The Express.
London, England, 1861-08-22 00:00:00

TO OUR RIADERS.

SPORTLNO INTELLIOVICE.

A We edition ot the Erprese is published every
evenieg during the racing eesson, containing the
multi; d the day's races.

Tea readers of Anise intelligence were horri-
lied a fortnight ago by • case of deliberate bru-
tality and ci utile so extreme, and at the same time
so precocious, that but for the actual proof it
might fairly have been deemed incredible. Two
small childien, each about eight years old were
placed in the dock, at Cheater, charged with the
wilful murder of another child, not half their'
own age. The crime was not only fully proved
against them, but it was shown to have been com-
mitted with the utmost cooluess and under cir-
cumstances of revolting and aggravated cruelty.
It evidently belonged to that worst species of bar-
barity which loves to inflict and witness pain, and
delights in torture for its own sake. There was
no impulse of passion or revenge, no motive of
gain or interest in the case. The two boys who
committed the crime found the murdered child—
who was little more than an infant, being only two
years and six months old—playing in the street,
induced him to join them, dragged him nearly •
mile down a bye-road, and then into a field,
stripped him naked, beat him most unmercifully
with a stick taken out of the fence, deliberately
forced him again and again into a pool of water at
the bottom of the field, and continued beating him
there till the poor thing was dead. They evidently
knew what they were about ; their silence after
the event, and their sullen recriminations when
taxed with the crime, betraying the clearest con-
sciousness of guilt. It would indeed be irrational
to suppose them capable of realising to the full the
nature and magnitude of the crime, but they knew
perfectly it was a crime, and deliberately ventured
un it in order to gratify their brutal delight in
suffering. It is scarcely accurate, however, to
call such • passion brutal, since no animal that we
know of ever indulges it. The appalling feature of
this precocious crime was the perverted humanity
it revealed. There was a method and forethought
shunt it, • careful adaptation of means to ends,
which revealed a human intelligence employed to
gratify perverted and depraved human sensibilities.
And the terrible question it suggests is how
children so young could possibly have had their
sensibilities so utterly depraved, and have become
so frightfully hardened in one of the worst ex-
tremes of human depravity. " They had been,"
it was stated on the trial, " utterly neglected, and
" accustomed to brutal sports and habits." In
other words, from their first entrance into life they
had been hopelessly abandoned to the uncontrolled
dominion of the worst influences, the worst habits,
and the worst examples. All their lowest instincts
and most depraved tendencies were unnatnrallyde-
veloped, and while yet infanta in years they had
reached the frightful distinction of being adults in
crime.

How shall we account, however, for the unre-
strained indulgence of this revolting passion in
those who have not only enjoyed early advantages
and advanced to riper years, but who occupy po-
sitions of influenosand high responsibility 1 Almost
every Amin brings out instances of this kind, and
the peculiar fact about these cruelties is that the
wont of them, if not the majerity,an committed on
the high seas. A case of this sort was tried at the
Liverpool assizes on Tuesday. WILLIAM WILSON,
master of the British ship Express, was indicted
for the wilful murder of Wtiums Hmeozarioa,
steward of the vesseL The details of the case are
of the most painful and revolting character, show-
ing on the part of the master, a ooerse of deliberate,
persistent, and savage cruelty, towards the unfor-
tunate steward, which in the end proved fatal.
There can be little doubt after reading the evi-
dence that the repeated and violent assaults of the
prisoner on the deceased, when weakened by ill '
health, were indirectly the cause of his death. It
appears trim the statement of the counsel, sup-
ported by the evidence of the sailors who worked
the ship, that the demand was in good health and
sting* when the Express stile I from Liverpool
for the Coast of Africa last September. After
they bed been at sea three or four weeks the
master's violence and cruelty towards the deceased
began, aril from that time to his death, which hap-
pened towards the end of January, he seems to
have had a strange delight in torturing the wretched
victim of his cruelty. The means and forms of
violence empl eyed by the master against the un-
happy man were various, such as beating him with
his fists, wounding him with missiles, knives, hand-
spikes, and the like, flogging him with a rope's
end, ki:king him, knocking him down on various
occasions, and on one occasion jumping on his
chest after he had been knocked down. The
original causes or pretexts for this violence
seems to have been of the very slightest
kind—mere whim and caprice, indeed. The
steward appari.ntly was not quite smart enough to
suit the master's taste, or his manner did not
please lion. But whatever the first ground of
difference, the master, having cruelly wronged the
unhappy man at the outset, soon conceived a vio-
lent hatred of him, and pursued him with unre-
lenting cruelty to the death. On one occasion,
soon after he first began to ill-use him, when he
had flung a couple of knives at him and cut open
his cheek, the mate remonstrated against this
treatment, advising the captain to send him home,
to which he replied, with an oath, "I will send him to
" his long home ; be shall never see England again."
" Till the death of the deceased, on the 26th of
" January, he was from this time repeatedly
" beaten and kicked by the captain, and rope's-
" ended with a rope an inch in diameter, part of
" the spanker-boom. Jost before they entered
" the Brass Ricer, one day the deceased was seen
" corning out of the cabin, sod the prisoner fol-
" lowed him, seized him, threw him down, kicked
" him, called for • rope, and gave him two or
" three dozen blows with it, telling him he should