Dealings With The Dead Volume I Part 19

The distinction, between grand and petty larceny, was not abolished, until 1827, when, by the act 7th and 8th Geo. IV. chap. 29, theft was made punishable by transportation, or imprisonment and whipping. By this statute, robbery from the person, burglary, stealing in a dwelling-house to the value of 5, stealing cattle, and sheep-stealing are made punishable with death. So that the punishment was, even then, the same, for murdering a man, and stealing a sheep, or 5 from a dwelling-house.

Death, by this statute, was also the punishment for arson, for setting fire to coal mines, and ships; and for riotously demolishing buildings or machinery.

In the following year, 1828, by the act 9th Geo. IV. ch. 31, death is made the punishment, for murder, maliciously shooting, cutting and maiming, administering poison, attempting to drown, suffocate, &c., and for rape and sodomy. By this act, more than fifty statutes, relative to offences against the person, are repealed.

The act 11th Geo. IV. and 1st Will. IV. ch. 66, pa.s.sed in 1830, abolishes capital punishment, in all cases of forgery, excepting forgery of the royal seals, exchequer bills, bank notes, wills, bills of exchange, promissory notes, or money orders, transfers of stock, and powers of attorney. Death remained the penalty for all these forgeries, in 1830, and, for all other forgeries, transportation and imprisonment.

Two years after, in 1832, another step was taken. By 2d Will. IV. ch. 34, capital punishment was abolished, and transportation and imprisonment subst.i.tuted, for all offences, relative to the coin. This was a prodigious stride.

This gave us a great hope, that misguided murderers might finally be suffered to live in security, at least, from the halter: for no object had been of greater moment with the British nation, than the coin of the realm, and the death penalty had often been exacted from those, who had dared to clip or counterfeit that sacred representative of majesty. The principle is well established, that men, who fly from one extreme, _in contraria currunt_. We trusted, therefore, that extremely lenient legislation would supervene, upon its very opposite.

We had great confidence in a system of "indefatigable teasing," as Butler calls it. In the same year, 1832, by 2d and 3d Will. IV. ch. 62, capital punishment was abolished, in cases of stealing from a dwelling-house to the value of 5, and sheep-stealing; and by the same act, ch. 123, capital punishment was abolished, in all cases of forgery, excepting in the cases of wills, and powers of attorney for stock.

In 1833, by 3d and 4th Will. IV. ch. 44, capital punishment was abolished in case of dwelling-house robbery; repealing so much of the larceny act of 1827.

Our good friends in England next thought it expedient to divest the process of hanging, of all its postmortuary terrors. I have heard of condemned persons, who expressed a greater horror, at the thought of being dissected, than of being hanged. It was deemed proper, therefore, to relieve the unfortunates, on this tender point. Accordingly, in 1834, by 4th Will. IV. ch. 26, dissecting murderers, and hanging them, in chains, were abolished.

It had been the law of England, that all persons returning, _sua sponte_, after transportation, should be hanged. But experience has shown how deep is the affection, which convicts bear to their former haunts, their native land. It is a perfect _nostalgia_. This law was therefore repealed, in 1834, by 4th and 5th Will. IV. ch. 67.

In 1835, by 5th and 6th Will. IV. ch. 33, sundry felonies, never before deemed bailable offences, were made so, notwithstanding the parties confessed themselves guilty.

Sacrilege and letter-stealing had long been capital offences in England.

In the same year, they were no longer punished with death.

We had great hopes from Victoria. In 1837, 1 Vic. ch. 23, she began, by abolishing the pillory entirely;--and ch. 84, capital punishment is abolished, in all cases of forgery;--ch. 85, capital punishment is inflicted, for administering poison, or doing bodily injury with intent to mutilate; but other acts, with intent to murder, or maim, or disfigure, are punished with different degrees of transportation and imprisonment.--Ch. 86 takes away capital punishment, in burglary, unless accompanied with violence.--Ch. 87 takes away capital punishment, in case of robbery, unless attended with cutting or wounding. Ch. 88 leaves the punishment of death, transportation or imprisonment, to the discretion of the court, in case of piracy, where murder is attempted. Ch. 89 varies the laws of arson, making arson a capital offence, in regard to a dwelling-house, _any person being therein_.--Ch. 91 abolishes capital punishment in cases of riotous a.s.semblies, seducing from allegiance, and certain offences against the revenue laws.

