Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-09-14 00:00:00

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MONDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 1857.

THE DAY'S NEWS.

Captain Rogers was executed on Saturday for
the murder of one of his seamen, Andrew Rose
The legal tragedy was attended by upwards of
thiity thousand people. Their conduct was said
to be decorou3, and, although it was expected that
manifestations of disapprobation would ensue, a
feeling of pity for the fate of the unfortunate man
pervaded the breast of the majority of the crowd.
Although just, the punishment was deemed severe.

No news from India. The telegraph despatch
in anticipation of the Overland Mail has not yet
reached us, but in all probability, it will have been
received before we go to press. That this news'
promises to be most interesting is felt by all.
Many a father—and, more nearly, many a mother—
looks forward to this intelligence with the most
intense interest. But even the most worldly and
cold-heatted politicians look forward to this mail
from India with an anxiety that they secretly
confess to themselves. We are waiting anxiously—
readers and writers alike. But whilst we wait,
our minds are full of the subject. What will
it be ? Not over good, we fear, for there is not yet
time, nor are there men from England to crush
completely the base and treacherous mutiny. But
the men are on the way—are arriving from this
day—day by day and every day—to help and
succour our brave lountrymen and countrywomen,
wh) are nobly defending themselves until the
moment when the suceourers shall reach them
from home, which they know and feel to be on
their way as well as we do, who have sent them
promptly to their aid. The Observer, of yesterday,
says:—" To defeat and punish the miscreants is
our lice, °Eject—and it is pleasant to reflect that
the first instalments of troops whom we have sent
out to inflict this most exemplary punishment to
be found in history, are beginning to arrive. From
henceforth they will arrive in rapid succession ,until
the myrials of barbarians shall be overpowered by
the might and majesty of the power of Great Bri-
tain. We must first put down this barbarous and
brutal foray. We have no doubt that we shall be able
to do this of actually and completely. Our next
business will be to consolidate our dearly-bought
power upon a more solid, a more enduring, and a
more politic basis than ever it was before." Bu►
the ministerial print does not eay how this con•
solidation is to be brought about ; this, however,
may be left for after consideration. But the sure
and only way to obtain and. hold a secure footing
in India, is by sweeping away with one fell swoop
that incubus of commerce—the Honourable East
India Company—and the sooner their eharter is
annulled, the better will it be both for England
and the East.

In another column will be found the report of a
speech of Mr. Henley, M P , on the stive of affairs
in India. The honourable gentleman is very em-
phatic in hi 3 denunciation of the mutineers.
Tho member for Dungannon has informed his
constituents that his services are needed in India,
and he does not, he says, hesitate to lend his aid
to " put down the mutiny, to re•establish British
authority, and to avenge the deed of cruelty and
murder. Major Knox does not intimate that he.
retires from the Dungannon representation. On
the contrary, he says, if it " be the will of a higher
Power that he should return, he hopes still to be
allowed to watch-over the interests of that ancient
and loyal borough." It- will be remembered that
Major Knox went off in the same prompt and
hurried way when Lis regiment was ordered to the
Orimea.

Earl Dalhousie has given the sum of £5OO to the
land for the relief of the sufferers in India. He
is somewhat too prudent to give his pension of
£5,000 per annum for such a cause—although
several influential journals have said to the con-
trary. To-day a public meeting is to be held in
Liverpool for the purpose of organising subscrip-
tions towards this fund. We hope, for the honour
of the good old town, that the call upon their
purses will be met with that liberty which has
heretofore characterised the inhabi,ants.
The Messengers of the London Court of Bank-
ruptcy have taken possession of the property of
Mr. Thomas Dean, solicitor, who recently
absconded. His name does not appear in Friday's
Gazette, owing to the usual formal delay, but it will
doubtless be comprised in the list of bankrupts
to-morrow. Mr. Dean seems to hay, systematica!ly
misappropriated funds entrusted to him fur
investment, to something like £30,000. When
a mm who has borne a respectab7e charac-
ter during a period cf five and twenty years
of professional practice is discovered to have thus
betrayed the trust reposed in him, the intimacy of
the relations subsisting between the client and his
confidential legal adviser renders the blow the
store severe.

