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Page 5
It was little matter of surprise, perhaps, that the executioner
should thus do his best to vindicate and uphold the machinery by
which he himself had his livelihood and worthier individuals their
death; but it deserved special note that men of a far different
sphere--even of that consecrated class in whose guardianship the
world is apt to trust its benevolence--were found to take the
hangman's view of the question.
"Stay, my brethren!" cried one of them. "You are misled by a false
philanthropy; you know not what you do. The gallows is a Heaven--
ordained instrument. Bear it back, then, reverently, and set it up
in its old place, else the world will fall to speedy ruin and
desolation!"
"Onward! onward!" shouted a leader in the reform.
"Into the flames with the accursed instrument of man's bloody
policy! How can human law inculcate benevolence and love while it
persists in setting up the gallows as its chief symbol? One heave
more, good friends, and the world will be redeemed from its greatest
error."
A thousand hands, that nevertheless loathed the touch, now lent
their assistance, and thrust the ominous burden far, far into the
centre of the raging furnace. There its fatal and abhorred image
was beheld, first black, then a red coal, then ashes.
"That was well done!" exclaimed I.
"Yes, it was well done," replied, but with less enthusiasm than I
expected, the thoughtful observer, who was still at my side,--"well
done, if the world be good enough for the measure. Death, however,
is an idea that cannot easily be dispensed with in any condition
between the primal innocence and that other purity and perfection
which perchance we are destined to attain after travelling round the
full circle; but, at all events, it is well that the experiment
should now be tried."
"Too cold! too cold!" impatiently exclaimed the young and ardent
leader in this triumph. "Let the heart have its voice here as well
as the intellect. And as for ripeness, and as for progress, let
mankind always do the highest, kindest, noblest thing that, at any
given period, it has attained the perception of; and surely that
thing cannot be wrong nor wrongly timed."
I know not whether it were the excitement of the scene, or whether
the good people around the bonfire were really growing more
enlightened every instant; but they now proceeded to measures in the
full length of which I was hardly prepared to keep them company.
For instance, some threw their marriage certificates into the
flames, and declared themselves candidates for a higher, holier, and
more comprehensive union than that which had subsisted from the
birth of time under the form of the connubial tie. Others hastened
to the vaults of banks and to the coffers of the rich--all of which
were opened to the first comer on this fated occasion--and brought
entire bales of paper-money to enliven the blaze, and tons of coin
to be melted down by its intensity. Henceforth, they said,
universal benevolence, uncoined and exhaustless, was to be the
golden currency of the world. At this intelligence the bankers and
speculators in the stocks grew pale, and a pickpocket, who had
reaped a rich harvest among the crowd, fell down in a deadly
fainting fit. A few men of business burned their day-books and
ledgers, the notes and obligations of their creditors, and all other
evidences of debts due to themselves; while perhaps a somewhat
larger number satisfied their zeal for reform with the sacrifice of
any uncomfortable recollection of their own indebtment. There was
then a cry that the period was arrived when the title-deeds of
landed property should be given to the flames, and the whole soil of
the earth revert to the public, from whom it had been wrongfully
abstracted and most unequally distributed among individuals.
Another party demanded that all written constitutions, set forms of
government, legislative acts, statute-books, and everything else on
which human invention had endeavored to stamp its arbitrary laws,
should at once be destroyed, leaving the consummated world as free
as the man first created.
Whether any ultimate action was taken with regard to these
propositions is beyond my knowledge; for, just then, some matters
were in progress that concerned my sympathies more nearly.
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