I avow openly that “The Last Days of a Condemned” is only a pleading, direct or indirect, for the abolition of punishment by death. My design herein (and what I would wish posterity to see in my work, if its attention should ever be given to so slight a production) is, not to make out the special defence of any particular criminal, such defence being transitory as it is easy. I would plead generally and permanently for all accused persons, present and future; it is the great point of Human Right stated and pleaded before society at large, — that highest judicial court; it is the sombre and fatal question which breathes obscurely in the depths of each capital offence, under the triple envelopes of pathos in which legal eloquence wraps them; it is the question of life and death, I say, laid bare, denuded of the sonorous twisitings of the bar, revealed in daylight, and placed where it should be seen, in its true and hideous position, — not in the law courts, but on the scaffold, — not among the judges, but with the Executioner!
This is what I have desired to effect. If futurity should award me the glory of having succeeded, — which I dare not hope, — I desire no other crown.
I proclaim and repeat it, then, in the name of all accused persons, innocent or guilty, before all courts, juries, or judges. And in order that my pleadings should be as universal as my cause, I have been careful, while writing “The Last Days of a Condemned,” to omit any thing of a special, individual, contingent, relative, or modifiable nature, as also any episode, anecdote, known event, or real name, — keeping to the limit (if “limit” it may be termed!) of pleading the cause of any condemned prisoner whatever, executed at any time, for any offence; happy if, with no other aid than my thoughts, I have mined sufficiently into my subject to make a heart bleed, under the as triplex of a magistrate! happy if I could render merciful those who consider themselves just! happy if I penetrate sufficiently deep within the Judge to reach the man.
When this book first appeared, some people thought it was worth while to dispute the authorship. Some asserted that it was taken from an English work, and others that it was borrowed from an American author. What a singular mania there is for seeking the origin of matters at a great distance, — trying to trace from the source of the Nile the streamlet which flows through our village! In this work there is no English, American, or Chinese assistance. I formed the idea of “The Last Days of a Condemned” where you might form it, — where perhaps you all may have formed it (for who is there that has not reflected and had reveries of “the last day of a condemned”? — there, on the public walk, the place of execution!
It was there, while passing casually during an execution, that this forcible idea occurred to me; and since then, after those funereal Thursdays of the Court of Cassation, which send forth through Paris the intelligence of an approaching execution, the hoarse voices of the assembling spectators, as they hurried past my windows, filled my mind with the prolonged misery of the person about to suffer, which I pictured to myself, from hour to hour, according to what I conceived was its actual progress. It was a torture which commenced at daybreak, and lasted, like that of the miserable being who was tortured at the same moment, untilf four o’clock. Then only, whence once the ponens caput expiravit was announced by the heavy toll of the clock, I breathed again freely, and regained comparative peace of mind.
One day at length — I think it was after the execution of Ulbach — I commenced writing this work; and since then I have felt relieved. When one of those public crimes called legal executions is committed, my conscience now acquits me of participation therein. This, however, is not sufficient; it is well to be freed from self-accusation, but it would be better still to endeavour to save human life. I do not know any aim more elevated, more holy, than that of seeking the abolition of capital punishment; with sincere devotion I join the wishes and efforts of those philanthropic men of all nations who have laboured, of late years, to throw down the patibulary tree, — the only tree which revolution fails to uproot! It is with pleasure that I take my turn to give my feeble stroke, after the all-powerful blow which, seventy years ago, Beccaria gave to the ancient gibbet, which had been standing during so many centuries of Christianity.