The Express.
London, England, 1856-03-14 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH 14.

" ANOTTIER poisoning cam!" the world is crying
out. "Another wife-murder!" there are people who
have not scrupled to say, before the inquest on Mrs.
Dova was concluded. Thera is always something
startling in a rapid succession of cases of the same
kind of calamity or crime; and the witnesses of such
• disclosure are apt to forget, in the strength of their
emotions, that the experienoe of all ages should MVO
as, on such occasions, from astonishment and display.
Not only is there always a tendency in the criminal
world, as in other worlds, to modes (to fashions based
en "pawky and imitation), but there is • deeper
canes for the existence of modes of suffering and of
crime. Not only have there been within the memory
of the existing generation caprices of crime
almost as conspicuous as caprices of dress,
bat there have occurred scientific and social causes
of new phenomena which should warn as to act
rightly under the grave circumstances of the present
time. Many of us can remember the murders of the
Maim and WILLIANSOICII, and the prevalent sensa-
tion et the time that no man would ever again feel
safe in his own home. Ws remember the rick-
burning of five-and-twenty years ago, the despair of
the farmers, and the temporary abolition of fire insu-
rance for their order. We remember the sudden
revelation of poisoning practices moo, the neglected
poor in certain agricultural counties, where mothers
had been taught by the operation of the Corn Laws
to believe that the moat loving office they could fulfil
towards their children was to send them early from
the pains of life to be "better off with the Loin."
None of us is likely to forget that one very poor
woman avowed, without any sense of guilt or shams,
that she had thus dismissed to sue and plenty eight
infants in succession by putting arsenic on her
breasts. The railway epidemic is still later in date,and
folly and crime were almost as prevalent as the retri-
bution which succeeded. Theme oases lie on the sur-
face of our country's history and our own °beer's-
tion. There are some deeper facts which should not
be lost sight of while everybody is talking about
strychnine poisonings, and one trial of a supposed
murderer succeeds another. We shall say nothing of
individuals implicated in recent eases— of Mr.
Woo Lea. who has been tried; of Mr. Perm's, who is
shoot to be tried; or of Mr. Dove, who will probably
be committed for trial. Leaving the evidence of the,
respective cases to be dealt with by the proper es-
thority, we would merely suggest some considerations

which may rectify a netorall>W in approaching the
evidence.

It is a fact, which has employed the pens of some
thoughtful physicians and moralists, that changes in
bodily functions and even structure attend on changes
in civilisation, and that every important discovery
in science is followed by new and strange human
phenomena, individual and axial. Very curious de-
taila may be found in medical literature on
the &object of the varying physiological conditions
which have attended the different periods of oar
eivilitation. We have never met with a medical
maw who meld or would may how it was unit tae
women in Queen ELUABITH'S time—the ladies of
bier court, for instance—could live as they did, aid
keep their health and attain old age. Breakfasts of
beefsteak and ale, early dinners of vast solidity; no
modern practice of open air recreation and bodily
exercise (for which the ambling palfrey and the',
eveniog dance were a poor apology); with solid
evening banquets, and the strong ale and manchet
brought to them in bed to compose them for the night:
bow could such a mode of living fail to kill of every
woman early with liver complaint P Where I. the
English woman who could bear it now P The only
rower that we have found attempted is, that the
English people have changed with the time, ipo
GS to have different modes of health and of
disease. The Severs and the gout of former
times are now scarce, and we have instead a group
of liabilities of the nervous system, which were not
only ignored by our imamate, bet in part nemesis-
tent. The alimentary apparatus, with all that it
involved, was then the smog and the weak point ;
mad the nervous system is the strong sad the weak
point now. People weld then digest like ostriches;
but the abase of the power led to "surfeits; fevers
—inflammatory disorders of all kinds. Peens can
sow get a great deal more oat of bran and nerve
than brain and nerve were then trained to yield; bat
the complement of the ease ig, that we witness more
nervous ailment and stranger phenomena of the
nervous system than were ever distinctly observred
before. Science has helped to alter the solidifies's of
our life by a variety of new disclosures. Sir Cuanza
Exu:s great discovery in the matter of berme
structure has brought into light and progelasnos
whole dames of diseases and liabilities ; and the all-
important reforms caused by seines in the study sad
dissection of the brain have time far thrown our
practical methods of dealing with dilemma:ld certain
orders of crime into confusion, mtbse than fitted as
to treat them as wisely as the next mention may
do. At the same time, there has been a net develop-
meet of thesciseee of animal casesistry; sad we are
in the list astonishment at anomie, how the'
carious mechanism of oar bodies is sustained and
kept going. Oar condition is pronely that ia which
abnormal nervous states are meet striking to us, gad
la which the subjects of food and poises are late.'
resting to the greatest somber of none. If a wise
student of history, seeleded from the world, were
told of the scientific and physiological teedidone of
the time, he would probably declare Is to be liable to
sew and unaccountable manifestation through the
nervous system, probably to a nab* of poiseneg
by new methods, and certainly to an 'pidgin!' ore.
delity and suspicion shoat poisoning.
And thee it is with a• Society, medical gad now
medical, is in a state of conflict about inaintatisee

