SOME THOUGHTS

ON THE APPROACHING EXECUTIONS,

HUMBLY OFFERED TO CONSIDERATION.

As the number of persons convicted on account of the late unhappy tumults will probably exceed what any one’s idea of vengeance or example would deliver to capital punishment, it is to be wished that the whole business, as well with regard to the number and description of those who are to suffer death as with regard to those who shall be delivered over to lighter punishment or wholly pardoned, should be entirely a work of reason.

It has happened frequently, in cases of this nature, that the fate of the convicts has depended more upon the accidental circumstance of their being brought earlier or later to trial than to any steady principle of equity applied to their several cases.  Without great care and sobriety, criminal justice generally begins with anger and ends in negligence.  The first that are brought forward suffer the extremity of the law, with circumstances of mitigation of their case; and after a time, the most atrocious delinquents escape merely by the satiety of punishment.

In the business now before his Majesty, the following thoughts are humbly submitted.

If I understand the temper of the public at this moment, a very great part of the lower and some of the middling people of this city are in a very critical disposition, and such as ought to be managed with firmness and delicacy.  In general, they rather approve than blame the principles of the rioters, though the better sort of them are afraid of the consequences of those very principles which they approve.  This keeps their minds in a suspended and anxious state, which may very easily be exasperated by an injudicious severity into desperate resolutions,—­or by weak measures on the part of government it may be encouraged to the pursuit of courses which may be of the most dangerous consequences to the public.

There is no doubt that the approaching executions will very much determine the future conduct of those people.  They ought to be such as will humble, not irritate.  Nothing will make government more awful to them than to see that it does not proceed by chance or under the influence of passion.

It is therefore proposed that no execution should be made until the number of persons which government thinks fit to try is completed.  When the whole is at once under the eye, an examination ought to be made into the circumstances of every particular convict; and six, at the very utmost, of the fittest examples may then be selected for execution, who ought to be brought out and put to death on one and the same day, in six different places, and in the most solemn manner that can be devised.  Afterwards great care should be taken that their bodies may not be delivered to their friends, or to others who may make them objects of compassion or even veneration:  some instances of the kind have happened with regard to the bodies of those killed in the riots.  The rest of the malefactors ought to be either condemned, for larger [longer?] or shorter terms, to the lighters, houses of correction, service in the navy, and the like, according to the case.