It is not the mere
loss of life which has so much a tendency to affect the
spectator, as the dreadful apparatus, the awful preliminaries,
which ought to attend publick executions; whose justifiable
purposes is the prevention of crimes, and not the inflicting
torment on the criminal. A variety of particulars might be
adopted respecting the dress of the condemned, the solemnity of
the procession to the place of execution, and the apparatus
there, to throw horrour on the scene without in reality giving
the unhappy victim a more painful exit. The Dutch have a mode of
execution which is well calculated to inspire terror, without
putting the sufferer to extraordinary pain. The criminal is
placed on a scaffold, opposite to the gigantick figure of a
woman, with arms extended, filled with spikes, or long sharpened
nails, and a dagger pointed from her breast, she is gradually
moved towards him by machinery for the purpose, till he gets
within her embrace, when her arms encircle him, and the dagger is
pressed through his heart.
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