We are sufficiently acquainted with the Catholic practice of roasting heretics—that of boiling thieves and other offenders is less generally known. Caldariis decoquere, to boil them in cauldrons, was a punishment, inflicted in the middle ages, on thieves, false coiners, and others. In 1532, seventeen persons, in the family of the Bishop of Rochester, were poisoned by Rouse, a cook; the offence was, in consequence, made treason, by 23 Henry VIII., punishable, by boiling to death. Margaret Davie was boiled to death, for the like crime, in 1541. Quite a number of Roman ladies, in the year 331 B. C., formed a poisoning society, or club; and adopted this quiet mode of divorcing themselves from their husbands: seventy of the sisterhood were denounced, by a slave, to the consul, Fabius Maximus, who ordered them to be executed. None of these ladies were boiled.

Boiling the dead has been very customary, after beheading or hanging, and drawing, and quartering, whenever the criminal was sentenced to be hung afterwards, in chains. Thus father Strype—“1554.—Sir Thomas Wyatt’s fatal day was come, being the 11th of April, when, between nine and ten of the clock, aforenoon, on Tower Hill, he was beheaded; and, by eleven of the clock, he was quartered on the scaffold, and his bowels and members burnt beside the scaffold; and, a car and basket being at hand, the four quarters and the head were put into the basket, and conveyed to Newgate, to be parboiled.” One more quotation from Strype—“1557.—May 28th, was Thomas Stafford beheaded on Tower Hill, by nine of the clock, Mr. Wode being his ghostly father; and, after, three more, viz., Stowel, Proctor, and Bradford were drawn from the Tower, through London, unto Tyburn, and there hanged and quartered: and, the morrow after, was Stafford quartered, and his quarters hanged on a car, and carried to Newgate to boil.”

How very ingenious we have been, since the days of Cain, in torturing one another! Boiling and roasting are not to be thought of. The Turkish bowstring will never be adopted here, nor the Chinese drop, nor their mode of capital punishment, in which the criminal, having been stripped naked, is so confined, that he can scarcely move a muscle, and, being smeared with honey, is exposed to myriads of insects, and thus left to perish. Crucifixion will never be popular in Massachusetts, though quite common among the Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, Africans, Greeks, Romans, and Jews. Starving to death, sawing in twain, and rending asunder, by strong horses, have all been tried, but are not much approved of, by the moderns. The rack may answer well enough, in Catholic countries, but, in this quarter, there is a strong prejudice against it. Exposure to wild beasts is objectionable, for two reasons; one of these reasons resembles the first of twenty-four, offered to the Queen of Hungary, for not ringing the bells upon her arrival,—there were no bells in the village—we have no wild beasts. The second reason is quite germain—man is savage enough, without any foreign assistance. Burying alive, though it has been employed, as a punishment, in other countries, is, literally, too much for flesh and blood; and, I am happy to say, there is not a sexton in this city, who would, knowingly, be a party to such a barbarous proceeding.

Death has been produced, by preventing sleep, as a mode of punishment. Impaling, and flaying alive, tearing to pieces with red hot pincers, casting headlong from high rocks, eviscerating the bowels, firing the criminals from the mouths of canons, and pressing them slowly to death, by weights, gradually increased, upon the breast, the peine forte et dure, are very much out of fashion; though one and all have been frequently employed, in other times. There is a wheel of fashion, as well as a wheel of fortune, in the course of whose revolutions, some of these obsolete modes of capital punishment may come round again, like polygon porcelain, and antiquated chair-backs. Should our legislature think proper to revive the practice, in capital cases, of heading up the criminal in a barrel, filled with nails, driven inward, a sort of inverted cheval de frize, and rolling him down hill, I have often thought the more elevated corner of our Common would be an admirable spot for the commencement of the execution, were it not for interrupting the practice of coasting, during the winter; by which several innocent persons, in no way parties to the process, have been very nearly executed already.