It is rather surprising, that there is such a general prejudice throughout the world, in favor of putting murderers to death. The Bible is an awful stumbling block, in this respect. We are also reminded that Solon, when he abolished the code of Draco, retained the punishment of death, in the case of murder. I have never thought much of Solon, since I became acquainted with this weak point in his character.

A writer in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 86, p. 217, speaking of death as the punishment for murder, observes--"The intense desire which now actuates a portion of the community, to get rid of capital punishment even for murder, may be taken as an indication of this excessive sensibility.

The propriety of that punishment in the given case, would certainly appear to be distinctly sanctioned by that book, to which its opponents professedly appeal--by reason--and by the all but universal practice of nations. It is the only certain guarantee which society can have for the security of its members." Here we have it again--"that book"--the Bible.

It cannot be denied that the Bible, or Solon, or Sir Matthew Hale, or somebody else, is everlastingly in the way of this and other modern, philanthropic movements. What was Solon, in comparison with David Crockett--we are sure we are right, and why should we not go ahead?

For my own part, I have never been able to perceive the wisdom of attempting to conceal any of our prospective movements. Indeed, our future course must be sufficiently apparent, at a glance. When we have _agitated_, until capital punishment is abolished, and we have had a commemorative celebration, with emblematical banners, and an hundred guns on the Common, nothing will be further from our thoughts, than a dissolution, sine die. One of our chief arguments in favor of abolishing capital punishment, is the greater hardship of a life-long imprisonment.

Availing of this argument, we shall be able to show, that we have placed these unfortunates, in a worse condition than before. A pet.i.tion will be presented to the Governor and Council, from five thousand unhappy murderers, ravishers, house-burners, burglars and highway robbers--such we think will be the number, in a few years--representing their miserable condition, and respectfully requesting to be hanged, under the influence of ether or otherwise, as to the Governor and Council may seem fit. We shall then _agitate_ anew, and endeavor, through public meetings and the press, to exhibit the barbarity of refusing their humble request.

This, we well enough know, will not be granted; and the only escape from the dilemma, will be to suffer them, to go at large, upon their parole of honor. It will not, of course, be expected, that this parole will be received from any, who cannot produce a certificate, under the hand of the warden, that they have committed no murder, rape, arson, burglary, or highway robbery, during the period of their confinement in the State Prison.

No. LVIII.

The late Archbishop of Bordeaux, when Bishop of Boston, Dr. Cheverus, told me, that he had very little influence with his people, in regard to their extravagance at funerals. It is very hard to persuade them to abate the t.i.the of a hair, in the cost of a _birril_.

This post-mortuary profligacy, this pride of death, is confined to no age or nation of the world. It has prevailed, ever since chaos was licked into shape, and throughout all Heathendom and Christendom, begetting a childish and preposterous compet.i.tion, who should bear off the corpses of their relations, most showily, and cause them to rot, most expensively.

This amazing folly has often required, and received, the sumptuary curb of legislation. I have briefly referred, in a former number, to the restraining edicts of the law-givers of Greece, and the laws of the Twelve Tables at Rome.

Even here, and among the earlier records of our own country, evidences are not wanting, that the attention of our worthy ancestors had been attracted to the subject of funereal extravagance. At a meeting, held in Faneuil Hall, October 28, 1767, at which the Hon. James Otis was the Moderator, the following resolution was pa.s.sed: "_And we further agree strictly to adhere to the late regulations respecting funerals, and will not use any gloves but what are manufactured here, nor procure any new garments, upon such occasions, but what shall be absolutely necessary_." This resolution was pa.s.sed, _inter alia similia_, with reference to the Stamp Act of 1765, and as part of the system of non-importation.

There is probably no place like England--no city like London, for funereal parade and extravagance. The Church, to use the fox-hunting phrase, must be _in at the death_; and how truly would a simple funeral, without pageantry, in some sort--a cold, unceremonious burial, without mutes, and streamers, and feathers--without bell, book, or candle--flout and scandalize the gorgeous Church of England! The Church and the State are connected, so intimately and indissolubly connected, that he, who dies in the arms of Mother Church, must permit that particular old lady, in the matter of his funeral, to indulge her ruling pa.s.sion, for costly forms and ceremonies.

