The Express.
London, England, 1856-05-29 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAT 29.

IT is the way of the world. PALMEI IS convicted
ca the Tuesday—the Derby run for on the Wednes-
tiay—on this Thursday morning how many thousands
Sr. cursing the delusion that has led them to stake
their all, aye, and more than their all, on the premi-
um r•nnoes of that licensed hell when the pals of
trainer., the friends of handicappers, sod the confi-
dante of stables, play with loaded dice against the
reckless infatuation of fools and the easy pllitif lily
of dupes. The character of the turf has vastly
changed of late years. It has felt to the full the
levelling tendencies of the time. Whatever it might
coos have been, it has long ceased to be an
aristocratic inetitutioe. Manchester is the great
rival of TATTERSALL'S. On Gay given turf
event • thousandfold more mosey changes
hands among the betting dubs of the populous
North, than smog those more exclusive associations
of the metropolis that once arrogated to themselves
the undisputed supremacy of the sporting world. To
the speculative tendencies of the uneasy classes the
turf offers the same arena that the money market
dale to the more decorous, but scarcely mere moral
gamblers of the Stock Exchange. In both, money is
the sordid object—chance, the means of the reckless
many—fraud, of the crafty Jew.
If anything weld reed a sermon to turf speculators
(which nothing of coons ma), it would be the fate
of Wausit PALMED. This man possessed every
requisite which would, s priori, be deemed necessary
to sumacs in the career to which he devoted
himself. His salt-command was perfect. His rea-
diness of resource marvellous. His presence of mind
sever for a moment deserted him. In pews= of fax
reaching combined= he hoe rarely been surpassed.
Is the still more singular gift of making absolute
tools of those whom he wished to use, the annals of
great.= or of villas, might be searched in vain to
lad his peer. In this raped JONATHAN WILD THE
GREAT was nothing to him. The hones of FlELD-
tyro's fiction are distanced by the facts of Pilau's his-
tory. Cummins, the Postmaster, was his thrall, COOK
his Gully, old Dr. BAMPOID his dupe I he was over
WAID, the Coroner, by his presents—nay, even in the
supreme crisis of his fat•, he has contrived apparently
to Fedora a belief in certain quarters that the
righteous sestina) just passed upon him is rather
the result of popular prejedies than of even-handed
Jude,.
Aad yet this Booms of the betting-ring—this
calm sad cold-blooded schemer who never allowed
any osuoideratioas of wrong, or morality, or fear, to
stand kw a nomad between his desire and its object
—this calculator who had reduced life to a game of
hasard—money his only object and crime his familiar

