NOTE NN. [xxiii] 



to lake away the lives of their people) very necessary course or 

 trial by torture.&quot; See ante note A, p. 1. 



In Barrow s Travels in Africa, speaking of the Cape of Good 

 Hope, he says: Few die by the hands of justice. In the last 

 eight years 110 have been sentenced to death; 38 of whom 

 were publicly executed, and those were chiefly slaves : the rest 

 were condemned to labour during life at the public works. The 

 confession of a crime, where strong and concurring testimony 

 could not be produced, was sometimes extorted by the torture; 

 and breaking on the wheel was a capital punishment. These 

 were said to be seldom put in practice ; yet at the time they 

 were abolished by order of his majesty, the court of justice 

 urged the necessity of their continuance,, as proper engines of 

 terror for preventing the commission of capital crimes, which 

 they thought simple strangling with a cord would be insufficient 

 to effect. Contrary, however, to the opinion of the court of jus 

 tice, there have been fewer executions since the abolition of the 

 rack and torture than had taken place in an equal period for 

 many years before; so much so, indeed, that one of the public 

 executioners made an application for a pension in lieu of the 

 emoluments he used to receive for the breaking of legs and 

 arms. 



Thanks to the Almighty, the nature of these abominations 

 are, in this happy country, almost unknown : they are thus de 

 scribed by Mercier in the &quot;Tableau de Paris. &quot; 



What boding voice is that, which, with its harsh clamour fills 

 the streets and the suburbs, forces its way to the very tops of the 

 houses, and announces, that a human being, in the full vigor of 

 youth, is going to be massacred in cold blood, by another hu 

 man being, in the name of society ? It is that of one hurrying 

 along, and in discordant tones crying for sale the sentence still 

 wet from the press. Purchasers gather round him, anxious to 

 learn the name and crime of the delinquent, both of which, how 

 ever, are quickly forgotten. A sudden and unexpected convic 

 tion has appalled the public mind. The populace hasten from 

 their trades and their shops, and throng to the scaffold, to ob 

 serve how the sufferer will go through the great scene of dying 

 in public, in the midst of torments. 