which are foot, bowsaw tbsy are to be Nocomatod kr.
We have had the Unknown Tongue, Pritatioas,
feats of clairvoyance and of table-tuning remark-
able enough to "ogee the iatsrdiot of ths Pori
aid express legislation in Freida aad other States.
In the United &atm, the " Spiritual Circles" now
include millionw—actually "doodad
citizens; sod what proportlow of thew have paused
through the lunatic style's' it is needless to say.
In old times unaccountable nerving pbmosiont wore
is the ordinary warm treated as possession; sad in
ear time tb. POP 6 refers them to —RATAN, and a mul-
titude of people who should know bettor to spirited
&roc, of another sort. Too many mufsesimal mos,
whose studies should have roadie them MOM philoso-
phical, dispose of the matter by diabdisving all this
facts they can, and dabbing the rept eaderthis hoed
of hysteria—a ropterions dismiss, whisk is made to
answer for much more than it mosismily Weds,—

though that is far mom than is satisfactory to a
wall-
trainsd mind.

Together with this kind of development, we have
that of animal chemistry; and from this two sepuate
liabilities arise. On the one band, the employment
of subtle poisons becomes more probable and more
readily suspected; and on the other, analytical
chemists are pretty sure to over-rate their own quell-
floating, and the applicability of their own @client*
and methods. Science, especially in the case of
specialties, goes mad as fast se art, or philanthropy,
or anything else in which human egoism can be in-
vested; and it is highly necessary for as to remember
this now, when more than one life is depending on
the due or undue confidence of scientific cosclusions.
Nothing can be further from mar intention than to
oast any censure or soy doubt on personal grounds
against the analytical chemists who are probably to
decide the fate of PALVIII and Dove, and others
after them; what we mesa is, that all the
conditions of the cases cannot be known to
them any more than to others, as physio-
logical mysteries are involved in all such
extreme oases of nervous affection. From the
time of HIPPOCRATES till the present, tetanus has
been the same mysterious affair that poisoning by
strychnine is now; and from the time that post
mortem examination has become the practice, no
traces of the disease have been indicated as different
from those which attend all deaths under sudden
stress. Under these circumstances, with so very little
known and to very much remaining to be known of
which we can surmise only that it will be won-
derful and is not at all to be anticipated—with the

general tendency, moreover, to magnify our own
objects and to enforce our own convictions—there is
sorely a clear ease for moderation, caution, impar-
tiality at least, and, we should my, a tendency to
give the accused the advantage of any misgiving we
may have about the extent and the certainty of what
we know.