The first examination of Mr. John Townsend,
auctioneer, and M,P. for Greenwich, at the London
Court of Bankruptcy, tcok place on Saturday.
His liabilities are about £4.000. A number of
debts were proved ; but a claim by the Kentish
Mercury of £2O, for an advertisement of 24.5 lines,
being an a liress to his constituents by Mr. Town-
send, was disallowed.
An atrocious murder appears to have been
committed in that charming spat, the Nightingale
Valley, near Bristol, one of the last places which
one would be disposed to associate with so hor-
rible a deed. On Friday evening the mangled re-
mains of a lady were discovered by a gamekeeper ;
and from the appearance of the body, there can be
be no doubt that she perished by other than her
own bands. •
It is now confidently anticipated that the Belfast

riots are at an end. The Mayor of that town has
issued a proclamation, calling unou the inhabitants
not to assemble in large numbers, and intimating
that if such proclamation is not obeyed, those
assembled shall be dealt with according to the
law. The following is the latest bullitin of tha
state Of the town. It is dated Belfast, Saturday :
" Last night the town was comparatively quiet.
Some random shots were fired from `the Pound'
district, and the compliment occasionally returned
by the inhabitants of Sandy-row, but nothing of a
setious"nature occurred, as none of the parties were
permitted to approach the place in which the
others rei.if.e, owing to the arrangements made by
officers of the constabulary, who divided the large
force under their command into parties, and placed
them throughout that locality. The constabulary
force in town at present numbers upwards of 200
men, fifty having arrived by the four o'clock train
yesterday evening, from the Depot, Plicenix-park,
Dublin.

The continental news is not of much importance
thisemorning. The journals of Paris are full of
discussions on Indian affairs. Those who do not
exult in the state of affairs are at least lavish of
good advice. While the Univers rejoices in the
prospect that England will be compelled to give
Malta to France, other politicians are more modest.
They expound the proposal that France should
make use of the Indian events, in order to round
off hE r settlements in India. France should cede
to England her possessions on the Hooghly, the
Godavery, and the coast of Malabar, and receive
instead a territory near Pondichery.
We have Constantinople advices to the.sth inst.
The Porte has granted to an English company a
railway line from Satnsoun to the old copper
mines of Tokat. The Sultan is said to have
accepted the terms of a lean proposed by Mr.
Ricardo, of London, and Mr. Erlanger, of Ffank-
fort. several dignatories of the Porte propose to
put a son in-law or a brother of the Sultan at the
head of Moldavia and Wallachia. If such an
arrangement were made the Porte would consent
to the union of the Principalities.
The news which we published some days ago of
the hostility of Austria towards the rekrmatory
policy of France in the Pa pal States, is confirmed.
The warning of the Vienna Court that reforms at
this mament would encourage the revolutionary
party, may be a mere pretext, but Austria undei-
stands very well to what extent the introduction
of reforms in Rome would not only increase the
moral influence of Rance, but also lead to the
strengthen:fly, of her military position in the city of
the Seven Hills.

The sittings of th(3 Evangelical Alliance at
Berlin have commenced.

We have received a week's later news from the
United States, the steamer Arabia having arrived
here yesterday morning. The intelligence is not
of muelrimportauee. Mr. Bevereley Tucker, of Vir-
ginia, had been appointed as Consul for the United
States at Liverpool. A severe storm had visited
the coast in the vioinity of New York, and several
vessels had been wrecked, among them the Clara
Brookman, from Liverpool. Yatratan was in a com-
plete state of insurrection. News of a late date
from California is unimportant.
The Black Ball clipper ship i\lontmorencey,
from Melbourne, wan off Holyhead yesterday
afternoon. She sailed from Melbourne on the 16th
of June, and brings 50,196 cza. of gold.

