain of perishing, yet con tending for the remains of existence with that cruel element which menaced to swallow them up-such was their situation till break of day, when a dreadful spectacle presented itself. Ten or twelve unhappy men, having their extremities jammed between the spars of the raft, had perished in that situation, and others had been swept away by the violence of the waves.-All this, however, was nothing to the dreadful scene which took place the following night. "Already," says the narrator, "was the moral character of the people greatly changed. A spirit of sedition spread from man to man, and manifested itself by the most furious shouts." Night came on; the heavens were obscured with thick clouds; the wind rose, and with it the sea; the waves broke over them every moment; numbers were swept away, and several poor wretches were smothered by the pressure of their comrades. Both soldiers and sailors resolved to sooth their last moments by drinking to excess; they became deaf to the voice of reason; boldly declared their intention of murdering their officers; and, cutting the ropes which held the rafts together, one of them seizing an axe, actually began the dread ful work. The officers rushed forward to quell the tumult, and the man with the batchet was the first that fell-the stroke of a sabre terminated his existence. One fellow was detected secretly cutting the ropes, and was immediately • See Byron's "Narrative of the Loss of the Wager thrown overboard; others destroyed the shrouds 66 open every chest and box that was at hand, stove in the heads of casks of brandy and wine, and got so drunk that some of them were drowned on board, and lay floating about the decks for some days after." After the greater part, to the number of 150 persons, had got to shore" the boatswain and some of the people would not leave the ship so long as there was any liquor to be got at; they fell to beating every thing to pieces that came in their way, and carrying their intemperance to the greatest excess, broke open chests and cabins for plunder that could be of no use to them. So earnest were they in this wantonness of theft, that one man had evidently been murdered on account of some division of the spoil, or for the sake of the share that fell to him, having all the marks of a strangled corpse." The same malignant dispositions were displayed, in numerous instances, during their abode on the desolate and barren island on which they had been thrown, notwithstanding the hunger, the rains, the cold, and the attacks of wild beasts to which they were all equally exposed.* There is, perhaps, no occurrence that has hap Man of War." and haulyards; and the mast, destitute of support, immediately fell on a captain of infantry, and broke his thigh; he was instantly seized by the soldiers and thrown into the sea, but was saved by the opposite party. About an hour after midnight the insurrection burst forth anew. They rushed upon the officers like desperate men, each having a knife or a sabre in his hand; and such was the fury of the assailants, that they tore their flesh, and even their clothes with their teeth. There was no time for hesitation; a general slaughter took place, and the raft was strewed with dead bodies. On the return of day, it was found that, in the course of the preceding tight of horror, sixty five of the mutineers had perished, and two of the small party attached to the officers. A third night of horror approached, distinguished by the piercing cries of those whom hunger and thirst devoured; and the morning's sun showed them a dozen unfortunate creatures stretched lifeless on the raft. The fourth night was marked by another massacre. Some Spaniards and Italians conspired to throw the rest into the sea. A Spaniard was the first to advance with a drawn Enife; the sailors seized him and threw him into the sea. The Italian seeing this, jumped overboard; the rest were mastered, and order was restored. But, before the ship Argus came to their relief, of the 150 that embarked on the raft, 15 unhappy creatures only remained, covered with wounds and bruises, almost naked, stripped of their skin, shrivelled with the rays of the sun, their eyes hollow, and their countenances savage. Such are the dreadful effects of malignity, which produces more sufferings and fatal effects, than the most tremendous elements of nature! A certain portion of the same spirit was lately displayed by several individuals on board of the Kent East Indiaman. In the midst of a most violent gale, in the Bay of Biscay, when the sea was running mountains high, this vessel, containing about 600 persons, took fire, in consequence of the spirits from a stoved cask having communicated with a lamp; and all hopes of safety became extinguished, till the ship Cambria, Captain Cooke, hove in sight. But the danger of passing from one ship to the other, in boats, in such a tempestuous sea, rendered the preservation of the passengers and crew in a degree doubtful. Yet, in the midst of the danger, the alarm and the anguish which accompanied this tremendous scene, we are told by the narrator, page 24, that "it is suspected that one or two of those who perished, must have sunk under the weight of their spoils; the same individuals having been seen eagerly plundering the caddy cabins." And, a little afterwards, page 31, he adds: "Some time after the shades of night had enveloped us, I descended to the cuddy in quest of a blanket to shelter me from the inereasing cold, and the scene of desolation that there presented itself was melancholy in the extreme. The place, which only a few short hours before had been the seat of kindly intercourse, and of social gayety, was now entirely deserted, save by a few miserable wretches, who were either stretched in irrecoverable intoxication on the floor, or prowling about, like beasts of prey, in search of plunder."* The following is a short description of the moral character of the inhabitauts of Carolina, and of one of the amusements of a people who boast of their liberty and their civilization,-as it is found in "Morse's American Geography.” "The citizens of North Carolina who are not better employed, spend their time in drinking, or gaming at cards or dice, in cock-fighting, or horse-racing. Many of the interludes are filled up with a boxing match; and these matches fre quently become memorable by feats of gouging. This delicate and entertaining diversion is thus performed: When two boxers are worried with fighting and bruising each other, they come, as it is called, to close quarters; and each endea vours to twist his fore-fingers in the ear-locks of his antagonist. When these are fast clenched, the thumbs are extended each way to the nose, and the eyes gently twined out of their sockets. The victor, for his expertness, receives shouts of applause from the sporting throng, while his poor eyeless antagonist is laughed at for his misfortune. In a country that pretends to any degree of civilization, one would hardly expect to find a prevailing custom of putting out the eyes of each other. Yet this more than barbarous custom is prevalent in both the Carolinas, and in Georgia among the lower class of people."-"Lord, what is man!" In a savage and a civilized state in infancy and in manhood-in his games and diversions-in the instructions by which he is trained in the remarks he makes upon his neighbours-in the sports and amusements in which he indulges-in his literary pursuits and lucubrations-in his system of rewards and See a "Narrative of the Loss of the Kent East Indiaman, by fire, in the Bay of Biscay, on the 1st of March, 1825, by a Passenger," supposed to be Major Macgregor. The humanity and intrepidity displayed, amidst the heart-rending scene which this narrative describes-by Captain Cobb of the Kent; by Messrs. Thompson, Fearon, Macgregor, and the other officers, and many of the soldiers; by Captain Cooke of the Cambria, his crew, and the Cornish miners-is above all praise. Their benevolent and heroic conduct at that alarming crisis, is far more deserving of a public monument being raised for its commemoration, than that of many of our military heroes, in honour of whom so many trophies have been erected. If men, who have been instrumental in destroying the lives and the happiness of hundreds and of thousands, have pensions bestowed on them, and are exalted to posts of honour, surely those who have exerted their energies in preserving the lives of hundreds, and in preventing the anguish of thousands, ought not to be suffered to sink into oblivion, or to pass unrewarded. It is, I presume, one reason among others, why virtue is so little practised, that it is seldom rewarded according to its mcrit. |