Lieutenant H---- was about six feet two inches high;--strong, and broad
in proportion. His strength was great, but of the dead kind
unaccompanied by activity. He could lift a ton, but could not leap a
rivulet; he looked mild, and his address was civil--neither assuming nor
at all ferocious. I knew him well, and from his countenance should never
have suspected him of cruelty; but so cold-blooded and so eccentric an
executioner of the human race I believe never yet existed, save among
the American Indians.[6]
[6] His mode of execution being perfectly novel, and at the same
time _ingenious_, Curran said, "The lieutenant should have got a
patent for cheap strangulation."
His inducement to the strange barbarity he practised I can scarcely
conceive; unless it proceeded from that natural taint of cruelty which
so often distinguishes man above all other animals when his power
becomes uncontrolled. The propensity was probably strengthened in him
from the indemnities of martial law, and by those visions of promotion
whereby violent partizans are perpetually urged, and so frequently
disappointed.
At the period alluded to, law being suspended, and the courts of justice
closed, the "question" by torture was revived and largely practised.
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