Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-09-16 00:00:00

temper justice with mercy, by careful inquires into each
particular case. A distinction shoul,l be made in the
cases of those who*.,have fallen into crime Zi.y sudden temp-
tation to those steeped in guilt.

CRIME Ix Nsw YORK.—" Make way for Monsieur !"
said a soldier at the execution of Damien at Paris, "he
an Englishman and an amateur r, The amateur was a
person no less witty and wise than George Selwyn, who
had gone over specially for the great occassion. He had a
fondness for hanged people and for housebreakers, and
everybody will remember Horace Walpole's message :
:‘ My compliments to Mr. Selwyn, and I have a house-
breaker for him !" But the great wit of the London:clubs
lived a century too early. We take the liberty of
presuming that his penchant was not as much for
the sufferine, as for the sin of the criminal, and
that he thought a great deal more of c ;use than
of the effect. How delightful, then, would have
been Mr. George Selwyn'te position in New York,
as the Farmer's Almanac says, " about—this—time."
Could a prognosticat chronicle be considered possible, we
might imagine him gloating in the dog days over vaticina-
tions like these :—" Expect—two —bloody—murders—
about—this —time ! Look—out—far —several—aggra -
vated—rapes ! Bogus—babies —may —now —be—antici-
pated !" Depend upon it, M. Gregory should have his
stomach full. For it is crime! crime! crime! every-
where!" Burglary is chronic; the sheeting has become
stale; mobs are mere nothings; murders are sources of
merriment ; larcenies are levities, and poisonings are
productive of puns ; while any new nastiness
will sell the newspapers " When will New York
be finished ?" is a common question. Alas, that it
should be perfect in horrors before it is perfect in houses !
—The truth is that we hive travelled the whole circle;
boxed the compass, if we may say so, of shame and of
sin. There, is not, we suppose, a single law upon the
statute book which has not been violated within the last
year.—Murder, arson, rape, grand larceny, highway rob-
bery, seduction, adultery, abduction, forgery, defalcation,
obtaining goods under false preencee—these are common
crimes. And now we are having a taste of uncommon ones.
Mrs. Cunningham's suppositious child gives a mudded
beauty to our criminal calendar. Her new offence is a rare
one, made rare by its nature; for the most difficult assassina-
tion is easy in comparison with the successful introduction
of a false heir. Bat we have soared to the climax of cri-
minalty at last—the attempt to cheat a man dead and
gone into his grave —the grand rascality which reaches
beyond the tomb, and seeks to make a miserable moulder-
ing corpse the recnsitated and revived accomplice of injus-
tice. A. shameless woman, casting scorn upon the sacred
responsibility of her sex, deterred by none of these
gentle emotions which have been considered inherent
in the female bosom, simulates, for the sake of a few
paltry dollars, the throes of maternity, and clasps to her
bosom as her own the offspring of another. And more
and worse. She finds not one, not two, not three, but
many, who are ready to aid her in the wretched cheat,
There is no swindle which any one of either
sex can devise or prop )se in this city in which he
or she may not find assistants. AU the Burdell affairs
considered inclusively show that there are little coteries of
crime, societies of sin, bad men and bad women ready at
any time to be enlisted in any fradulent or felonious enter-
prise. To this same favour, then, we have come at last.
Much money has not brought us morality ; prosperity has
left us barren of principle; abundant cash has been found
compatible with little conscience. And now where is this
epidemic of wrong going to stop? Who of us is safe ?
All of us are cast into the whirlpool of acquisition. We
shun it with philosophical timidity; we linger, promp'ed
by a thousand generous motives, upon its edge ; we ask all
the gods and all the destinies to save us from its turbid and
noisome waters—but down we ge at last. And he who
ventures to point out the danger—to hint that all is not as
it should be in this writhing and wretched mob —to beg,
not a reconstruction of society, but some little thought of
its follies, seductions, fallacies, and lacerations, is generally
told for his pains that he is an infidel, and that public
wrongs admit but of two remedies —the state prison and the
gallows ! Very good. Let us go on a little longer. Let us
see how far war, murder, avarice, slavery, intemperance, and
lust will carry us ! Up from the great depths of our degra-
dation we may come purged as by fire. But alas ! for the
present, ere that blessed time has come, as come it will!
Which of 113, we have asked, is safe ! We pass by, with the
exquisite superciliousness of the Pharisee, the hand-cuffed
and hang-dogged detected, marching to his cell and his
bread and water, but even then there may be a busy devil
at our ear whispering of that first step which it is the
sweetest and yet the hardest to take. Nobody knows
what particular devil may assail him. Money, position,
fame, a pretty face, envy, conempt, revenge —no matter
what its name may be called ! --ei her of these may assail
him. There is something in the air which may belie the
proverb and make any man suddenly vile. Fortunate
for the world will it be if many take warning from the
events continually occurring, and case themselves as in
mail against the evil assailants of the hour.—New York
Tribune.