place, which now tries a party. The party in power is almost always right as to what it does. Its faults consist of faults of omission, not commission. The sliding scale, the sugar duties, and the exemption from income tax of the 150/. incomes, are the principal exceptions in Peel's conduct. An Opposition, therefore, which opposes indiscriminately is generally wrong. The Tories did this most wickedly. But we are not without similar defects. Witness the opposition to the Factory Bill. The foreign relations of a country are, however, the points on which an Opposition is generally most unscrupulous and most mischievous. Such is the case with France now, and probably with America. Such was the case with us in the opposition to the Ashburton treaty. I hope we shall behave. better in future; but I own that my principal fears for the peace of the world arise from my fears of the misconduct of the French, American, and English Oppositions. The three Governments will behave well, if they are allowed.—Ever yours, N. W. S. CHARLES DICKENS. 1, Devonshire Terrace, July 28, 1845. MY DEAR SIR,-As my note is to bear reference to business, I will make it as short and plain as I can. I think I could write a pretty good and a well-timed article on the Punishment of Death, and sympathy with great criminals: instancing the gross and depraved curiosity that exists in reference to them, by some of the outrageous things that were written, done, and said in recent cases. But as I am not sure that my views would be yours, and as their statement would be quite inseparable from such a paper, I will briefly set down their purport, that you may decide for yourself. Society, having arrived at that state in which it spares bodily torture to the worst criminals, and having agreed, if criminals be put to death at all, to kill them in the speediest way; I consider the question with reference to society, and not at all with reference to the criminal, holding that, in a case of cruel and deliberate murder, he is already mercifully and sparingly treated. But, as a question for the deliberate consideration of all reflective persons, I put this view of the case. With such very repulsive and odious details before us, may it not be well to inquire whether the punishment of death be beneficial to society. I believe it to have a horrible fascination for many of those persons who render themselves liable to it, impelling them onward to the acquisition of a frightful notoriety; and (setting aside the strong confirmation of this idea afforded in individual instances), I presume this to be the case in very badly regulated minds, when I observe the strange fascination which everything connected with this puuishment, or the object of it, possesses for tens of thousands of decent, virtuous, well-conducted people, who are quite unable to resist the published portraits, letters, anecdotes, smilings, snuff-takings, of the bloodiest and most unnatural scoundrel with the gallows before him. I observe that this strange interest does not prevail to anything like the same degree where death is not the penalty. Therefore I connect it with the dread and mystery surrounding death in any shape, but especially in this avenging form; and am disposed to come to the conclusion that it produces crime in the criminally disposed, and engenders a diseased sympathymorbid and bad, but natural and often irresistible-among the well-conducted and gentle. Regarding it as doing harm. to both these classes, it may even then be right to inquire, whether it has any salutary influence on those small knots and specks of people, mere bubbles in the living ocean, who actually behold its infliction with their proper eyes. On this head it is scarcely possible to entertain a doubt; for we know that robbery, and obscenity, and callous indifference, are of no commoner occurrence anywhere than at the foot of the scaffold. Furthermore, we know that all exhibitions of agony and death have a tendency to brutalise and harden the feelings of men; and have always been the most rife among the fiercest people. Again, it is a great question whether ignorant and dissolute persons (ever the great body of spectators, as few others will attend), seeing that murder done, and not having seen the other, will not, almost of necessity, sympathise with the man who dies before them, especially as he is shown, a martyr to their fancy, tied and bound, alone among scores, with every kind of odds against him. I should take all these threads up at the end by a vivid little sketch of the origin and progress of such a crime as Hocker's, stating a somewhat parallel case, but an imaginary one, pursuing its hero to his death, and showing what enormous harm he does after the crime for which he suffers. I should state none of these positions in a positive sledgehammer way, but tempt and lure the reader into the discussion of them in his own mind; and so we come to this at last-whether it be for the benefit of society to elevate even this crime to the awful dignity and notoriety of death; and whether it would not be much more to its advantage to substitute a mean and shameful punishment, degrading the deed and