Explore "Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark" by Mary Wollstonecraft on Textopian.
Business having obliged me to go a few miles out of town this morning I was surprised at meeting a crowd of people of every description, and inquiring the cause of a servant, who spoke French, I was informed that a man had been executed two hours before, and the body afterwards burnt. I could not help looking with horror around -- the fields lost their verdure -- and I turned with disgust from the well-dressed women who were returning with their children from this sight. What a spectacle for humanity! The seeing such a flock of idle gazers plunged me into a train of reflections on the pernicious effects produced by false notions of justice. And I am persuaded that till capital punishments are entirely abolished executions ought to have every appearance of horror given to them, instead of being, as they are now, a scene of amusement for the gaping crowd, where sympathy is quickly effaced by curiosity.
I have always been of opinion that the allowing actors to die in the presence of the audience has an immoral tendency, but trifling when compared with the ferocity acquired by viewing the reality as a show; for it seems to me that in all countries the common people go to executions to see how the poor wretch plays his part, rather than to commiserate his fate, much less to think of the breach of morality which has brought him to such a deplorable end. Consequently executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deferred anyone from the commission of a crime, because, in committing it, the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances. It is a game at hazard, at which all expect the turn of the die in their own favour, never reflecting on the chance of ruin till it comes. In fact, from what I saw in the fortresses of Norway, I am more and more convinced that the same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organised. When a strong mind is not disciplined by cultivation it is a sense of injustice that renders it unjust.