The Express.
London, England, 1864-11-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, VI:SIMI', NOVEMBER 15.

Ir would be idle to deny that MULLER'S last
words on the scaffold yesterday have removed an
anxious irritation from the public mind. This irri-
tation was not in any considerable degree a mis-
giving as to the justice of the sentence and the
guilt of the convict; it was rather the irritation
which honest men are apt to feel, not at listening
to the repeated praises of a good man, but at
seeing a vulgar murderer transformed into •
martyr by spurious patriotism in search of a cause
and a hero. It may have been also perhaps that
irritation which, in a somewhat gloomy and mono-
tonous society, the mere incessant repetition of one
name and one subject of conversation cannot but
cause at last, even under less favourable condi-
tions than those which an exuberant foreign
nationality and a vast newsmongering industry
that requires constant flushing like a sewer, have
combined to produce in the present instance.
For it is not too much to say that Mrusit has
been the nightmare of all social intercourse in
this unconversaticnal country since he ceased
to be an ingonuons ruffian at large. Assuredly,
the great majority of the British public, and the
reasonable portion of the public in all countries,
were completely satisEsd with the conduct and re-
sult of the trial of l‘li.u.els in a regular court of
justice ; with the verdict of the jury, and the
sentence of the Judge. They had more faith in
the responsihla administration of justice by such
a tribunal than in the supplementary, irre-
sponsible, irregular trial and verdict of
an anonymous court of excited partisans, whose
simple and convenient form of justice consists in
resolving beforehand that the prisoner is innocent,
in admitting no evidence that suggests au opposite
conclusion, none that an oath can strengthen or a
cross-examination confound, and in piling up piece-
meal an exhaustive ,11;5:. The majority of the
public are fully aware of the mercifulness and
the largo iiido:gence of criminal justice in
England. They Snow well enough that where
the evidence for conviction is circumstantial—
,n other words, where no mortal eye has wit-
nessed the crime there must always be
ground for misguided or sincere benevolence to
raise specious doubts upon, and that, armed with
such doubts, some conscientious advocates of the
abolition of capital punishment (forgetting that their
object is to change but not to defeat the law)
are always ready to mistake the public for the
culprit, and the culprit for the victim. They
know that in ii cap o,le of such a crime as him.-
LEE'S are not prone to make confession to • gaol
chaplain or a sherith and are as likely as not to die
with a " lie upon their lips." In Mmait's case
a confession, at least until the rope was round his
neck, was certainly not to be expected. Simple
gratitude to his cons' big country men, if not a feel-
ing of delicacy towards the clergyman who expressed
his earnest li-.pc to meet him "at the right hand of
" Goo," would be 31.111ic lent to account for MuLLea's
constant though can. ions denials of his guilt so long
as a single remote chance of escape from the extreme
penalty remained, and to the very last moment he
may well have counted upon many chances in
his favour. It is uo fault of the German Protection
Society, or of the benevolent enthusiasts who con-
curred in acquitting 3ll:xxsa after his sentence,
that he did not die " with a lie upon his lips." It
seems as if they had almost persuaded the misera-
ble man that nas innocent, until the great dark-
ness was lethally looming upon his soul. But that he
has coLfessed is at least as sensible a relief to those
who felt convinced of his guilt as to those who per•
sisted in declaring that his death would be a sacri-
fice ; an exp;atory sacrifice to a panicstruck public,
to a baffled police, and an unjust tribunal. Let
ns hope it may be a lesson to that distorted na-
tional sentiment which identifies itself with a
convicted felon ; a lesson to amateur judges of
criminal npl col ; a lesson to philanthropists
who, in their abundant tenderness for
the assassin, take no account of his
victim, and ferret that self-preservation is the first
law of sod •••• of the individual. It has been said
that the e• wate fruit of all that we cling to and
cherish as the British constitution is to bring twelve
men into a jury-box. It would be well if in the
sordid and squalid multitude that stood panting
with blood-thirsty curiosity at the gates of New-
gate, there were a few who perceived, under those
ghastly trappings, and that hideous apparatus, some-
thing more sacred and august than a gallows and a
hangman—perceived the awful presence of Autho-
rity, and the majesty of Law, without which the
whole order of society would relapse into barbarism,
and our boasted civilization sink into savagery.
But for the tolerable certainty that crime will be
detected and punished, what would become, this
very day, of all the treasures of the capital and
centre of the world's wealth and industry ? Do
Philanthropists who set their wits to work to defeat
justice ever ask themselves this simple question?