The Express.
London, England, 1864-01-07 00:00:00

BRITANNIA.

TIM ETExTNG. thr \,:w rant nmirne HICKORY. HICKORY,
Ist al:. Sirs s. Lane an.l IrM • rate Canton' mints—The Mande
of Peru. -THEE:REA 1' JidgT E KFEC and Bertrand.
THE GORILLA HUN t.

111011 WAT"R AT LONDON BRIM'.
nes DAT Morning. ob. Om Aflernoen. Ob.
To-igolloli limning, 4h. 44m... Atternoini, lb. him

LONDON, TBURSDAY, JANUARY 7.

THE law of England is proverbially full of
anomalies and inconsistencies, but it would be
difficult to find any case in which these defects
have shown themselves more conspicuously than
in the case of I:Foil:GE VICTOR ToWNLEY. This
miserable youth bad unquestionably committed an
act of the most revolting atrocity. Apparently
with the utmost deliberation, and without the
faintest disguise, he murdered an innocent girl
because she had transferred her affections, or at
all events her hand, to another. It is obvious
that, unless every man is not only to avenge his
own wrongs, but to determine the tit penalty which
belongs to them, such a man as GEor.GE Vicroß
ToWNLEY ought to die. The only possible ground
upon which his life could be spared would be
that he was insane at the time he com-
mitted the act, or had become insane since
its commission. No law is so barbarous as to deny
that a man must be sane in order to be respon-
sible—that lie must be sane when put upon his
trial—and that lie must be sane at the time he is
about to suffer death upon the scaffold. It may
appear to some that this is carrying things too far;
that as soon as a person has been convicted he is
practically in the hands of the executioner, and
that thenceforth ail hope of safety ought to be cut
off. In such an opinion we cannot concur, and
our dissent has already been expressed upon this
subject. But most certainly the fact of insanity
ought to be established beyond all possibility of
doubt, and if the decision of one tribunal
upon the .iuestion of sanity is to be overruled,
it ought to be by some other tribunal, of equal if
not of higher authority.
Now consider the case of GEORGE VICTOR
TOWNLEY. It is scarcely pretended that he was
mad at the time he committed the murder of the
unfortunate girl to whom he had been engaged.
Even Dr. FORBEs WiNALoW, according to his own
Published letter, did not venture to form any
opinion of the state of his mind at that period.
And the jury, with the concurrence of the Judge,
had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that
if TowNLEv had been tried on the fatal evening he
must have been considered perfectly sane, and
must therefore have been convicted. Nor is this
all. The Judge, the jury, and the prisoner's
counsel must have gone even further.
They must have thought that TOWNLEY was tole-
rably sane on the day of his trial. If such
was not their opinion their course was clear. It
is a maxim of English law that a prisoner must be
able to understand what is going on, and must
therefore have intelligence enough to put in a plea
of guilty or not guilty. If he be unable to do so
there is an Act of Parliament--39 and 40
C Eo. 111., c. 94—which provides that "if any
" person indicted appears insane," the question of
sanity may lie tried by a jury, and the insane person
may be kept in custody during the royal pleasure.
Now, ToWN tEI was allowed by his counsel to plead
to the indictment, and neither counsel, jury, nor
Judge suggested a doubt as to his competence
to understand the charge wade against him. On
the contrary, the very point was submitted to the
jury, and they practically overruled it. For Dr.
FoRIIES WINSLoW and the Chaplain of the prison
both seemed to be of opinion that at the time of
the trial he wns insane, and their opinion was
overruled both by the jury and the presiding
Judge. It is absurd to suppose that both Mr.
Baron MARTIN and the prisoner's counsel were
ignorant of the law on so ordinary a point,
or that they would have hesitated to urge the
prisoner's insanity as an objection to proceed-
ing with the trial at all. The truth probably
is that the prisoner's counsel had no confidence
in any such plea. They believed that their
chance of success lay in attempting to prove not
that he was insane at the time of the trial, but at
the time when he committed the offence. Perhaps
they relied upon the chance that some authority
would intervene to stop the execution of the sen-
tence even after it was pronounced, on the ground
that by that time at least TOWNLEY had gone mad.
And their anticipations have proved correct.
Under the provisions of an Act of Parliament two
justices of the peace, aided by two local physicians,
have certified that TOWNLEY is insane, and
accordingly, the Home SECRETARY, in obedience,
it is said, to the law, has respited the prisoner.
Tow N LEY will, therefore, be confined in an asylum
until he recovers his reason. Can any state of
things be more unsatisfactory Y It may be that
man who, in the opinion of his own counsel, of Mr.
Baron MARTIN, and of twelve of his fellow-citizens,
was perfectly sane on the day of his trial, has