The Express.
London, England, 1849-10-18 00:00:00

the erprcoo.

OUTGOING MAILS.
The mans kr British North America and the United
States will be mad* up to-morrow evening, Oct. 19.
The manatee G:braltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Ceylon, India, and China, via Southampton, will
be made up on the morning of Oct. 20.
Toe mans via Marseilles, to the Mediterrtnean, Egypt,
Ceylon, India, Ilong•Kong, &0., will be made op on the
evening of October 24.
The next mails kr Lieber, Spain, and Gibraltar will be
made up on Oct. 27.
The West India Mails, including Bermuda, II
Nassau. Honduras, New Or:eans, and Mexico, and excluding
those for Mackie*, St. Juan.dieNicaragua, New Granada,
Chili, and Penn, will be made up on Nor. 2.
The mails for Madeira, the Brezi:s, and Buenos Ayres,
will be made up on Nov. 6.

MOH WATER AT LONDON 14131D0R.
T. Doe —Monnan. 3IL R. Afternoon. Ik. Ws.
Tornrnator —Romani. Wa. 41a. Afternoon. 3 ►. Id nu

LONDON, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18.

THE question of capital pun'shment is again
forcibly brought before the public by the cue of
CHARLOTTE HARRIS, convicted during the last forezes
of the Western Circuit, and condemned to death, but,
owing to her pregnancy, respited until such time as
she should be delivered of her child. A petition was
lately brought up from Taunton to the Home Secre-
tary, who, however, granted no favourahle ear to its
prayer, and this unfortunate woman is about to un-
dergo the pangs of childbirth, in order, during the
weakness consequent upon it, to be transferred to the
hands of the executioner.
. .

We have no need to expatiate on the horrors of
such a system, or the hundred thousand deaths that
this woman has been dom. d to die during her so-
journ in the condemned cell, and the revolting duty
of making such a creature in such a state totter to the
scaffold. That inch punishmPuts can continue to be
inflicted we do not believe. The frame and temper
of society will not bear it, even if juries can be found
to condemn, and Home Secretaries to be blind to
the horrors of the spectacle. Neither do we
believe that it is possible in this cue to persevere.
The cue of a woman not long since condemned under
similar circumstances, and say. d by the general outcry

of the public, is well known. Now, can the bar-
barous sacrifice be accomplished in the one case and
desisted from in the other? Dues the Home-office
obey a clamour, not a principle ? Is it not plan that
in such cases punishment is aggravated an hundred
fold ? Either the unfortunate creature is seceitive,
and then her agonise must have been uLepeakable, or
she is, what criminals with us too often are, stupid
and unconscious. If to, whine is the justice, the use,
the morality of her execution ?
Women under such circumstances cannot be
hanged. And yet, it will be said, is pregnancy to be
always a protection ? And hive women but to take
care to add one crime to another, in order to escape
the penalty of the more heinous one ? We must say
that the hanging of women at all appears to
us superlatively disgusting, aid the hanging of
women pregnant, or just recovering from preg-
nancy, impcssible in a civilized and christian country.
Yet if women are to escape and men to remain subject
to the infamous penalty, the sex which enjoys impu-
nity would no doubt always be selected and induced
to perpetrate crime. There is especially the crime of
pnteoning, that for which Cummorrs HARRIS was
condemned. Tho fatal deed can be committed with-
out bloodshed, or without any of those efforts which
require nerve, and which peculiarly shock the female
nature. Women, too, always entrusted with the
preparation of food, have peculiar facilities for such
kind of revenge, of which they are, in consequence,
much more often guilty than men. The use of poison
is the criminal refuge of the weak against the strong,
of the abused woman against the man that ill-treats
her. Such eases, therefore, require attention and
repression. But the only mcde of repression is to
adopt a punishment to which society will lend its
sympathies, and which may be equalised to both the
sexes, and to persons in all circumstances and condi-
tions. This, we think, can only be answered by the
abolition of the punishment of death, and the substi-
tution for it of a system of seclusion, which may be
rendered equally deterring, and in reality, we believe,
more severe.

