They were unanimous on several points--first, that the position of
things was most dangerous to the Authority of the College and the
safety of the People; next, that the punishment of Death alone would
meet the case; thirdly, that, in future, the Museum, with the Library
and Picture Galleries, must be incorporated with the College itself, so
that this danger of the possible awakening of memory should be removed.
Here, however, our unanimity ceased. For the Fellow, of whom I have
already spoken as having always followed the Arch Physician, arose
and again insisted that what had happened to-day might very well
happen again: that nothing was more uncertain in its action, or more
indestructible, than human memory: so that, from time to time, we must
look for the arising of some Leader or Prophet who would shake up the
people and bring them out of their torpor to a state of discontent
and yearning after the lost. Wherefore he exhorted us to reconsider
our Administration, and to provide some safety-valve for the active
spirits. As to the Death of the three criminals, he would not, he could
not, oppose it. He proposed, however, that the mode of Death should be
optional. So great a light of Science as the Arch Physician had many
secrets, and could doubtless procure himself sudden and painless death
if he chose. Let him have that choice for himself and his companions;
and, as regards the girl, let her be cast into a deep sleep, and then
painlessly smothered by gas, without a sentence being pronounced upon
her at all. This leniency, he said, was demanded by her youth and her
inexperience.
In reply, I pointed out that, as regards our Administration, we were
not then considering it at all: that as for the mode of punishment,
he had not only to consider the criminals, but also the People, and
the effect of the Punishment upon them: we were not only to punish,
but also to deter. I therefore begged the Court to go back to one of
the former methods, and to one of the really horrible and barbarous,
yet comparatively painless, methods. I showed that a mere report or
announcement, made in the Public Hall, that the Arch Physician had been
executed for Treason, would produce little or no effect upon the public
mind, even if it were added that the two women, Mildred and Christine,
had suffered with him: that our people needed to see the thing itself,
in order to feel its true horror and to remember it. If Death alone
were wanted, I argued, there were dozens of ways in which Life might be
painlessly extinguished. But it was not Death alone that we desired;
it was Terror that we wished to establish, in order to prevent another
such attempt.
"Let them," I concluded, "be taken forth in solemn Procession to the
open space before the Public Hall; we ourselves will form part of that
Procession. Let them in that place, in the sight of all the People, be
publicly decapitated by the Porter of the House, John Lax."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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