The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-22 00:00:00

The Germans and the Case of Muller,

The .firermann (German paper published in London) con-
tains an article from the pen of Dr Jock, in which the cpi •
nion is expressed that the statement made by Dr Cappel
respecting the last words of Muller should be accepted with
confidence by every impartial person, because the rev. gen.-
tleman paid visits to the prisoner with, in the first instance,
a full conviction of his innocence, Dr Cappel, the writer re-
marks, never attempted to exercise any undue pressure on
the prisoner, and therefore his statement has all the value
of spontaneity, The Reform, a Berlin newspaper, breaks out
into the following wild tirade on the subject of the mur-
derer's execution :

"An execution we may call murder was the day before
yestehlay committed on the person of the unlucky journey-
man tailor in London. The word we are in the habit of
using for execution' in German has, etymologically, affi
nit .y with that other term, common in both languages,
'right.' We really don't know in what relation English
'right' stands in that particular piece of workmanship with
which the English capital, emerging from the pious tran-
quillity of its Sabbath, began the week; but the German
recht' declines having anything whatever to do with so low
and ignoble an act. A murder it is and will ever rennin,
no matter whether Muller was guilty or not, Man could not
pronounce him to have been guilty. If in the anguish of
death—in the last muttered words of a convulsed frame—he
really confessed his guilt—that this was no more than an
accident, a fortuitous coincidence of the truth with a blind
vindictive verdict. But it was worse than murder—it was
murder on the ground of national prejudice and hatred. The
Schleswig-llolstein war and the impotent rage of the Eng-
lish aristocratic mob, tied the noose by which was hung the
man Muller. The drop was made to fall by the noble zeal of
the German Legal Protection Society, which by the journal-
istic hounds was denounced as an attempt against the ancient
dignity of English judicial proceeding. And that venerable
assembly which aroused to attend on hanging days in front
of Newgate prison, that most respectable conglomeration
of thieves and robbers, would have stormed the scaffold
and destroyed the victim had the Que n dared entertain the
prayers of her crowned cousins of Germany, who a few
days previously had been dragged in effigy through the mire
of the capital to invest the celebration of Guy Fawkes day
with fresh charms. We earnestly hope that the judgment
of the people of Germany will not be led astray by a con-
fession alleged to have fallen from the quivering lips of a
dying man in his last moments. More explicit confessions
have been made in similar situations which were subse-
quently proved to have been wholly untrue. Who will deny
tha the time between judgment and punishment, the days
between the Central Criminal Court, and that Monday
morning in front of Newgate, have been a moral torture--
the vestibule of insanity—to the journeyman tailor? But,
even were it truth in itself what he is sail to have con-
fessed,' are the proceedings, is the conduct, of the police and
the judges—is the verdict of the jury, and the indifference
of the Secretary of State—more justifiable on that account ?
All the private intelligence German papers receive from
London has been in favour of Muller. The German Legal
Protection Society, and, co-operating with it, the German
exiles, hold the same opinion. English lawyers, men of
renown and recognised respectability, have stated it openly
in the press cf their country that the sentence against Mul-
ler has been no well-founded one. Had we to reproach the
jury only with an error of judgment, this indeed would
be a most lamentable mistake, but a mistake only of some
private and insignificant individuals. But the way in which
the inquiry was carried on, the manner in which the pro-
ceedings wore conducted before the jury, was brimful of
prejudice and partiality. The most important facts, when
calculated to exonerate Muller, were lett out of account ;
tracks in his favour were not followed up; and for this in-
famous practice an excuse was found in some technical rules
connected with the justice of England."

SUPPOSED MURDER IN A RAILWAY TRAIN ON
THE NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY.-LIVERPOOL,
Monday Night.—lt is alleged that a man has been found
murdered, robbed, and thrown out of a train near Rugby.
The police met the train at Liverpool, and apprehended a
soldier and three sailors named Murphy, Memel. and Rey-
nolds on suspieion. The sailors belonged to the Commo-
dore, Captain Perry, paid off to-day in London, The tele-
grams from Rugby and Stafford say the man was not found.
It is alleged that the man who is said to have been mur-
dered was one of the ship's crew, that he was drunk, and
that he was showing his money, when the door flew
open and he fell out.

PEOPLE OF WEIGHT.—What is th© average
weight of a man ? At what age (hes ho attain his
greatest weight? How much heavier are men than women ?
What would bo the weight of fat people—and what of very
fat people ? M. Quetelet, of Brussels, some years ago,
deemed such questkns quite within the scope of his exten-
sive series of researches on man (Sur l'Homme, et le De-
veloppement de ses Facultes). He got hold of everybody
he could, everywhere, and weighed them all, He weighed
the babies, he weighed the boys and girls, he weighed the
youths and maidens, he weighed rt. en and women, he
weighed collegians, soldiers, factory people, pensioners—
and as ho had no particular theory to disturb his facts, he
honestly set down such results as ho met with. All the
infants in the Foundling Hospital at Brussels for a con-
siderable period were weighed—and the results were com-
pared with others obtained at similar establishments in
Paris and Moscow. The average returns show that a
citizen of the world, on the first driy of his appearance in
public, weighs about six pounds and a half—a boy-baby
a little more, a girl-baby a little less. Some very modest
babies hardly turn the scale with two pounds and a half,
while other pretentious youngsters boast of ten or eleven
pounds. When Shylock asked for his " pound of flesh,"
he asked for an equivalent to a little less than one-sixth of
a baby. How the tiny ones grow during childhood, we
need not trace hero : but it may be interesting to know that
girls and boys at 12 years of age are nearly equal in weight ;
utter which limit, males are heavier than females of the
same ages. 111, Quetelet grouped his thousands of people
according to ages, and found that the young men of twenty
averaged 1431 b each, white the young women of twenty
gave an average of 1201 b. His men reached their heaviest
bulk at about thirty-five, when their average weight was
1521 b; but the women slowly fattened on until flay, when
their avenge was 1291 b. Men and women together, the
weight at full growth averaged almost exactly ten stones,
or 1401b,—,Dickens's the Feat' 2?mtd,"