Laceration

“ Therefore, on account of the magnitude of the anger, punishment ought not to have been inflicted, but to have been delayed, lest it should inflict [3] upon the offender pain greater than is just, or occasion an outburst of fury in the punisher. But how, how is it equitable or wise, that any one should be punished on account of a slight offence, and should be unpunished on account of a very great one? But if he had learned the nature and causes of things, he never would have professed so unsuitable a forbearance, that a wicked slave should rejoice that his master has been angry with him. ”

“ The force of the muscles, and the sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person being given, it is required to find the degree of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a given crime.
The examination of the accused is intended to find out the truth; but if this be discovered, with so much difficulty, in the air, gesture, and countenance of a man at ease, how can it appear in a countenance distorted by the convulsions of torture. Every violent action destroys those small alterations in the features, which sometimes disclose the sentiments of the heart. ”

“ In cities, the common people, whether residing within or without the walls, were assembled, the market-places filled with crowds of families, all attended with their children and slaves, the noise of torture and scourges resounded, sons were hung on the rack to force discovery of the effects of their fathers, the most trusty slaves compelled by pain to bear witness against their masters, and wives to bear witness against their husbands, In default of all other evidence, men were tortured to speak against themselves ”

“ Dear lady, I confess that I have often given cause for offense, for I am only a man, and a young one, too, but I never committed a deadly crime until today! You have my confession of guilt, I deserve any punishment you may see fit to prescribe. I betrayed a trust, I murdered a man, I violated a temple: demand my punishment for these crimes. Should it be your pleasure to slay me I will come to you with my sword; if you are content with a flogging I will run naked to my mistress ”

“ Let me add that worthy penance is that in which the measure of grief and pain corresponds to the measure of the pleasure and the sin, that according to the enormity of the sin should be the increase of punishment. A far heavier penance should be that of the adulterer than of the thief, of the parricide than of the manslayer. ”

“ Unless by chance they think that those who are once contaminated are about to change their mind, so that they may now begin of their own accord to do that which they have done under the influence of torture. Who would willingly undertake that duty which began with injury? Who, when he sees the scars on his own sides, would not the more hate the gods, on account of whom he bears the traces of lasting punishment, and the marks imprinted upon his flesh? ”

“ Trembling at the severity of her aspect my strength scarce sufficed me to obey her. I drew near, but my limbs were unable to support their burthen. I sank upon my knees; I clasped my hands, and lifted them up to her for mercy, but had no power to articulate a syllable.
She gazed upon me with angry eyes.
“Do I see a Penitent, or a Criminal?” She said at length; “Are those hands raised in contrition for your crimes, or in fear of meeting their punishment? Do those tears acknowledge the justice of your doom, or only solicit mitigation of your sufferings? I fear me, ’tis the latter!” ”

“ Nature has indeed given you an irresistible self-love, and an unalienable right of self-preservation; but I create in you a contrary sentiment, an heroical hatred of yourselves. I command you to accuse yourselves, and to declare the truth, midst the tearing of your flesh, and the dislocation of your bones. Torture is used to discover, whether the criminal be guilty of other crimes besides those of which he is accused; which is equivalent to the following reasoning. Thou art guilty of one crime, therefore it is possible that thou mayst have committed a thousand others ”

“ They do not put us to death, but they search out new and unheard-of tortures, that the frailty of the flesh may yield to pains, and if it does not yield, they put off further punishment, and apply diligent care to the wounds, that while the scars are yet fresh, a repetition of the torture may inflict more pain ”

“ Sometimes the punishment awarded to a prisoner was mutilation instead of death. Cutting off the ears close to the head, blinding the eyes with burning-irons, cutting off the nose, and plucking out the tongue by the roots, have been in all ages favorite Oriental punishments. ”

“ They contend, therefore, that they may conquer and inflict exquisite [4] pains on their bodies, and avoid nothing else but that the victims may not die under the torture: as though, in truth, death alone could make them happy, and as though tortures also in proportion to their severity would not produce greater glory of virtue. But they with obstinate folly give orders that diligent care shall be given to the tortured, that their limbs may be renovated for other tortures, and fresh blood be supplied for punishment. What can be so pious, so beneficent, so humane? ”

“ Every man among you would be guilty of that crime did you break into this jail and drag out the fellow you are after and string him to a limb. What good would it do? I know what the Bible says—'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' and 'Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed.' But let the law do it, men. ”

“ Imprisonment as practised in modern times has followed from the last-named class of punishments. Although affecting the individual, and in many of its phases with brutal and reckless disregard for human suffering, it can hardly be styled a purely personal punishment, upon which I propose now more particularly to treat, and the present chapter will deal only with penalties corporeal.
Taking first the punishments which fell short of death, those most common in this country until comparatively recent times, were branding, mutilation, dismemberment, whipping, and degrading public exposure. ”

“ But still fell the horrid lash; still strip after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her living flesh, until it became a livid and bloody mass of raw and quivering muscle. It was with the greatest difficulty I refrained from springing upon the torturer, and arresting his lash; but, alas! what could I do, but turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for humanity? This was in a public and regularly-organized prison; the punishment was one recognized and authorized by the law. ”

“ The first man I saw flogged, received eight hundred lashes, for desertion—it would have been more merciful to have shot him. But men have been known to receive a thousand lashes before they were taken down from the halberts; and on occasions where nature could not bear the punishment awarded at once, they have been brought out again, and again, to have their half-healed backs torn open afresh! They have been known to faint under their punishment, and again be flogged into life! ”

