The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-16 00:00:00

then nowhere discoverable. Then, again, there is
the otherwise surely very remarkable eircumstal Ice
of a hat being found in the blood-bespattered 'rail-
way carriage compartment, which turned out to be—
not the dead man's, but another man's hat—and
that man nowhere any more traceable as yet than
1 the exchanger of the gold chain already mentiorAtd !
There—in the scene of all this fearful bl')odAhed,
there in that railway carriage compartment, toge-
ther with the dead man's stick and leatlern bag
(the latter with the mark of the bloody hand upon
its fastening) was—not the deceased's hat', but
—another man's—a stranger'o! Not a genti eman's
hat—not a hat of the better sort—but a common
cheap London hat—belonging to some -unknown
person. Everything here, we repeat, paints to the

f,;.ec of Mr. BRIGGS'S death baying been one of great

brutality and violence, caused by the hand of a
murderer. One's instant impression is that the

strange, battered, bloodstained, common hat is the

murderer's ! One's instant impression is also that

the blocdy finger-marks on the fastening of the
dead man's leather bag were the bloody finger-marks

of the murderer. That murderer seeking—while
yet red handed—in the bag, the booty he had
hoped to win by reason of this deed of assassina-
tion. The forcible rending away from the dead
man's possession of his gold watch and his gold
chain—all except the hook or fastening of the latter,
where it was too strongly entangled with his
clothing to be extricated in a hurry—this likewise
seems to us, quite as clearly as the rest of it, to have
been the work cf a murderer, and of none else than
a murderer, or a murderer's accomplice. It may pos-
sibly be deemed by some a mere waste of worth, in-
sisting upon all this, under such very frightful and
extraordinary circumstances• Yet, so singularly
ingenious an hypothesis has been thrown out this
morning by an anonymous correspondent of our
morning contemporary the Herald, to the effect
that the death of Mr. BRIGGS was, after all, the
result of no murder whatever, that we have felt
constrained to recall the above mentioned facts
to mind, before giving the argument put forth in
this same ingenious hypothesis in the manner fol-
lowing. The deceased gentleman—suggests this cor-
respondent of our contemporary—" Mr,Briggs, had
been dining out, and possibly from congestion he
may have had an attack of hemeetemisis, or vomiting
of blood ; from giddiness or other apoplectic feeling
about the head he may have taken up the first hat
he found at his last place of call, and hurried to the
train ; there he is seized with vomiting, and to his
horror he discovers it is blood ; he turns over the
cushions to ascertain the fact, and on doing so, he
tries the window, but finds it barred. He then, with
his bloody hand, tries the handle of the door to
get it open, and while pushing and turning the
handle, the door flies open, and out he is precipi-
tated on his head, the watchguard or any loop
catching any projection, and the watch and guard
either carried along the line on the footboard, or
thrown with him, where it may yet be found. I
might enter into more minute details to account for
minor circumstances, " observes the correspondent,"
but fearing to tresspass on your columns, I only
wish to add that an assault oa a banker's clerk,
with the hope of finding money, would scarcely
be undertaken at ten o'clock on a Saturday night,
or any night returning from a bank." Now, of
course, as the prepounde: of this (we repeat)
very ingenious hypothesis insists above, all this
may have occurred precisely according to
his conjectures. Mr. BRIGGS may have taken the
stranger's hat instead of his own by mistake—and
so forth. But—if he fumbles with his blood-
soaked hand at the window and at the door to
g. t each open—how comes he to be fumbling pre-
viously with the lock of his own empty leather
bag ? What possibly could he have been doing
that for ? Again, the gold watch may have
been torn out of his pocket, during the
accidental fall hero hinted at, and have been throw❑
somewhere on to the line, where it may yet be dis-
covered lying ! Only—days and nights have since
passed by—and it has not been so discovered nor
even a fragment of it! And—what is more—the
missing gold chain, the gold chain missed simul-
taneously, from the dead body, together with the
gold chronometer, is known to have been exchanged
the day afterwards, on the sly, by an unknown
man, who can nowhere since then be discovered.
No—the strange, common, cheap hat, found blood-
stained and battered in that ghastly railway car•
riage compartment—the disappearance of the gold
chronometer—the mysterious exchange made by
some unknown and undiecoverable person of the
lost gold chain—the bloody hand.mark on the
dead man's travelling-bag —to say nothing
about the murderous wounds discovered upon the
skull of the unfortunate deceased—all point clearly
and distinctly, to our thinking, to his death as the
result of a most brutal, sudden, ruthless, inhuman
assassination. The railway official whom he had
cheerily bidden " Good Night" a minute or two
before his awful and violent death, can testify that,
even as recently as up to that moment, there was
no evidence of the confusion supposed by
the correspondent to have been so heavily by
that time upon Mr. BRIGGS' faculties that
he had blundered himself out of the possession of
his own hat and instead of that carrying away upon
his head that of another person's! One other con-
sideration not yet referred to by ns about the cirri
cumetance attendant upon Mr. BRIGGS'S appalling
death we would here direct especial attention to,
as, to our thinking, in its way, perfectly conclusive,
that the unhappy gentlemen did noc come by
his death in the manner suggested by this
correspondent, but that he did die the death
of the victim of a cruel and inhuman murder. This
simple, and, as we conceive, quite conclusive con-
sideration, being the fact that the door of that
hideously blood saturated compartment of the
railway carriage—in which the dead man's
stick and travelling bag (the both blood-
' stained) was found, together with the
common cheap hat of some other person un-
known—that the door of that compartment, from
which the dead man's body had been precipitated,
was found—closed-to afterwards ! And not swings
ing wildly open—as must have been the case had
the deceased fallen out, as suggested, merely by
accident!

There is an old adage which tells tts that there
are none so deaf as those that will not hear ; and
certainly it may be followed by the aphorism that
none are so dull as those that will not under-
stand. It is certainly a very strange thing that no
amount of argument or opposition, or even an ad-
verse vote, can succeed in convincing her MAJESTY'S
Ministers that it is the wish and intention of the
House of Corom.ins to retain the National Gallery
on its present site. In this matter at least the pre-
sent House fairly enough represents the feelings of
the people, although its political views have in
many instances proved in opposition to the public.
It has given a decided opinion on the matter, and
has been supported in its opposition to the favourite
scheme of Government by the general feeling of all
classes. The retention of the National Gallery on
its present site is readily
most
sensible and suitable method of settling the long
discussion. The spot is strieg
llocenntirsaalbilen as
ee ino
of the
spreading suburbs; it is easily accessible OA foot or
by vehicle, while the great focus of railways at