ANOTHER victim has been strangled upon
the scaffold. CALCRAFT has sent another fellow
mortal into the world of spirits. The law has
wreaked its vengeance upon another murderer,
and the blood of ANDREW ROSE has been atoned
for by the execution of Captain ROGERS. No
similar event of the last ten or twenty years has
called forth such an amount of sensation. The
execution of GLEESON WILSON, or HEYwoon, the
Rochdale assassin, did not call forth a tithe of
the excitement; and yet these men suffered for
murders of the most diabolical character. Still,
when compared with the crime for which
ROGERS perished on ;;.1
lturday, their doocla
merciful. We have ever advocated the abolition
of capital punishments. Our feelings upon the.
subject are strong, and our opinions decided ;
and yet, for the first time in our lives, we felt
that such was the nature of Captain ROGERS'
crime, that it formed an exception to any general
rule, and that the stern decrees of the law must
be fulfilled.

As long as the law pronounces that the mur-
derer shall perish by the hands of the hangman,
nothing could be urged why the life of RoGEns
should be spared. He not only aided and
assisted in hurrying his victim out of the world,
hut to the crime of murder he added that of
cruel and hard-hearted torture, thereby levelling
his fellow-creature below the very brutes of the
field. The screams and shouts of pain which
daily came from the throat of his maddened
victim only suggested fresh torments and severer
tortures. Physical force, canine violence, imp:i-
sonment in a cask headed up, and without
means of ventilation, and hunger and thirst were
among the means takcn by the captain and his
mates to end the days of the unfortunate man
Treatment such as he received would not be
tolerated in the most savage nation. The fiendish
practices which were carried out on board the
Martha Jane would disgrace the cannibals of
New Zealand. England, then, could not blink
at such a horrid offence ; and hence it was that
although the public generally commisserated the
fate of the wretched culprit, his case did not
present one single redeeming feature to
justify a commutation of the sentence,
The royal prerogative of mercy was denied to
him, not merely to avenge the blood of Rose,
but to teach the mercantile marine of the
country that such cold-blooded brutalities cannot
be tolerated. The safety of the life of the hardy
mariner must be secured and preserved, cost
what it may. Had Captain R3GERS been
transported, the public at large would have been
greatly dissatisfied. The shouts of applause
which greeted the learned Judge who tried the
case as he left the court after passing sentence,
clearly showed that the verdict was a righteous
one, and that the vox pop ili demanded blood for
blood.

But well merited as the death of Captain
ROCiERS may have been, we are not without hope
that the scene of Saturday will do more than
aay thing that has occurred for many years to
lead to the abolition of capital punishment.
Any one who will peruse the report of what
took place in the front of the scaffold, and
ponder over the expressions of a vast portion
of the congregated thousands who flocked to the
execution, must come to the conclusion that as
a meant for repressing the crime of murder,

hanging is ineffectual. This terrible punish-
ment has been more frequent during the last
year or two, and yet murder is as rife as ever.
We can hardly publish a single number of the
NORTHERN TIMES without it containing some
horrid deeds of bloody brutality, or the stealthy
actions of the poisoning murderer. The crimes
of PALMER and DOVE, and the ignominious end
to which they came, did not stop the adminis-
tration of arsenic for felonious purposes, for it
is only two weeks ago since CALCRAFT was
called to Lancaster, to hang PEDDAR, for
poisoning his wife at Chorley: Neither has the
doom of JACKSON and BLAGG, at Chester, and
several others of recent date, stemmed the torrent
of blood which has been spilled in various parts
of the country. It was only a day or two ago
that we were called upon to record a diabolical
tragedy in one of the London prisons. As far,
then, as the repression of the crime of murder is
concerned, public executions have little or
effect. But not only are they inefficient for the end
proposed : they are also positive incentives to
crime.

