To the ordinary Englishman a murderer is a murderer and nothing else. He is a vile creature who has taken life, and who by law, divine and national, must die because of his deed. He is a creature different from the rest of humanity, a fiend, a monster, who has outraged Justice, and must die like a dog. To me, a murderer is a study. He is a man who has done an ill deed, who may or may not be naturally vicious; who may or may not be really responsible for his actions; who may or may not be devoutly penitent. My own ideas on capital punishment are given in another chapter. I believe, honestly, and from long study of the subject, with unique opportunities of judging, that with a certain low class of the human brute, the fear of death is the only check that can in any way curb their lusts and passions. But I have sometimes thought that amongst those whom I have executed, for crimes which they have undoubtedly committed, there were men to whom their crime was a trouble more terrible than death; men who had not premeditated murder, who had taken no pleasure in it and expected no profit from it, and who, if they could by any means have been set at liberty, had within them the making of model citizens. Logically, and as a matter of conviction, I feel that if one sheddeth man's blood, by man should his blood be shed; but as a matter of sentiment, I sometimes feel sorry that certain murderers can not go free. The power of reprieve is, of course, often exercised, and very rightly so, and yet it sometimes seems as if murderers who have been wilful, deliberate and thoroughly vicious in their acts and characters are reprieved because they possess interesting personalities or influential friends, while others are executed who have a better plea for mercy, but no one to present it. The whole subject is a very difficult one; I must lay the facts before my readers and let them draw their own conclusions. But I may say that the executions which have given me the most trouble have not been those in which the convicts were violent or hysterical, not those in which they struggled and fought and cursed, or doggedly and stubbornly resisted; but the few cases in which they have been devoutly penitent, and almost seemed to welcome death as a release from a burden too heavy to be borne and an expiation for the sin which they deplored. In such cases the executioner's task is, indeed, a painful one. The conduct of the condemned in the cell and on the scaffold throws much light upon the various phases of human character, and to me it has always been an interesting study. _Robert F. Vickers and William Innes._