ATROCIOUS PUNISHMENTS. LA CORDA.

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during the Carnival, at fairs, &c., the police erect an appa-ratus called La Corda. This consists in an upright beamwith a traverse, precisely like a road-side gibbet. At theextremity of the arm is a pulley wheel, with a thick ropepassed through it, both ends reaching to the ground. Anyman, deemed by the police agent, to be deserving of punish-ment for disorderly conduct, or any other fault, is summarilysubjected to the torture of La Corda. To the wrists, tiedbehind the back of the sufferer, one end of the rope isfastened, and he is thus drawn up to the top of the gibbet.According to the degree of ‘‘ punishment,” intended to heinflicted, he is drawn up and let down, a greater or lessernumber of times. Besides which, the effect is more or lessaggravated by the more or less violence and rapidity of therise and fall. People are threatened with one, two, three,or more Tratte di Corda, for different infractions of thearbitrary and capricious orders of the police director of theday. When it is intended to inflict the utmost effect of thisatrocious instrument of torture, the wretch, when hangingat the gibbet top, is suffered to fall on a sudden, like a stone,but the rope, being attached to a ring near the bottom of| the beam, is not long enough to allow of his reaching thej ground ; so that he is suddenly stopped with a shock equalto the momentum of so heavy a body falling freely fromsuch a height. The consequence is, that the arms of thesufferer are completely dislocated at the shoulders ; all thetendons, ligaments, and muscles torn to pieces ; the use ofthe arms entirely lost for life!

I merely mention the above mode of Roman “ Correc-tional Police,” as an isolated sample of practices (we can-not call them laws) characteristic of the priestly system.Were we to examine and describe that system throughoutevery branch of mis-government, we should find the wholeequally nefarious, and ill-adapted to the end proposed.

Von. x.

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