Thus much relates chiefly to the parties who are in
any way concerned in the investigation of the oases
under notice. Bat we have all our own concern in
the matter. There is at present among us an aggra-
vation of the constant liability to a monomania about
crime. Food and poisons occupy a vast space in oar
conversation; and if we let in our imaginations, and
stimulate one another by sympathy, we shall see
poisoning going on on every hand. Such things
have happened, not only in seasons of plague, when
men's wits are out of joint, bat in ordinary times,
when the citizens believe themselves orderly and re-
ligious, and only anxious to do right. Englishmen used
only turn to certain periods in their own history to
see their danger in a time when new phenomena
are accruing faster than usual; but those of them
who have travelled in New England can never loss
the impressions they received in the atmosphere of
sadness and MUMS which even yet hangs over
Eia:em. There the place is pointed out where the
witches were banged in long rows, day after day;
and there is no end to the mournful stories told by
descendants of the sufferers and of the persecutors.
Bat sadder than the spectacle and the tale are the
memorials of recovery from the delusion. They are not
spoiled as a warning by the entire belief of the pen}
tents that they bad been tempted by devils. Science
discloses to our generation how the phenomena of
witchcraft (allowing for the admitted exaggerations
of seal and terror) may be easily accounted for; but
those to whom the matter remained a mystery did
not wait for an explanation to repent. Most touching
are the contender's recorded en tombstones, in church
records, and in family archives—confessions of Mute,
of credulity, of over-confidence in condemning the
aerated ; and piteous are the prayers for forgiveness
for having shed innocent blood, in the presumption
of ignorance. Th....zae.eue exist on the spot a tae
agonised efforts of the penitent to restore and sustain
the bereaved families of the victims; and there are
families which wilt bear to yet remote generations
traces of "the calamity of 1692." It is as well to
rectal such fans an mission and in good time. We
are all proud of the spirit of our law and our courts
which provides, in case of the alternative, for the
escape of the guilty rather than the ondemnation of
the innocent. We trust that the same spirit will
enter into all oar conversation and all our procedure
lin a matter so critical as that of a very new scintilla
process, applied to decide in MIMI surrounded withl
mysteries which science doss not yet praise to solvs.l

A TM remarkable petition will be painted thin
evening to the Hass of COMMIS by Sir Buena
Penny. it is the petition of &manna Ilizarrr
Bsowento, Me= Hovrirr, Mrs. Oeszatz, Mrs.
Comma amine, Mrs. Mums, and others,
ooteplaielog of the Mate of the Law as it efeets
the earnings and property of Married Wows, sad
praying the Hesse to apply a remedy.* The lan-
guage of the petition is eminently temperate and
jedisioue, cud it is naniereuely signed—by many who
have no elsim to be considered literary or artists
sohnieties. It is the deliberate ressoostrases of a
whole sex against the perpetuation of gross isjustioe.
As the Law sow Moods all the earainp of the wife
become the property of the Mahan& He an dispose of
than absolutely ; she is powerless to prerest him from
equadering them in the most Mappable manner.
We need not remind ear nodes of certain revolting
ilketradose of this disereditable state of affairs, of
whisk the public has obtained seguisonee from time
to time from proceedings in Carta of Law. There is
scarcely one asnoog is who ham sot witnessed esea
googly, within the range of his own private observe-
tioo, cams of which the great world hears nothing, bat
which are whops more probative of samitigated
and =deserved searing than those about which a
noise is made. The Sedan of law, according to width
all the goods of man and wife are held to be is sem-
moo, with the power of administration =elu-
sively vested in the former, too often makes
the intelligent and industrious wife at ones
the bountiful maintainer of an idle, or a sot-
fish, or a absolute husband, and a depredeut es
his beauty. Such anomalous sad iniquitous relations
between sexes equal in intellect, equal in all the best
endowments of balmily, ought no looter to be
tolerated. Woman was given to as to be "a help
meet for him," not to be a bostlelave, or the old= of
(*prides@ oppression. A deep seise of equal rights
and reciprocal duties is indispensable to the happi-
sae or utility of the married state. This truth hos
been too long overlooked by men, or if neognised,
roosted to se a sere abating proposition which bad
so isfloence on their essdnet. The wawa have
been driven to escort their owe rights, and we bail
their having do= no, in the present Wiliam, is the
precursor of a more equitable and happier era.

The edreiseloa of Prowls to the Coelirences con-
firms the statement we were enabled to make in eur
Wtdseeday's bone, that the oeuelesion of a pseae
will be announced almost immediately. Pravda as
only have been admitted to figs, not to disease, the
tame of peso,. Her admission shows bow far the
negotiators have advanced towards a final settlement.

There is a talk of Sir R. Lyons being nag am
Minister to Constantinople soon after the pease Is
finally onoluded.

It was stated in well-informed eireles Lot sight
(nye the Herald) that Indianian arlll meet probably bo
ibrolved early ta May.

14ftlINIMINENft