Those who argue in favour of executions say, “But as an earthly punishment, we may hang;” may, indeed! There are fifty things we may do that are better avoided. Why need we hang, when other punishments will suffice, and have been proved to have succeeded in other cases? A very few years back, and the advances we have recently made in the civilization of our laws would have been scouted as equally Utopian, as is now considered the attempt to abolish the punishment of death altogether. Let us reflect too that in a case of murder, the prisoner (from a feeling which imperceptibly affects the minds of all) is looked on with a degree of suspicious anxiety to convict that almost watches to make out a case against him sufficient to condemn. The very fact of his being put on his trial for murder prejudges him in our eyes; and a slight variation in reporting a conversation has marvellously increased many a poor man’s danger of the gallows.
There is no recalling the erroneously condemned from the grave; a wrong judgment cannot there be reversed! Let us bear in mind, also, that the wisest judges may sometimes decide wrongfully. They were considered by myself and others to have erred in respect to the privileges of the House of Commons; why might they not commit a similar error in the case of a prisoner?
But enough; let errors in judgment speak for themselves. They contain matter for deep reflection and self-examination for us all.
If the average number of executions be reduced, even by one, I shall have the satisfaction of feeling at least that I have been an humble labourer in the great cause of mercy, which could not have a more zealous advocate, though it may have many more powerful and successful supporters.
Happy are we if, in all we do during the course of our career, we have not to answer for one death; for the bitter word, the cruel neglect, the light injurious observation, may be the cause of death, as well as the bludgeon or the steel.
I would here desire to make a few observations as to the medium through which I have introduced to the public my opinions in favour of the abolition of Capital Punishment, and the advantages to the cause obtained from its appearing in the form of a translation, the reflections being those of a foreigner who looked not to England when he penned his work. In all this there is a beneficial distraction of ideas created, for we look, as it were, at a foreign scene when we read the interesting paper of the narrative,—the sentiments conveyed, the idioms transcribed, are foreign, and the reader appropriates alone the portion he feels is applicable to the circumstances of his own country; in fact, he examines the context, not as he would an original treatise, but as one who would apply the problems found advantageous in one region to another. He cavils not at words or similes; his criticism is reserved for the object at which the translator aims,—no matter even if the phraseology be too flowery, the expressions too strong. There may be strange similes, strained amplifications; he studies but a translation, and cares comparatively little for them. True, he may have some curiosity awakened as to what the original author was in feeling and ideas; but these thoughts are light and evanescent compared with the anxiety, or more properly the curiosity, he has to ascertain what could be the translator’s ideas in thus “wasting the midnight oil” by reducing into the phraseology of his vernacular (English) tongue, the varied thoughts, the acute observations, the (to English ears) novel ideas of that clever, eccentric, single-minded writer, Victor Hugo. “What was the aim of the copyist?” methinks I hear repeated by many; and as my object is one of serious importance to the realities of life, and to arrest the attention of the reader beyond the mere passing hour, I reply: The object for which I plead is the priceless value of human life. Well and truly may the reading public,—and happy for this my dear native land is it that its public is a reading one,—well may this public exclaim, “Who is he, or what his view, who has thus dared to scatter these additional leaves on the pathway of a nation’s thoughts? Why has he done so, what motives urged him, what end did he seek?”
Such are the surmises that may flit across the reader’s brain, and the translator humbly hopes that the lightning scowl, or the thunder of maledictive criticism, will be directed alone against the oaken plank of a hundred years’ growth, and that this his nautilus bark will feel no breeze beyond the aura populi. Probably to the English public many of the observations in this translation will be original. Haply to the gay and frivolous the thoughts may appear exaggerated; but, alas! with too many they will come home to the heart. Numbers there are, who, steeped in misery before they were steeped in crime, had as little inclination to sin as their more fortunate fellow-men, but whose first transgressions were the offsprings of their misery, the necessitous urgings of their poverty. Yes, gentle reader,—for among the fair and young I hope to have many readers; readers whose hearts yet know how to feel,—ye would I address, and exclaim, for the startling fact is but too true, that though,—
“we who in lavish lap have rolled
And every year with new delight have told;
We who recumbent on the lacquered barge
Have dropped down life’s gay stream of pleasant marge;
We may extol life’s calm untroubled sea,”
well may the miserable, the guilty answer,—
“The storms of misery never burst on thee.”