It is more than forty years, since, with infinite delight, I first read that effusion--outpouring--splendid little eruption, if you like--of Walter Scott's, called Llewellyn. Apart from all context, a single stanza is to my present purpose; I give it from memory, where it has clung, for forty years:

When a prince to the fate of a peasant has yielded, The tapestry waves dark, round the dim lighted pall, With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded, And pages stand mute in the canopied hall.

Through the vault, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming, In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming, Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming, Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.

In all this, the n.o.bility ape royalty, the gentry the n.o.bility, the commonalty the gentry: and there is no estate so low, as not, in this particular, to account the death of a near relative a perfect justification of extravagance.

There is scarcely one in a thousand, I believe, who has any just idea of the amount, annually lavished upon funerals, in Great Britain; or of the extraordinary fact, that joint stock burial companies exist there, and declare excellent dividends.

In 1843, at the request of her Majesty's princ.i.p.al Secretary of State, for the Home Department, Edwin Chadwick, Esquire, drew up "a report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment, in towns."

Mr. Chadwick states, that, _upon a moderate calculation, the sum annually expended in funeral expenses, in England and Wales, is five millions of pounds sterling_, and that four of these millions may be justly set down as expended on the mere fopperies of death.

Evelyn says, that his mother requested his father, on her death bed, to bestow upon the poor, whatever he had designed, for the expenses of her funeral.

Speaking of this abominable misapplication of money, a writer, in the London Quarterly Review, vol. 73, p. 466, exclaims--"To what does it go?

To silk scarfs and bra.s.s nails--feathers for the horses--kid gloves and gin for the mutes--white satin and black cloth for the worms. And whom does it benefit? Not those, whose unfeigned sorrow makes them callous, at the moment, to its show, and almost to its mockery--not the cold spectator, who sees its dull magnificence give the lie to the preacher's equality of death--but the lowest of all hypocrites, the hired mourner, &c." It is calculated by Mr. Chadwick, that 60 to 100 are necessary to bury an upper tradesman--250 for a gentleman--500 to 1500 for a n.o.bleman.

High profits were obtained, by the joint stock burial companies in England, in 1843. The sale of graves in one cemetery was at the rate of 17,000 per acre, and a calculation, made for another, gave 45,375 per acre, not including fees for monuments, &c. One company, says Mr.

Chadwick, has set forth an estimate, that seven acres, at the rate of ten coffins, in one grave, would accommodate 1,335,000--one million three hundred and thirty-five thousand--paupers. The following interrogatory was put, and repeated by members of the Parliamentary Committee, to the witnesses: "_Do you think there would be any objection to burying bodies with a certain quant.i.ty of quick lime, sufficient to destroy the coffin and the whole thing in a given time?_"

In 1843, Mr. J. C. Loudon published, in London, his work on the Managing of Cemeteries and the Improvement of Churchyards. The cool, philosophic style, in which Mr. Loudon handles this interesting subject, is rather remarkable. On page 50, he expatiates, as follows: "_This temporary cemetery may be merely a field, rented on a twenty-one years' lease, of such an extent, as to be filled with graves in fourteen years. At the end of seven years more it may revert to the landlord, and be cultivated, planted, or laid down in gra.s.s, or in any manner that may be thought proper. Nor does there appear to us any objection to union workhouses having a portion of their garden ground used as a cemetery, to be restored to cultivation, after a sufficient time had elapsed._"

This certainly is doing the utilitarian thing, with a vengeance. Quite a novel rotation of crops--cabbages following corpses. My long experience a.s.sures me, that the rapidity of decomposition depends, upon certain qualities in the subject and in the soil. Skeletons are sometimes found, in tolerably perfect condition, after an inhumation of two hundred years.

Perhaps Mr. Loudon, in his eager festination for a crop, may have determined to bury in quicklime. Paupers and quicklime would make a capital compost, and scarcely require a top-dressing, of any kind, for years. What beets! what carrots, for the c.o.c.kney market! Notwithstanding the quicklime, I should rather fear an occasional envelopment of some _unlucky_ relic, in the guise of a _lucky_ bone--a grinder, perhaps. And, when these vegetables shall again have been converted into animals, and these animals shall have served their day and generation, they shall again be converted into cabbages and carrots, as all their predecessors were.

