This being admitted, let me now proceed to consider another functionary, and observe how far the rule of right is consulted in the treatment _he_ meets with--I mean the hangman. You start, good reader, and your gesture of impatience denotes the very proposition I would come to. I need scarcely remind you, that in our country this individual has a kind of prerogative of detestation. All other ranks and conditions of men may find a sympathy, or at least a pity, somewhere, but for him there is none. No one is sufficiently debased to be his companion,--no one so low as to be his associate! Like a being of another sphere, he appears but at some frightful moments of life, and then only for a few seconds. For the rest he drags on existence unseen and unheard of, his very name a thing to tremble at. Yet this man, in the duties of his calling, has neither will nor choice. The stern agent of the law, he has but one course to follow; his path, a narrow one, has no turning to the right or to the left, and, save that his ministry is more proximate, is less accessory to the death of the criminal than he who signs the warrant for execution. In fact, he but answers the responses of the law, and in the loud amen of his calling, he only consummates its recorded assertion. How then can you reconcile yourself to the fact, that while you overwhelm the advocate who converts right into wrong and wrong into right, who shrouds the guilty man, and conceals the murderer, with honour, and praise, and rank, and riches, and who does this for a brief marked fifty pounds, yet have nothing but abhorrence and detestation for the impassive agent whose fee is but one. One can help what he does--the other cannot. One is an amateur--the other practices in spite of himself. One employs every energy of his mind and every faculty of his intellect--the other only devotes the ingenuity of his fingers. One strains every nerve to let loose a criminal upon the world--the other but closes the grave over guilt and crime!