Such massacres as we have been describing will probably never be repeated: they will, no doubt, stand unparalleled in the future, as they do in the former annals of the world; but they should never be forgotten as an example of the incalculable excesses of popular insanity.
The invention of this instrument of death (the guillotine) is thus described by a graphic writer:—Joseph Ignace Guillotin lived to deplore his own ingenuity in inventing or suggesting a machine which besides being effective for the immediate purpose intended, was the result of a really kind feeling. The stern irony of fate occasionally rewards inventors in this way.
Born in 1738, Guillotin received a medical training; he became a physician of much repute, and was chosen professor in one of the French universities. In 1789, when France was beginning to feel the first throes of the Revolution, Guillotin was elected member of the National Assembly, and took his seat among the Liberals or Reformers.
He proposed a resolution declaratory that capital punishment ought to bear no relation to the rank of the culprit; that when a criminal is condemned to death, for any crime whatever, the mode of execution should be the same whether he were peer or peasant.
Until then, nobles and privileged persons, when condemned to death, had the honour of being decapitated, either by the axe or by the sword; whereas the common people were left to the tender mercies of a hempen rope. Dr. Guillotin at the same time proposed a second resolution.
He wished to save the unhappy being from the additional punishment existing from the uncertainty, nervousness, or clumsiness of the executioner, whether axeman or swordsman.
He cited historical incidents in which two, three, or even more cuts were given, by the axe or the sword, before the head of the miserable sufferer was finally severed from the body. He proposed to do away alike with the gibbet, the sword, and the axe, and to substitute a decapitating machine, in which a sharp, heavy knife should descend on the neck of the condemned.
Feeling assured that bodily pain could not be felt during this brief operation, he was quite carried away by his subject, and said, enthusiastically, “I could cut off your head with my machine in the twinkling of an eye, without your suffering the smallest pain!”
Poor Dr. Guillotin had to bear the shafts of ridicule, always a terrible weapon to a Frenchman. Many of the members of the Assembly smiled at his ardent words; and the Royalists out of doors made rare fun of him. One of their journals gave a song, “On the inimitable machine of Dr. Guillotin for chopping off heads called after his name the Guillotine.”
Poor Dr. Guillotin had to bear the shafts of ridicule, always a terrible weapon to a Frenchman. Many of the members of the Assembly smiled at his ardent words; and the Royalists out of doors made rare fun of him. One of their journals gave a song, “On the inimitable machine of Dr. Guillotin for chopping off heads called after his name.”