Well, this Mr. Loudon is a practical fellow; and his metastasis is admirable. Here are thousands of miserable wretches--_nullorum fiilii_, many of them--they have contributed scarcely anything to the common weal, while living; now let us put them in the way, with the a.s.sistance of a little quicklime, of doing something for their fellow-beings, after they are dead. The pauper squashes and cabbages must have been at a premium, in Leadenhall Market. Imagination is clearly worth something. After all my reason can accord, in the way of respect, for these utilitarian notions, I solemnly protest against marrowfats, cultivated in Mr. Loudon's pauper hotbeds. No doubt they would be larger, and the flavor richer and more peculiar--nevertheless, Mr. Loudon must excuse me--I say I protest. He gives an alternative permission, to lay down his mixture of dead bodies and quicklime to gra.s.s, or for the pasture of cows. Even then the milk would have a suspicious flavor, or _post-mortem_ smell, I apprehend; it would be the same thing, by second intention, as the surgeons say.

The explanation of Mr. Loudon's monstrous proposition can be found nowhere, but in his concentrated interest in agriculture, to which he would have the living and the dead alike contribute. When contemplating the corpse of a portly pauper, he seems to think of nothing, but the readiest mode of converting it into cabbages.

I have heard of a cutaneous fellow, who had an irresistible fancy, for skinning animals--it had become a pa.s.sion. Nothing came amiss to him. He sought with avidity, for every four-footed and creeping thing, that died within five miles of his dwelling, for the pleasure of skinning it. The insides of his apartments were covered with the expanded skins, not only of beasts and the lesser vermin, but of birds, serpents and fishes. His house was an exuvial museum. He had a little son, a mere child, who a.s.sisted his father, on these occasions, in a small way. He had the misfortune to lose his grandmother--a fine old lady--and the following brief colloquy occurred, between the father and the child, the day before she was buried: "I say, father." "What, Peter?" "When are you going to skin Granny?"

No. LIX.

Last Sabbath morning, I read Cicero's _Dialogus de Amicitia_--simple Latinity, and very short--27 sections only. It seemed like enjoying the company of an old friend. It is now just forty-seven years, since I first read it, at Exeter. I marvel at Montaigne, for not thinking highly of it--but find some little motive, in the fact, that he had written a tract upon the subject, himself, which may be found, in his first volume, page 215, London, 1811, and which can no more be compared to the _Dialogus_, than--to use George Colman's expression--a mummy to Hyperion.

The Dialogus de Amicitia, of a Sabbath morning! Aye, my reverend, orthodox brother. Not having, in my system, one pulse of sympathy for disorganization, and liberty parties, I reverence the holy Sabbath, as much as you do yourself; and, to prevent the _Dialogus_ from hurting me, I read one sermon before, and another immediately after--Jeremy Taylor's _Apples of Sodom_; and Flechier's _Sur La Correction Fraternelle_--such sermons, as, in the concoction, would, perhaps, be very likely to burst your mental boiler, and which would not suit the appet.i.tes of many, modern congregations, who have ruined their powers of inwardly digesting such strong meat, by dieting upon theological _fricandises faites avec du sucre_.

And you was not at meeting then! Right again, my dear brother. I am deaf as a haddock; though Sir Thomas Browne has annihilated this favorite standard of comparison, by a.s.suring us, that a haddock has as good ears, as any other fish in the sea. Mine, however, are quite unscriptural--ears not to hear. My ear is all in my eye.

Roscius boasted of his power to convey his meaning, by mute gesticulation.

Our modern clergy have so little of this gift, that, with my impracticable ears, it is all dumb show for me. Now and then, when the wind is fair, I catch a word or two; and no cross-readings were ever more grotesque and comical, than my cross-hearings. I am convinced, that I do not always have the worst of it. When, in reply to an old lady, who once asked me how I liked the preacher, I told her I heard not a syllable--what a mercy! she exclaimed. But consider the example! True, there is something in that. Try the experiment--stop the _meatus auditorius_ with beeswax, and try it, for half a dozen Sabbaths, even with the knowledge, that you can remove the impediment at will, which I cannot!

After I had finished the _Dialogus_, I found myself successfully engaged, in the process of mental exhumation:--up they came, one after another, the playmates of my childhood, with their tee-totums and merry-andrews--the companions of my boyhood, with their tops, kites, and marbles--the friends and a.s.sociates of my youth, with their skates, bats, and fowling pieces.