PREFACE.
IN the earlier editions of this work, published at first without the name of the author, the following lines formed the sole introduction to the subject:—
“There are two ways of accounting for the existence of the ensuing work. Either there really has been found a roll of papers on which were inscribed, exactly as they came, the last thoughts of a condemned prisoner; or else there has been an author, a dreamer, occupied in observing nature for the advantage of society, who, having been seized with those forcible ideas, could not rest until he had given them the tangible form of a volume.”
At the time when this book was first published, I did not deem fit to give publicity to the full extent of my thoughts; I preferred waiting to see whether the work would be fully understood, and I find such has been its fate.
I may now, therefore, unmask the political and social ideas which I wished to render popular under this harmless literary guise. I avow openly, that “The Last Day of a Condemned” is only a pleading, direct or indirect, for the abolition of punishment by death. My design herein (and what I would wish posterity to see in my work, if its attention should ever be given to so slight a production) is, not to make out the special defence of any particular criminal, such defence being transitory as it is easy: I would plead generally and permanently for all accused persons, present and future; it is the great point of Human Right stated and pleaded before society at large,—that highest judicial court; it is the sombre and fatal question which breathes obscurely in the depths of each capital offence, under the triple envelopes of pathos in which legal eloquence wraps them; it is the question of life and death, I say, laid bare, denuded of the sonorous twistings of the bar, revealed in daylight, and placed where it should be seen, in its true and hideous position,—not in the law courts, but on the scaffold,—not among the judges, but with the Executioner!
This is what I have desired to effect. If futurity should award me the glory of having succeeded,—which I dare not hope,—I desire no other crown.
I proclaim and repeat it, then, in the name of all accused persons, innocent or guilty, before all courts, juries, or judges. And in order that my pleading should be as universal as my cause, I have been careful, while writing “The Last Day of a Condemned,” to omit any thing of a special, individual, contingent, relative, or modifiable nature, as also any episode, anecdote, known event, or real name,—keeping to the limit (if “limit” it may be termed!) of pleading the cause of any condemned prisoner whatever, executed at any time, for any offence; happy if, with no other aid than my thoughts, I have mined sufficiently into my subject to make a heart bleed, under the æs triplex of a magistrate! happy if I could render merciful those who consider themselves just! happy if I penetrate sufficiently deep within the Judge to reach the man.
When this book first appeared, some people thought it was worth while to dispute the authorship. Some asserted that it was taken from an English work, and others that it was borrowed from an American author. What a singular mania there is for seeking the origin of matters at a great distance,—trying to trace from the source of the Nile the streamlet which flows through our village! In this work there is no English, American, or Chinese assistance. I formed the idea of “The Last Day of a Condemned” where you all might form it,—where perhaps you may all have formed it (for who is there that has not reflected and had reveries of “the last day of a condemned”?)—there, on the public walk, the place of execution!