§ 2. After the execution, the said Sheriff or Coroner shall make oath or affirmation, in writing, that he proceeded to execute the said criminal within the walls or yard aforesaid, at the time designated by the death-warrant of the Governor, and the same shall be filed in the office of the Clerk of the Court of Oyer and Terminer of the aforesaid county, and a copy thereof published in two or more newspapers, one of which at least shall be printed in the county where the execution took place. Language could not make the design of the Legislature more intelligible. The walls of the prison yard effectually protect the enclosed area from being overlooked or entered without license; and it is within these walls that the extreme penalty of the law is to be inflicted. The Sheriff or Coroner to whom the warrant is addressed, is alone _required_ to be present. He is to _invite_ the presence of one of the principal prosecuting officers of the government, and only one of them. He is also to _invite_ one physician and twelve reputable citizens of the county selected by himself, for the purpose. He is _authorized_ to admit such ministers of the gospel as the culprit may desire and name, _but never more than two_, and also any of his immediate relatives, (if it were possible they could desire to witness such a scene). Besides these, no persons can be present (but in direct violation of law) except such officers of the prison, and such of his own deputies as he, the Sheriff, in his discretion may think it expedient to have present. And lest this permissive authority should be unduly stretched, it is restricted by a positive prohibition, that no other person shall witness the execution, and still farther to guard against any injurious effects from the scene, it is provided that no physician or minister, or relative, or officer of the prison, or other party, shall be admitted, if not twenty-one years of age or upwards. The second section evidently contemplates such a record of the proceeding as shall be authentic and permanent in the absence of all personal or oral testimony--as for instance, if the Sheriff executed the warrant alone, none of the persons invited being in attendance, nor any minister or relative, nor any of the prison officers, or the Sheriff’s deputies, which, under the provision of the first section, was a supposable event. Now we maintain, that any violation of the letter or spirit of this law on the occasion of the execution of _Arthur Spring_, was, in the first place, in derogation of the dignity of the government--and in the second place, well fitted to bring all law into popular contempt, and to give encouragement to the perverse and disobedient to persist in their evil courses. We avail ourselves of the columns of a highly respectable religious Journal published in Philadelphia, for a statement of the facts in respect to this particular case, rather than rely on our own information: