a lunatic asylum) brought forth to be strangled on a scaffold — an object of universal commiseration-an unconscious criminal!

* *

This is, perhaps, one of the instances which the Duke of WELLINGTON [see p. 350] would include within the sweeping condemnation of mercy extended " upon private application." But if private application had not been made in this case, or if opinion and argument operating through the Press had not had some weight, the maniac Macleod, instead of being kept in safe custody for life, would have been put to death upon the scaffold for an offence of which he was not, and could not be, by either the municipal or the moral law, guilty. Thus such application to the Home-office has, in the present instance, prevented one alleged murder being avenged by the commission of another.

"We may now," says an Inverness Paper, "congratulate the public on being spared the painful and brutalizing spectacle of a public execution." But what if the Home Secretary had been, as in some other lamentable instances, inexorable to all argument and to all supplication in this case? In his hands, and in his hands alone, or in those of his legal, but secret and irresponsible adviser-Mr. C. M. PHILLIPPS-was the fate of the convict. Many a human being has perished wrongfully under our present system of justice, because a Secretary of State was not importuned to examine the case and revise the decision of the jury, or because, although so importuned, he would not take the trouble of investigating a case which only concerned the life of some obscure individual! The only efficient remedy against the fatal consequences of the indolence, ignorance, or caprice of a Secretary of State in such cases, is to establish, in place of the secret and irresponsible tribunal of the Home-office, an open and regular court of criminal revision. Let us, while punishments of blood remain upon the statutebook, not continue in the practice of putting people to death upon a solitary decision of a court and jury-in a country where questions of property may be tried two, three, or four times, to prevent the chances of injustice upon one inquiry and a first decision.

Not long ago we implored the Home Secretary to examine more narrowly the case of Mrs. Jeffray, and not to despise the unanimous recommendation of the jury to mercy. Such a recommendation even the Duke of WELLINGTON admits ought to be attended to; but Lord John RUSSELL did not attend to it, any more than he listened to the applications for mercy on behalf of the wretched woman, Anne Wycherly, the victim of seduction and the vilest treachery, whose crime was forgotten in the popular sympathy which her fate excited. But in Mrs. Jeffray's case there was great reason to doubt the propriety of the conviction, because the proof of criminal intention was very loose and insufficient. The doubts which existed as to her guilt have not been removed by "the law" having been "allowed to take its course. On the contrary, those doubts have been, since her execution, considerably strengthened. Several articles to that effect have appeared in the Scottish papers; one of the most recent we here insert :

"The unfortunate woman, Mrs. Jeffray, was executed at Glasgow on Monday morning, in terms of her sentence. The trades of the city, much to their credit, issued a placard in the latter end of last week, denouncing the execution, and calling on their brethren not to countenance the 'feast of blood.' When executions are viewed in this light by the mass of society, (the working classes,) what advantages can the Government expect them to have on the country, even when the execution is for murder? Jeffray, however, was not proved to have committed murder. All the proof against her was the purchasing of arsenic, and that two persons died from arsenic ; but that it was administered by Jeffray, was only a matter of suspicion. What a horrible thought is it, therefore, that the woman was executed on suspicion, after being recommended to mercy by the jury! Mrs. Jeffray protested her innocence to the last, and whether she was guilty or not of the crime for which she lost her life, no person can tell. What a reflection is such an occurrence on the Government and laws of a civilized country!"

Thus a strong suspicion exists that a double mistake was committed in this case-first, by the jury, and, secondly, by the Home-office. We ask what moral influence can have been produced by an execution under these circumstances? Is it not calculated to lessen the respect of the people for the law, and their confidence in those who are connected with its administration? Must it not correspondingly depreciate, in the

public estimation, the character of those whose duty it is to put in motion the prerogative of the Crown, to correct any hasty and unsatisfactory decision of a judicial tribunal?

Infanticide-Two Young Women ordered for Execution by Mr. Baron GURNEY.-Aug. 30, 1838.

THE strangulation of women on the scaffoldunder any circumstances-is a practice so barbarous and brutal, that nothing could make a civilized people tolerate it for a moment, but that force of custom which too often takes away the horror of cruel and demoralizing spectacles, by rendering them familiar. The people of England have had their reflection awakened upon this subject. They no longer view with indifference a practice as abhorrent from manhood, as it is disgraceful to civilization. They see in the butchery of women by the sword of the law, nothing but unmitigated barbarism. They cannot respect the laws which sanction such a practice, or feel any reverence for the counsellors of the Crown who wish to perpetuate them. But of all the exhibitions of this sort which can shock the better feelings of mankind, the sacrifices of women who are the victims of male libertinism, encouraged by the bastardy clauses of the Malthusian law, are the most revolting.

Those infamous clauses, which set justice and morality at defiance, are likely to fulfil the predictions to which they formerly gave rise, [see p. 142.] by being copiously sprinkled with human blood. The seducer and betrayer of weak and confiding woman, is covered by the law with an ignominious security; while the unhappy being that has fallen from virtue, comfort, and honour, under the basest arts of the perfidious libertine, and who, in the frenzy of desperation stifles the cries of nature in a mother's heart, is dragged to the felon's cell and the murderer's scaffold, and, cast out from the lap of society, perishes unpitied-no, not unpitied; the sympathies of the people surround the dying victim-their execrations fall upon the law and the legislators. They breathe curses deep and loud upon the

cause of the two-fold homicide. They see in a law which protects the seducer from a share in the penal consequences of his own licentiousness, the instrument of destruction of the mother and the child. They see the blood of both rise up to Heaven, in testimony against this atrocious law !

When we alluded before to the cases of the two women lying under sentence of death, at Chester, we stated that a petition for mercy had been forwarded to the QUEEN,† which was signed by the rector of the parish in which one of the women resided, six other clergymen and ministers, two county magistrates, and a large number of respectable tradespeople. * *

If Lord John RUSSELL persists in advising the QUEEN against extending mercy to this poor young woman and her fellow convict-if he refuses to avert from Chester the exhibition of that disgusting tragedy, or mob pastime, or whatever it is to be called, with which that town is threatened on the 1st of September-we do not think the reflection will hereafter sweeten that hour when the hand that uncrowns Monarchs disrobes the Statesman, and calls the Judge to meet the victim of his inexorable sentence before an unerring tribunal ‡

Duelling.-Sept. 17, 1838.

THEY who lecture others, should be capable of taking a lecture with good grace themselves. In saying this, we only lay down a rule which we are prepared to follow. We gave a lecture the other day on the subject of duelling, and we have been since lectured for so doing. This is all fair enough. Duelling is said to result from difference of opinion, and there will be difference of opinion about duelling. Our contemporary has as much right to his opinion on the subject as we have to ours, provided he can support it by fair reasoning. We think he does not, and we will state why we think so.

[ The Jury had accompanied their verdict by a recommendation to mercy, which the Judge, Baron Gurney, publicly declined to accede to. ED.] [Lord John RUSSELL ultimately recommended both these young women to the royal clemency, and thus their lives were spared. ED.]

We had ventured to disprove the correctness of the position (we will not say, "solemnly" and "pedantically," but certainly with an air of oracular wisdom laid down by our contemporary,) that "duelling is an unfortunate necessity of civilization." A more unfortunate defence of duelling we never heard a more pernicious fallacy could not be circulated as a philosophical truth. And surely if the Morning Post had a right to disseminate the moral poison of such a doctrine through society, the Morning Herald had as clear a right to endeavour to supply an antidote. But it seems we usurp the office of the clergy" in appealing to morality and religion, against the practice of fashionable homicide. We ask, whose office do they usurp, who inculcate in newspapers the necessity of such a practice? We would rather be chargeable with usurping the office of Christian instructors, than of those whose doctrines tend to make Christianity appear a fable, and its morality a lie.

Christianity itself would be a fiction, if it were not untrue that duelling is "a necessity of civilization;" for the most efficient power that ever was employed to civilize mankind is that Gospel, whose moral sentiments our fashionable contemporary would merely allow to occupy "the pulpit," leaving "the world" to the ethics of a code, as opposed to the instruction of the pulpit, as moral darkness is to moral illumination.

If the words "unfortunate necessity of civilization” had hastily slipped from the pen of our contemporary, he would have taken the opportunity of retracting or qualifying them, upon his attention being recalled to the subject. But as he has chosen to repeat those words, and, of course, to reinculcate the mischievous morality which they convey, we must proceed to vindicate the opinion which we advanced, in opposition to that maxim, in a very different spirit from one of cavilling criticism, or disingenuous controversy.

We say, then, that if duelling be "a necessity of civilization," no civilization ever did, can, or will exist without it. There was pagan civilization in the world at one time, and there is Christian civilization now. We deny that it was necessary to pagan civilization, and we deny that it is neces