Shooting is apt to be performed, in a bungling manner. Hanging by the heels, till the criminal is dead, is very objectionable, and requires too much time. The mode adopted here and in England, and also in some other countries, of hanging by the neck, is, in no respect agreeable, even if the operator be a skilful man; and, if not, it is highly offensive. The rope is sometimes too long, and the victim touches the ground—it is too frail, and breaks, and the odious act must be performed again—or the noose is unskilfully adjusted, the neck is not broken, and the struggles are terrible.

The sword, in a Turkish hand, performs the work well. It was used in France. Charles Henry Sanson, the hereditary executioner, on the third of March, 1792, presented a memorial to the Constituent Assembly, in which he objected to decollation, and stated that he had but two swords; that they became dull immediately; and were wholly insufficient, when there were many to be executed, at one time. Monsieur Sanson knew nothing then of that delightful instrument, which, not long afterward, became a mere plaything, in his hands.

Stoning to death and flaying alive have been employed, occasionally, since the days of Stephen and Bartholomew. The axe, so much in vogue, formerly, in England, was a ruffianly instrument, often mangling the victim, in a horrible manner.

After all, there is nothing like the guillotine; and, should it ever be thought expedient to erect one here, I should recommend, for a location, the knoll, near the fountain, on our Common, which would enable a very large concourse of men, women, and children, to witness the performances of both, at the same moment.The very best account of the guillotine, that I have ever met with, is contained in the London Quarterly Review, vol. lxxiii. page 235. It is commonly supposed, that this instrument was invented by Dr. Guillotin, whose name it bears. It has been frequently asserted, that Dr. Guillotin was one of the earliest, who fell victims to its terrible agency. It has been still more generally believed, that this awfully efficient machine was conceived in sin and begotten in iniquity, or in other words, that its original contrivers were moved, by the spirit of cruelty. All these conjectures are unfounded.

The guillotine, before its employment, in France, was well known in England, under the name of the Halifax gibbet. A copy of a print, by John Doyle, bearing date 1650, and representing the instrument, may be found, in the work, to which I have, just now, referred. Pennant, in his Tour, vol. iii. page 365, affirms, that he saw one of the same kind, “in a room, under the Parliament house, at Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent, Morton, who took a model of it, as he passed through Halifax, and, at length, suffered by it, himself.”

The writer in the London Quarterly, puts the question of invention at rest, by exhibiting, on page 258, a copy of an engraving, by Henry Aldgrave, bearing date 1553, representing the death of Titus Manlius, under the operation of “an instrument, identical with the guillotine.”

During the revolution, Dr. Guillotin was committed to prison, from which he was released, after a tedious confinement. He died in his bed, at Paris, an obscure and inoffensive, old man; deeply deploring, to the day of his decease, the association of his name, with this terrible instrument—an instrument, which he attempted to introduce, in good faith, and with a merciful design, but which had been employed by the devils incarnate of the revolution, for the purposes of reckless and indiscriminating carnage.

Dr. Guillotin was a weak, consequential, well-meaning man, willing to mount any hobby, that would lift him from the ground. He is described, in the Portraits des Personnes cÉlebres, 1796, as a simple busybody, meddling with everything, À tort et À travers, and being both mischievous and ridiculous.

He had sundry benevolent visions, in regard to capital punishment, and the suppression, by legal enactment, of the sentiment of prejudice, against the families of persons, executed for crime! Among the members of the faculty, in every large city, there are commonly two or three, at least, exhibiting striking points of resemblance to Dr. Guillotin. In urging the merits of this machine, upon merciful considerations, his integrity was unimpeachable. He considered hanging a barbarous and cruel punishment; and, by the zeal and simplicity of his arguments, produced, even upon so grave a topic, universal laughter, in the constituent assembly—having represented hanging, as a tedious and painful process, he exclaimed, “Now, with my machine, Je vous sauter le tÊte, I strike off your head, in the twinkling of an eye, and you never feel it.”