Hanging is little less ridiculous than the Chinese custom of walling-in a parricide with masonry, air-holed to delay death. Indeed, it is no more appropriate to modern ideas than death from the Tarpeian Rock would be. It is quite inconceivable that the rope should have stood firm as an instrument of execution as long as it has. In the days, not so far back (as recently as 1868), when hanging was carried out in public, it had a certain awe-inspiring influence on the ignorant mind. But now that the death penalty is executed within prison walls, the quickest, easiest, and least complicated method must inevitably recommend itself as the best. Death by the volley of muskets should take an easy lead, at any rate over hanging. To pinion a man, to stand him against a wall, and to order a handful of troops to fire, are acts simple and certain in their effect. Advance arrangements become unnecessary. The boxing and burial of the dead body are no different, after such an episode, than the boxing and burial after a criminal has been hanged. The removal of the evidence of taking blood is a detail. As a concession to the _soi-disant_ humanitarian, blindfolding could be adopted to ameliorate the condition of the condemned. The writer is no violent antagonist to hanging; he is merely of opinion that it could be superseded with some advantage, chiefly because the formula is based upon an antiquated conception of punishment, which does not seem to him to be as promising as the simple method of shooting down the condemned criminal.