Our criminal annals clearly sh3w that some of
the most serious crimes agaiwt person and pro-
perty have been planned and carried out under
the scaffold itself. No doubt the police sheet to
be laid before Mr. MANSFIELD this morning will
contain a record of several of the swell mob who
have been practising their nefarious and dishon-
est calling in front of the gibbet. It will show
that the terrors of the law, and the apparatus of
death which it sanctions and calls into play, pro-
duce no effect upon the hardened and depraved.
For these reasons alone do we call for the extinc-
tion of such exhibitions, and that some other
punishment than that of death shall be awarded
to the murderer. The fate of the two mates will
be more terrible to them than had been that of
their unfortunate captain. It is a horrifying idea
to any man to think that he rnu=t drag out his
life in chains—a slave—and shut out from the
- world, and all belonging to it. To such persons
instant death would be preferable.
Now that the horrid deeds of the murder of
ROSE have become a matter of history, and that
the culprits have been dealt with according to
law, let us hope that it toil teach a salutary and
lasting lesson to captains and mates to beware
how they act in future. We know that they
require ample powers to put down insubordina-
tion. At the same time that can be effected
without any of the tortures and acts of brutality
perpetrated on board of the Martha Jane. It is
full time that the atrocities of brutal captains and
their hard-hearted officers should be put down.
Many a promising youth has fallen a victim to
their blood-thirsty designs, and many brave and
courageous sailors have been goaded to deeds of
desperation by the unfeeling treatment which
they have experienced. Let us have no more of
it. Let all in command on board vessels at sea
thh-)1 of tho tinth,tely end of Captain ROGERS,
and the fate of his mates, and sure we are they
will not tolerate such crimes as disgraced the
Martha Jane.

THE discussion on Mr. WDONALD'S memorial
on Wednesday last showed the character of the
thick and thin Pike factionists in its true light.
It appears that Dr. HofisoN, a Pikeist by•the-
bye much to his credit, undertook to Move a
resolution that the prayer of the Memorial he
complied with, and that the matter be referred
to a committee, to be named. Unfortunately
the worthy Dr. was sent for to attend a gentle-
man then in the agonies of death, and was thus
prevented carrying his benevolent intentions
into effect, and the task then devolved on Mr.
JEFFERY, who, in a most temperate speech,
urged the Council to consider, dispassionately,
Mr. M DONALD'S many claims on the Corpora-
tion, fbr services rendered and injuries sustained
in their employment. He showed that Mr.
M.DoNALD, while water engineer, had rendered
important service to the town, by the intro-
duction of his plan for extinguishing fires, and
that it would only be an act of bare justice, on.
the part of the Council, to refer his Memorial to
a select committee of Pikeists and anti-Pikeists,
which he was prepared to name. . Mr. BANNER
seconded the motion, and passed some well-
deserved compliments on Mr. Nl'DoNat,o's
conduct. On the other side followed Mr. Alder-
man
TURNER, and Messrs. TOBIN and TINNE.
Mr. TURNER merely remarked that he thought.
the Council had acted kindly to Mr. M'DONALD j
that a committee had once investigated some
charges brought against him, but what
their decision was he had forgotten. Messrs.
TINNE and TOBIN admitted the efficiency
and zeal displayed by Mr. M`DONALD, not only
in the police, but in the water works ; the latter
expressing his surprise that there should have
been such a remarkable change—precisely what
Mr. M'DONALD wishes to explain. Mr. TINNE,
while conceding to Mr. APDONALD the merit of
having been instrumental in introducing the 'high
pressure system into Liverpool, yet he con-
tended that in Nottingham the same system had
been in operation for some time previettsly, and
he added that the Council had under their con-
sideration the adoption of this very system at
the time Mr. M`DoNALD was nraking his experi-
ments. We leave Mr. M'DoNALD to reply to
these statements. The tone of the three last
speakers, though adverse in some degree to Mr.
NITONALD, was yet not characterised by any-
thing like bitte:rness or bad feeling. At last
the great gun. of the Pike, the Chairman of the
Water Committee, rose, and while disclaiming
I 411 anirriosity to Mr. M'DoNALD, and declaring