The Express.
London, England, 1865-12-22 00:00:00

EOHN BROGDENI GOLD CHAINS.

'OEN BROGDEN'S GOLD GLAD') CHAINS.

rOHN BROGDZNS G OLD ALBgla CHAM&

'ORN lIROGDZNS GOLD BROOCH CHAINS.

MESSRS, WATHERSTON and SON,
Goldsmiths aad Jewellers.
Hays Ready for Inspection a Great Variety of JEWELLERY,
of the latest Deelgas, suitable tor
CILRISTIIAS EEASENTS sad NEW-YEAR'S GIFTS.
12, Pallasell East. SAY-

LONDON must have s SUPPER and MUSIC
ROOM for Gentlemen. Pesember, we welt for you at
EVANS," after the Covent-Iranian Opera, end the Theatres

Vie erprtoo.

TO COWSPONDINTS.
Advorttototooto Wooded tor Uprise I.oodon Evening
, mud/ bo uOSOB. 10, rosTotto4troot, by Two
or Zit ow lbo dwy ot pattioolios.

YMARILIT.
Tins Emma. VIZ O HAYCHLAND ROUTE. Maas. Black-
stone, C. Mathows. and Compton Mendamea Mathews, Snow-
don, MA and Wright. —USED 17P. Mr. C. Mathews—And MY
HUSBANDS OHOST.—Commanos at 7.

PEIIeCTSBII.
Ten 11Viewi1!O, QV= LODOINGS.—Atter which IT IS
II& TOO Lilt TO MIND. Moore. Vining, 0 Melville.
T. Mewl, D. Mono, h. Cahoon. F. VIDIaok.I. G. Shore, G. Mur-
ry, sod Z. Caihtart Wool LbLooro sad L. Rodgers.

SIGH WALT= AT LONDON-BRIDOZ.
Ms DAT Menlam DA U. —Afternoon. 4b 50s.
To.4tositoM—. Morning, Mt. 11m..... Afternoon, 5a 34.

LONDON. FRIDAY. DECEMBER 22.

Arran two days' trial, STEPHEN FORWARD, alias
SOUTHEY, has been found guilty of the murder of
his wife and child, and sentenced to death. There
was no disputing the evidence of the fact that the
prisoner had most deliberately committed the mur-
ders, for he had been found, a moment after the
discharge of the five shots of the revolver with
which the murder was perpetrated, quietly sitting
on the sofa and removing a false beard and mous-
tache, which he had worn as a disguise on entering
the house, and which he afterwards attempted to
destroy when the police sergeant found them in his
pockets, together with the revolver, still hot, and
several pistol balls and cartridges and copper caps.
The only defence attempted to be set up by the
prisoner, or on his behalf, was that of insanity;
but this was disproved to the satisfaction of
the jury by the prisoner's own conduct and
demeanour before and immediately after the murder,
at the moment of his arrest, and subsequently in
prison. His behaviour in court, if it was madness,
was a madness with a very ugly method in it. It
was calculated to embarrass the trial by absurd
irregularities and interruptions, but was not per-
sistent enough to prevent the trial from pursuing
its course and the jury from arriving at a verdict.
The prisoner first objected on principle to being
indicted in the name of Fonwasn, which he de-
clared he had changed eight years ago for that of
SOUTHEY ; be objected "conscientiously" to being
defended by counsel ; he objected to the whole
jury, and desired to be tried by a special
jury ; he interrupted the principal witnesses once
or twice with cries and ejaculations ; but thanks to
the firmness of the Judge he forgot the part he
should have played, and behaved for the most
part like a man in his senses, and perfectly respon-
sible, as there is no reason to doubt he was and
is. It was not disputed that he was the man
who took the three children overnight to the inn
in Holborn, where they were found dead next
morning, and that on the day of the discovery of
the murdered children he had gone down to
Ramsgate, found out his wife and child, whom he
had not seen for eight years, and murdered them
in the house of their friend. The murdered children
were the sons of a married woman with whom he
had lived for years, and who it appears had gone to
Australia when be could no longer support her.
They had been given up to him by their reputed
father, to be handed over to their mother. What
motive the wretched man could have for murdering
his wife and child, whom he had not seen for eight
years, and who was only anxious to be rid of him
altogether, did not and could not appear. As
Mr. POL►AD, the counsel for the prosecution, re-
marked, it was often impossible to fathom the motive
of a murder. That the prisoner, a man
of loose and ragged condition, with a smattering
of undigested and desultory notions on the ini-
quitous condition of "society," had embodied these
notions in a life of turbid profligacy and selfish vice,
crowned with the murder of three little children of
a shameless woman, and with the murder of his
own deserted wife and child, was not sufficient to
persuade twelve calm and rational Englishmen that
he was a fit subject for theorists and practitioners
in lunacy to take under their protection. They
contented themselves with finding a sensational
scoundrel "guilty," without any extenuating cir-
cumstances ; and for doing an obvious duty in this
simple and straightforward way, we think the
Maidstone jury deserves the thanks of the public.
FORWARD'S practical mode of objecting to a state
of society which was not good enough for him to
live in will find its last and most proper vindi-
cation on the gallows.

MODERN Greece is labouring, not unsuccessfully,
to break the spell and dissolve the charm that
surrounded and secluded from vulgar desecration
names and places once held and tenanted byheroism,
genius, and wisdom. King GEORGE has now reigned
two years, and his confidential adviser, who one
would think must at least have served him in as
disinterested, if not in as Greek a manner as any
statesman of Athens, has returned home a
sadder and a wiser man. The youthful
Sovereign whom in their wisdom the Pro-
tecting Powers recommended to the Hellenes,
and presented with a third of the annual interest
of their loan, finds himself face to face with a
native Assembly and a constant succession of native
administrators, who are too assiduously occupied
in ousting one another to attend to such vulgar and
trivial matters as security of life and property,
payment of debts, road-making, and police. In their
horror of institutions from which the monarchical
principle is absent, the Protecting Powers could
not allow this poor, indebted, impoverished, uncul-
tivated, depopulated little country to dispense with
the dignified apparatus of royalty, with a royal
palace, and a royal court, a royal army and a royal
navy, a royal civil list, a royal Council of State,
and • royal Cabinet, responsible to • National
Assembly. It was not permissible that
this interesting and remarkable people
should revert to the municipal institutions
which they had enjoyed under the barbarous
domination of the Turks, or that they should be
content with a simpler and cheaper form of go►ern-
ment than • centralized monarchy. A federal re-
public on the Swiss pattern would have been too
dangerous an example to establish. Better an
insolvent and anarchical monarchy, the toy and