But, whatever maT be the award of the legislature,
when it can be got to give time to a question which
is or a of humanity and justice, not of party, the duty
of the Home Secretary is to supply the biches of par-
liament, and at least not allow public feeling to be
outraged by sending • human being from the bed of
childbirth to execution. We trust that Sir GEORGE
GREY may be induced to reconsider his deciPion ; and
we should recommend those alive to humanity
throughout the country to remind the Home-office of
that universal sentiment which prevails upon the
horrid subject.

TrtE proceedings of the Dean and Chapter of Roch-
ester against the Rev. ROBERT WIIISTON, Master of the
Cathedral Grammar School in that city, are oertainly as
offensive a piece of ecclesiastical tyranny as the pre-
sent century has seen. For reminding these reverend
personages and pluralints of their sworn obligation,
under their founder's statutes, to maintain twenty
scholars in the Cathedral School and four students at
the Universities, they first dismissed him from his
office of schoolmaster; then revoked their instrument of
dismissal ; and are tow calling on the resolute object of
their persecution to answer before themselves charges
in which they have already pronounced judgment
against him. In this mode of proceeding there is a
stupid confusion of all judicial propriety—an inva-
sion of the order in which ell legal Investigations in
this country take place—a disregard of thecommonest
principles of justice, such as vindictive malice only
ventures on. Happily, however, its very outrageous-
ness ensures Mr. WHISTON against any ultimate
damage from this display of Cepitalar spite ; for it is
impossible to suppose that as a last resort the court
of Queen's Bench will not correct the adjudication of
so partial a tribunal as the Chapter of Rochester Ca-
thedral, which in its corporate capacity unites in this
ease the inconsistent characters of prosecutor, judge,
and jury. The Dean and the Canons of lent:nester
may be able to tease and torment Mr. WINSTON a
little, but the only persona who will ultimately suffer
from these proceedings will, they may depend upon it,
be themselves. _ _ _

That the statutes of Rochester Cathedral directed the
maintenance of 20 scholarsat the Grammar School out
of the capitular property, and of four students at the
University, does not admit of a doubt. Liters acripta
menet. The only question is, what may be meant by
maintenance ? Ihe chapter contends that mainte-
nance in the nineteenth century signifies such a sum
of money as would support *cholera and students in
the sixteenth century. Mr. WinsToN more rationally 1
argues that maintenance in every century means a
sufficiency of meat, drink,clothing, and nurture in that
state of life to which it has pleased God to call the per-
son to be maintained. And for this difference of opinion
(at last strongly expressed, no doubt, by Mr. WatsroN,
bat only after moderate expressions and temperate
argument had failed to enlighten these reverend men
of Rochester) the Dean and Chapter are now at-
tempting to eject a most competent schoolmaster
from an office, in which the whole city of Rochester,
by resolutions passed in public meeting, seek, for their
children's sake, to retain him.

The statutes of Rochester Cathedral (A.D. 1542)
assign to the dean 1001. a year, and to each canon
201. a year ; but, by the progress of wealth and the
growth of property, the dean is now in receipt of
1,4261. a year, and, each of the canons of 6801. a year.
The same statutes assign 61. a year till the degree of
8.A., and 61. 13s. 4d. a year atter the degree of
M.A., to four students at the universities, and ordain
that they are to be maintained out of the fends of
the cathedral church ; they also assign 21. 13.. 4d. to
each of twenty scholars, with the like direction.
But the Dean and Chapter, for whom time has
done so much in the way of augmented reve-
nues, won't allow time to do anything for
their students or scholars. They pin them down to
their original allowances, and increase their own in-
comes, by the rigid constructionof the statutes which
they read en liberally when they affect themselves.
Nay more; they endeavour to oppress the gen-
tleman who takes a more liberal view of their
obligations than they do. Ins'ead of applying to
others the principles which they apply to themselves,
they harass, persecute, and try to crush a
brother clergyman, in wham they have no
fault to find, except that he has used strong lan-
guage against themselves. And yet it a; pears from
the proceedings which took place in Chancery, eat
they are conscious that they are not doing what is
right: nor what they have been told by their own