the committer of the deed, and leaving the general compassion to expend itself upon the only theme at present quite forgotten in the history, that is to say, the murdered person. I do not give you this as an outline of the paper, which I think I could make attractive. It is merely an exposition of the inferences to which its whole philosophy must tend.Always faithfully yours, CHARLES DICKENS. LORD JEFFREY. Craigerook, July 31, 1845. MY DEAR N.,-As to Dickens and his Capital Punishments, Empson agrees fully with me that you should not hesitate about accepting his paper. You see from his letter that you are perfectly safe from any risk of cant, either sentimental or religious, and may rely on having the question argued on grounds which those who are most in favour of the present system must admit to be relevant. And as he promises not to be in any degree dogmatical or presumptuous, but suggestive only, I do not see that anything but good can come from the discussion. Indeed, I have for a good while had a considerable tendency to the same views, and I cannot agree with you that the proofs of this punishment being the most startling to the innocent and pious, and the most attractive to the lovers of spectacles and theatrical effect, show also that it is the most terrible to those who are likely to come within its danger; there being, as I think, redundant and precise proof to the contrary. Ask Dickens to look in Mandeville (the Fable of the Bees man) for a description of the accompaniments and effects of executions in his day. He will there find a picture from which even his glancing eye and graphic hand may not disdain to borrow something. It is the subject, I rather think, of more than one of his essays.-Ever yours, F. JEFFREY. CHARLES DICKENS. November 10, 1845. MY DEAR SIR,-I write to you in great haste. I most bitterly regret the being obliged to disappoint and inconvenience you (as I fear I shall do), but I find it will be impossible for me to write the paper on Capital Punishment for your next Number. The fault is really not mine. I have been involved for the last fortnight in one maze of distractions, which nothing could have enabled me to anticipate or prevent. Everything I have had to do has been interfered with and cast aside. I have never in my life had so many insuperable obstacles crowded into the way of my pursuits. It is as little my fault, believe me, as though I were ill and wrote to you from my bed. And pray bear as gently as you can with the vexation I occasion you, when I tell you how very heavily it falls upon myself.-Faithfully yours, LORD JEFFREY. CHARLES DICKENS. Lanfine House, Kilmarnock, September 20, 1845. MY DEAR NAPIER,-The immediate cause of my writing is the communication I have this morning received from Lord Brougham. It relates to an article on Privilege of Parliament, which no less a person than the Lord Chief Justice Denman has drawn up, and which Brougham reports to be "admirably written, full of sound learning, constitutional principle, and manly eloquence." Brougham says he wanted it for his next Law Review, but that Denman would prefer the Edinburgh. You certainly cannot have a more respectable contributor than Denman, or one whom, I suppose, you would be more willing to oblige, and, therefore, I conceive that the only ground of hesitation must be as to committing the Review on the merits of the great question it involves. My own leaning, I confess, is rather with Parliament, and against the Courts of Law. But the subject is full of difficulty, and very high names, as well as much public opinion, is the other way. How far the leaders and the great body of the Whig party are committed, or in their hearts convinced, as to the doctrines which, in Parliament itself, they can scarcely help maintaining, I really have no information, any more than as to the extent to which they might be offended by seeing the Review take a decided part against what the Parliamentary leaders on both sides have so warmly asserted. And it is upon this ground that I see and feel that your decision must be a matter of some difficulty. A truly neutral and principled examination of the question, even if it leaned against Privilege, would be quite unobjectionable. But Denman's will not be of that description, but a distinct Plaidoyer for the Courts. I think I am rather better since I came here, and am sure it was a great relief from the feeling of loneliness and desertion that had fallen on my shades of Craigcrook.-Very truly yours, F. JEFFREY. Edinburgh, October 8, 1845. MY DEAR N.,-You are too modest about your Number [October, 1845]. It is a very good one, and better than the average. Mr. Nathaniel (or Jonathan) Willis' might have been as well let alone, indeed, and his reviewer is not much better than himself. All the other articles are reasonably well written, some remarkably so, and none that are not decidedly superior in that respect to that monster paper of Sedgwick's, from which so much was expected. Your Northern Chronicle2 is too long, but not merely respectable, but interesting and 1 "Willis's Dashes at Life," by Thackeray. 2 "The Heimskringla," by the late Lord Neaves. |