isfort means—was singularly a unite as a speculator
ma the turf. The insurance on his wife's life—say
rather the blood-money received for his wife's mar-
der—paid of with difficulty the ruing debts of 1861.
In 1856, those debt' had again reached the enormous
aggregate of from 19,0001. to 20,0001. And yet the
dice with which this man played were loaded—the
hand that threw them never trembled with coin-
pusition. He owned hones—he was in with traleers
—he was deeply versed in all the scents et the
tuft and yet this was the reenit—rein, forgery,
murder, and a felon's doom. We utterly disclaim
the puerile exaggeration which would recreant even
the professional turf man as neossearily a eandidate
for ruin or an adept is crime. We know that
sothing of the sort is the ewe. But this we do know,
that a life whose business is speculation, whether
sprat on the doing coarse, or at the gaming table, or
in the Stock Exchange, is& life of all others most on-
dooarable to the healthful development of the moral
faeultiee. It is a career in which ocomiosal sauce.'
proves nothing beyond the eoppbook trails, that
there is no role without its deeption--• ceder in
which for one prise there ere a thousand blotto—a
eider in which the most brilliant donee is leis en-
viable than swede in any other field el eater-
prise--• career in which failure has recently led to
such crimes am those by which &num has lately
raised a provisos, or that more execrable guilt which,
is Nutmeg case, has appalled a world.
There it, we lied, souse Need to suppose that the
jut verdict by which this unmitigated villain
has been pronounced guilty is already giving rise
to eriticions which appear to as to proceed on a
totally mistaken view of the nature and quality of
the evidence required in criminal eases. No man,
say thed objector., ought to be found guilty of mur-
der, diem the cause of death be discovered. The
reseconablenessof this objection depends of conneopon
the truth or falsehood of the proposition, that in every
ease of death the cause of it is diecoverable. Id
PALMER'S CIAO the proposition wee the very one
upon which the jury had to make up their Wade
The presseation averred that stryohnia might be
given in such quantities es to destroy human life
without the possibility of discovering say traoes of
It in the body. The defied denied this. There
wee evidence both ways; and the jury had to decide
on which side the weight of evident), inclined. They
decided, and rightly decided, that the pre
pondenting weight of evidence was with the
theory advanced by the prosecution. And, fortunate
indeed was it that they did so. Had their decision
beea the other way, not oely would a great criminal,
of whom guilt every one is morally convinced,
have escaped his jest doom in deference to as
overstrained punctilio, but the very framework
of society would have been shaken, and the fearful
crime of scientific poisoning been let loose as an un-
punished scourge in the dwelling-houses of the lend.
Ones establish the proposition that you will sever
convict of murder by poisoning except where you
detect its traces in the body of the victim, and you
establish an impunity for all poisoning which is con-
ducted so scientifically ere to insult that the deadly
ingredient shall be absorbed in the system, and
thereby elude the operation of all chemical testis: If
ever a verdict was justified by the evidence, it was
that by which PALMII2 was pronoseoed panty r and
we feel confident that any attempt to inter-
pose between this man and his righteous doom will
be, as it ought to be, utterly undocessful.
There has been enough, and more than enough, of
misdirected sentimentalism already wasted on this
man's case. We have no desire to comment harshly on
any advocate plied in a position so arduous MI that
of the ousel who bad to coded the defence of
PALMER. But it would be wrong to withhold the
expedition dour opinion that in asserting his solemn
deviation of PALMEWA MUM:KAMM MP &Titian Saxe
clearly overstepped the recognised duties of an
advocate. Lord CAMPBELL, indeed, made a hied of
apology for the learned Berjeast by telling the jury
that such asseverations on the part of coded Rout

nothing mere than the formal plea of net guilty
tendered ma matter of course by every primate who,
is the language of the law, "pats himself on GOD
end his tosatry.• We emus* sue* this apology.
The advocate is bound on behalf of his (limn
to urge every argument which ingenuity can supply,
and to exert to the uttermost every faculty be may
poems.; but he is sot bound to degrade his moral
nature either by professing a belief he does not feel.
or by imposing upon the jury the expression of that
belief for more than it is really worth. Another
gross offeuee—not so much against the code of pro-
fessional morality as against the plain precepts of
good taste—was the gratuitous introduction to the
notice of the jury of that letter of Psalms's to his
wife before their 'marriage, which proved nothing
except that even each a man could, when it suited
him, successfully simulate the language of love, and
which irresistibly led the jury to reflect that the
woman he so addressed was one whom, on the
Coroner's inquest, he had been declared guilty of
murdering, and whose reputation, after death, he had
remorselessly lied away in the witness-box in order
to shift from himself the guilt of those forgeries
which it is now on all hands admitted were his own
act and deed. But enough of this wretched man and
his misdeeds; if the record of his eareer induces any
neophyte of the turf to pause en his road to rule—
I
even his crimes will not have been utterly in vain.'
For any other purpose except that of example it
would be better if a career so odious could at once
and for ever be buried in oblivion. But it may not
be. There are certain criminals whose enormous
guilt is destined to an immortality of execration.
With this hateful company the remorseless and sor-
did murderer, WILLIAM PALMMIL is henceforth en-
rolled. With THorrxu., and Bow, and Gsaste.
ACILI, and MANKitto, his branded name will long be
gibbeted before the gime of the world—a proverb of
infamy, and a landmark of crime.

The correspondent who yesterday favoured the
Timis, as well all oureelves, with a very elaborate as
count of Lord John Russell's intentions, would ap.
pear to know more of them than Lord John himself;
for his lordship does not, we are assured, contemplate
a longer absence from Ragland than that which the
parliamentary recess will afford.