ment for closing the circuit can be attached to the wall.

"The electrodes should be of metal, between one and four inches in diameter, covered with a thick layer of sponge or chamois skin.

"The poles and the skin and hair at the points of contact should be thoroughly wet with a warm aqueous solution of common salt. The hair should be cut short. Provision should be made for preventing any moisture reaching from one electrode to the other.

"A dynamo capable of generating an electro-motive force of at least 3000 volts should be employed, and a current used with a potential between 1000 and 1500 volts, according to the resistance of the criminal.

"The alternating current should be made use of, with alternations not fewer than 300 per second. Such a current allowed to passed for from fifteen to thirty seconds will insure death."

When one considers that these sentences set forth the means to be employed in deliberately taking a human life, it is hardly possible to imagine anything more gruesome than the scientific precision of the details. The objection that it is dangerous to argue from the effects of electricity upon animals to its action upon man, is met in the report in this wise:

"If any doubt should exist in the minds of some that electricity would not necessarily be fatal to man, because it has been successfully applied to lower animals, we have but to call attention to the fact that since 1883, some 200 persons have been killed, as we are credibly informed, bv the handling of electric lighting wires."

We disapprove of the change which has been effected in the mode of executing the capital sentence by the New York Legislature. That change, and the whole argument upon which it rests, seem based upon the conception that the destruction of life, is the object of capital punishment. The matter is treated as though the criminal were a dangerous animal, or a homicidal maniac, or a being smitten with an incuraable and contagious malady, whom it was desirable to remove from the world. In such circumstances the arguments in favor

of an orderly, painless departure would be irresistible. But capital punishment is a measure of a wholly different character. The object of capital punishment is not to destroy a noxious life, but to inflict such a punishment as will strike the popular imagination with the greatest terror without exciting such sympathy for the victim as will outweigh popular indignation against his offense. So far from the taking of life being the object aimed at, it is a regrettable circumstance that the destruction of life should be one of the incidents of the punishment. The life is taken only because no punishment which spared the life, and excited no overwhelming pity, would impress the popular mind with an equal sense of terror.

Perhaps no other form of death is invested with such a sense of horror and degradation as death by hanging. It is this fact which gives its value to the gallows. In substituting death by electricity for hanging, the effort is made—we do not know whether it be successfully made to eliminate everything from the severest penalty of the law except the one thing, which, as we have pointed out, is not the real end, but only a regrettable, albeit an inevitable, incident of the punishmentthe destruction of the life of the condemned. In examining the proceedings which led to the enactment of the law, it is hard to avoid two conclusions in regard to the authors of this

measure.

1. They appear to be at heart opponents of capital punishment, and would gladly see it abolished altogether. If so, we think they are wise in their generation. If executions must be carried out by scientific apparatus, public sentiment will not, we think, endure the maintenance of capital punishment. We have already pointed out how death by electricity secures the maximum of mischief with the minimum of benefit. It is the tremendous responsibility of taking a life, not any repugnance to the manner in which life is taken, that makes people squeamish about capital punishment. If the life is taken by machinery, popular attention will be centered upon the one circumstance that occasions qualms in the public conscience that human life is irrevocably taken.

2. The authors of this measure seem to regard the con

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demned as a patient rather than as a miscreant. It is necessary, in the public interest, that the homicide should be not punished-Mr. Clark Bell objects to that word-but rather should have something disagreeable inflicted upon him, which will deter others from doing the like; and law, sanctioned by public opinion, declares that the something disagreeable must be death. But the death must be made as little unpleasant as possible. When a child has to take a nauseous dose there is no help for it, but the humane man of medicine makes the ordeal as little disagreeable as he can by mixing a syrup with the draught. Even so, if the homicide must be executed, there is no help for it; but the humane medical jurist makes the passage as dignified and comfortable as possible, by killing him instantaneously in his chair by an electric shock. Mr. Clark Bell treats the homicide in the same spirit as he treated the convulsed child (see a case referred to in the article "Murder from the best Motives" in "The Month".) Both are cases. The homicide is no more to be execrated for his crime than is the child for its agony-the one has to be slain for the good of society, the other for its own comfort. Let both be disposed of according to the most approved scientific methods. Be it trusted that when the homicide's turn comes, science will prove more unerring than it appears to have been in the case of the child.

Here, in Edinburgh, we read with sad indifference of accidents and catastrophes by land and sea, of cities destroyed by earthquakes and floods, of provinces ravaged by plague and famine. We listen with equanimity to the clash of contending armies. We know that every minute a member of our race passes out into the night; and we study with feeble interest the weekly mortality statistics of our own town, in relation to the weather of the preceding week. But the whole city goes with blanched cheek and bated breath when, as on the other morning, the black flag waving over the Calton prison, tells that on the scaffold the hangman has done his ghastly duty.

The gallows and the rope, through long centuries of use, have taken a strong hold of the imag ation of the Anglo

Saxon race. "To be hanged by the neck, what a death!" exclaimed a wretched murderess, the other day, as the judge pronounced the terrible sentence. Is not the horror which these words express a most powerful plea for the maintenance of a form of punishment the terror of which is a most formidable preventive against the darkest crime of which humanity is capable?

(The foregoing article from the Scottish Law Magazine we have published in connection with the proceedings of the Medico-Legal Society of New York, in order to give both sides of the question.

We are not in favor of the death penalty in any form. If the penalty is to be retained, the form of enforcing it should be freed from all elements of barbarity.-EDITOR LAW TIMES.)

MOTLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE.

In the correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, author of "Rise of the Dutch Republic," recently published, there are some interesting descriptions of English public men. Motley, it may be remarked, was educated for the law, but found other occupations more congenial, and probably more useful to mankind. In 1851, the historian met Lyndhurst and Brougham at dinner. Here is what he writes of the latter:.

"Brougham is exactly like the pictures in Punch, only Punch flatters him. The common pictures of Palmerston and Lord John are not like at all to my mind, but Brougham is always hit exactly. His face, like his tongue and his mind, is shrewd, sharp, humorous. There certainly never was a great statesman and author who so irresistibly suggested the man who does the comic business at a small theatre. You are compelled to laugh when you see him as much as at Keeley or Warren. Yet, there is absolutely nothing comic in his mind. But there is no resisting his nose. It is not merely the configuration of that wonderful feature which surprises you, but its mobility. It has the litheness and almost the length of the elephant's proboscis, and I have no doubt he can pick up pins or scratch his back with it as easily as he could take a pinch of snuff. He is always twisting it about in quite a fabulous manner.

"His hair is thick and snow-white and shiny; his head is large and knobby and bumpy, with all kinds of phrenological developments, which I did not have a chance fairly to study. The rugged outlines or headlands of his face are wild and bleak,