“ As I have explained to thee, Aglaophonos, our Sages have mercifully interpreted the words of the Law relating to the four modes of capital punishment among us—stoning, burning, beheading, and strangulation. For stoning they have substituted throwing down from a height after the criminal has been made to feel naught by drinking a mixture of frankincense, myrrh, and vinegar, which the ladies of Jerusalem supply as one of their pious duties. The criminal condemned to be burnt is in reality strangled, and then a lighted wick placed for a moment in his open mouth. ”

“ In entering upon the subject of ancient modes of punishment, we must first speak of the torture, which, according to the received phrase, might be either previous or preparatory: previous, when it consisted of a torture which the condemned had to endure previous to capital punishment; and preparatory, when it was applied in order to elicit from the culprit an avowal of his crime, or of that of his accomplices. It was also called ordinary, or extraordinary, according to the duration or violence with which it was inflicted. In some cases the torture lasted five or six consecutive hours ”

“ Stripping.—All who are tortured are stripped naked, both men and women, without regard to decency or honour; and the prisoner has no clothing except a pair of linen drawers. This process, to some, is an inexpressible torment. While he is being stripped, he is exhorted to confess and declare all the truth, being admonished that if he should die under the torture, the judges would be clear from blame, which would rest alone with himself, as a criminal. The notary present writes down everything that is said or done in the act of torture. ”

“ Woe to them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; [112] 2 To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! 3 And what will ye do in the day of punishment, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? 4 Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. ”

“ First, there are certain punishments that inherently involve so much physical pain and suffering that civilized people cannot tolerate them - e. g., use of the rack, the thumbscrew, or other modes of torture. ”

“ Experience has shown these attempts ever to have been futile. All kinds of punishment have been tried — hanging, beheading, burning, mutilating, disemboweling, quartering, gouging out the eyes, cutting out the tongue, cropping the ears, branding, standing in the stocks, drowning, using the rack and the thumbscrew and many others which ingenuity in this direction could devise. ”

“ Sir, it is an heinous and crying sin: And truly, Sir, if any man will ask us what Punishment is due to a Murderer, let God's Law, let man's law speak. Sir, I will presume that you are so well read in Scripture, as to know what God himself hath said concerning the shedding of man's blood: Gen. ix., Numb. xxxv. will tell you what the punishment is: And which this Court, in behalf of the whole kingdom, are sensible of, of that innocent blood that has been shed, [Pg 114] whereby indeed the land stands still defiled with that blood ”

“ Some of the prisoners, I understand, regard the first bath as the worst part of the punishment. They are brought up in dirt, and love it; like the Italian who deserted the English girl he was engaged to, and justified himself by saying: "Oh, if I marry her, she wash me, and then I die." ”

“ The sin of the deed of lechery is divided into many boughs according to the state of the persons that do it, and goes upwards from bad to worse. The first is of man or of woman that have no bond, either of widowhood, or of wedlock, or of orders, or of religion, or of another kind. That is the first deadly sin in the deed of lechery. The second is with a common woman. This sin is harder because it (she) is older, and because such women are sometimes wives, or (women) of religion, and forsake no one, neither father, nor brother, nor son, nor kin. ”

“ The act which is deemed disgraceful in the eyes of men, is regarded as a moral transgression, and is visited, as was the case in the Mosaic institution, by the stern reprimand of the priest. The penance of severe fasting, or of uneasy repose upon the bare ground, is enforced by the father confessor to efface the taint of the interdicted animal; and prayers must be repeated, and holy water plentifully besprinkled over the defiled person of that sinning individual who shall have dared to touch the meat of the hare, or the swine, or the aquatic fowl. ”

“ In that religion nothing else is required but the blood of animals, and the smoke of incense, and the senseless pouring out of libations; but in this of ours, a good mind, a pure breast, an innocent life: those rites are frequented by unchaste adulteresses without any discrimination, by impudent procuresses, by filthy harlots; they are frequented by gladiators, robbers, thieves, and sorcerers, who pray for nothing else but that they may commit crimes with impunity. For what can the robber ask when he sacrifices, or the gladiator, but that they may slay? ”

“ The different punishments for offences are these, increasing with the enormity of the crime:—Fines, the stocks, imprisonment, labour in chains, flogging, branding, maiming, pagoda slavery, and death. The last, which seldom occurs but for murder and treason, is inflicted by decapitation, drowning, or crucifixion. ”

“ For there the human tribunal by which men were condemned to death for murder is meant; but here is understood the Divine judgment, which judges and condemns venial anger to temporal punishment, such as purgatory, but deadly anger to eternal punishment, i.e., to hell.
How vile a thing anger is! See S. Basil and S. Chrysostom (Hom. on Anger) ; Cicero (4 Tuscul.) , where, among other things, he says, “Is there anything more like to madness than anger—anger which Ennius well calls the beginning of madness? ”

“ Punishment retained enough of the character of penance to justify the theologian in treating its non-performance as a proof that repentance had been feigned, and that the offender had relapsed into heresy, the penalty for which, under the canons, was death by fire without trial. ”

“ There mercy sends the prisoners under sentence of death, and not one of them ever survives a year of imprisonment. What mercy!
During the two mortal hours of suspense, full of sombre thoughts and the most melancholy ideas, I could not help fancying that I was going to be plunged in one of these horrible dens, where the wretched inhabitants feed on idle hopes or become the prey of panic fears. The Tribunal might well send him to hell who had endeavoured to escape from purgatory. ”