It must be confessed that it somewhat detracts from Peace’s piety that he did not take refuge in the consolations of religion until he found there was no chance of his regaining his liberty.
We fear it would have been a dangerous experiment to have let him loose again upon society, even as a “converted man!”
There seems to be something repulsive in the idea of such a consummate rascal making sure of Heaven with so little effort, after having spent his whole life in the shameless violation of every law of God and man!
The wretch was so steeped in vice and crime that his death seems to remove him beyond the liberality of the old de mortuis injunction.
Had he been really repentant of his atrocious crimes rather than of the fearful consequences to which they had brought him, it would surely have been more becoming on his part had he humbled himself in the profoundest silence, and not run the risk of intensifying the enormity of his hypocrisy by palming himself off as a local preacher upon the scaffold.
When Christ converted people He told them to go home and keep quiet—“see thou sayest nothing to any man.” But nowadays converts seem to be encouraged to advertise themselves as much as possible.
Charles Peace’s demeanour in the presence of the hangman is, to our thinking, far from being edifying. The sooner all memory of the career of this cunning, cruel, and abject criminal is obliterated, the better it will be for society.
No. 99.
SCENE ON THE SCAFFOLD—MARWOOD PINIONING PEACE’S LEGS.