CRUEL PUNISHMENTS. 



159 



quently inflicted for the most trivial offences. 

 The knout is one of the most common punish 

 ments 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 to 

 bacco without a license. &quot; The executioner s 

 man, after stripping them down to the wast, tied 

 heir 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 whip 

 ped through the city of Petersburgh for about a 

 mile and a half, and then brought back to the 

 place of their punishment, and dismissed.&quot; That 

 is what is termed the moderate knout ; for when 

 it is given with the utmost severity, the execu 

 tioner, striking the flank under the ribs, cuts the 

 flesh to the bowels ; and, therefore, it is no won 

 der 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 impreca 

 tions, imploring the relief of water and other 

 liquors.* During the reign of Peter the Greal, 

 the robbers who infested various parts of his do 

 minions, 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 feel 

 ings, and to render criminal characters still more 

 desperate : and hence we need not wonder at 



See Han way s &quot;Travels through Russia and 

 Persia&quot; Salmon s &quot; Present State a all Nations,&quot; 

 vol. 6. Outline s Geography, &c 



what travellers affirm respecting the Russians, 

 that they are very indifferent as to life or death, 

 and undergo capital punishment? with unparal 

 leled apathy and indolence. 



Even among European nations more civilize^ 

 than the Russians, similar tortures have been 

 inflicted upon criminals. The execution of Da- 

 miens, 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 ex 

 ceeded, 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 Bri 

 tain, at no distant period, similar cruelties were 

 practised. Those who are guilty of high treason 

 are condemned, by our law, &quot; 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.&quot; Though the 

 most cruel part of this sentence has never been 

 actually inflicted in our times, yet it is a dis 

 grace to Britons that such a statute should still 

 stand unrepealed in our penal code. The prac 

 tice, 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 re 

 sorted to, in several parts of the continent. 

 Hence, Baron Bielfeld, in his &quot; Elements of 

 Universal Erudition,&quot; published in 1770, lays 

 down as one of the branches of criminal jurispru 

 dence, &quot; The different kinds of tortures for the 

 discovery of truth.&quot; Such a practice is not only 

 cruel and unjust, but absurd in the highest de 

 gree, and repugnant to every principle of reason. 

 For, as the Marquis Beccaria has well observed, 

 &quot; 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 i( 

 truth resided in the muscles and fibres of a wretch 

 in torture. By this method, the robust will es 

 cape, and the feeble be condemned. To disco 

 ver 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 tht 

 muscles and the sensibility of the nerves of an in 

 nocent person being given, it is required to find the 

 degree of pain necessary to make him confess him 

 self guilty of a given crime.&quot;* 



* See Beccaria s &quot; Essay on Crimes and Punish 

 ments,&quot; 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 b 



