exists in England between the mildness and the leniency of the English customs
and legislation in criminal matters, and the barbarity and savagery of the enter-
tainments in their playhouses. On the same morning that Hamlet was performed,
the execution of Dr. Dodd was carried out at Tyburn. Doctor Dodd was a
minister of the Church, highly respected for his eloquence. He had been Aumonier-
to the King, and cherished the ambition of becoming a bishop. With this object,
he had, through his wife, offered the sum of a thousand guineas to the wife of a
Minister. The transaction was discovered and Dr. Dodd was dismissed from
his post, but still retained a living. He had been the tutor of a son of a man who
is well known here, Lord Chesterfield, and in the name of the young lord he
signed a bond of four thousand guineas. This was also discovered, and it consti-
tutes what they here call the crime of forgery, for which Dr. Dodd was con-
demned to death. In spite of many petitions the sentence was carried out yester-
day, June 27. I assisted at the execution. A stranger accustomed to the terror-
inspiring machinery, to the noise and fuss with which, in the rest of Europe,
the decrees of justice are executed, and all that is designed to serve as an example,
would be astonished at the manner in which it is done here. Here there are no
soldiers, no representatives of the army, no outward signs of ferocity, no preli-
minary torture. Here that humanity, which the law seems to forget from the
moment the judge has uttered the word guilty—by letting a long delay elapse
between the pronouncement of the sentence and the execution—reappears as
soon as the prison opens its doors and delivers the prisoner to the sheriffs, who
are charged with carrying out the sentence. The sheriffs are not military men;,
they have no mercenaries under them, but merely a certain number of constables,,
ordinary bourgeois, whose only uniform consists in a long stick painted and.
partially gilded.
The victim, bound, without constraint, by the cord which is to hang him, is
seated on a cart draped in black, or he may obtain leave to use a carriage, and this
is what was done yesterday. The carriage passed slowly up Oxford Street, one
of the longest and broadest streets of London. The prisoner had no escort, save
a small number of constables on foot, and some sheriffs on horseback. He is
condemned by the law; it is the law which leads him to death. The officers show
no signs, either of threatening or fear, lest the people should oppose themselves
to a severity which has their safety for object.
The immense crowd which fills the streets, especially in a cause celebre of this
nature, maintains a respectful silence. When they arrived at Tyburn Dr. Dodd
left his carriage and mounted on a cart which stopped under the horizontal
beam of the gallows. The executioner then appeared, untied the rope, and attached
it to the transverse beam. The victim conversed with a minister of the Church,
who recalled his crime, and spoke of the necessity of expiation. After a short
pause, the executioner covered the victim's head with a handkerchief, which he
drew down to his chin. The first sheriff made a sign; the executioner touched
the horse, the cart went on, and the work of execution was thus almost imper-
ceptibly accomplished. After the body has remained hanging for an hour it is
cut down and restored to the relatives of the deceased. He is then no longer a
culprit, but a citizen in possession of the rights he had forfeited. His memory

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