The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimEs.-=lt is difficult to conceive an act of more
cruel kindness than the attempt of the German Legal
Protection Society to obtain the reprieve of Muller.
It was for the very purpose of discouraging such
efforts that Baron Martin, with true humanity,
solemnly declared his own concurrence and that of
the Chief Baron with the verdict of the jury, and
earnestly warned the unhappy man to expect no
mercy on this side the grave. So long as death is
the doom of murder, anything which tends to un.

settle the condemned criminal's mind in the interval

between sentence and execution is in itself deplorable.
It may be justified by a firm conviction that he is
the innocent victim of the law—of that we speak
not at present—but that it must needs distract his
attention from those thoughts which ought to en.

gross it, in prospect of eternity, will hardly be dis-
puted. Such is the inconsistency of human nature
that men conscious of guilt, and on the very eve of
confession, will catch at mere straws of hope, and
frame to themselves the flimsiest sophisms by way
of self exculpation. The infamous Palmer, hardened
and desperate as he was, protested to the last that
he did not poison Cook with strychnine, and seemed
to hug the idea that he was unjustly convicted,
beciuse, forsooth, there was some reason to believe
that he had also poisoned him with antimony. With

such a state of conscience, repentance, in any sense
moral or religious, is wholly incompatible. No man
can throw himself unreservedly on the Divine com-
passion who is anxiously seeking loopholes to escape.
from the righteous penalty of human justice. No-
thing, therefore, can warrant a petition to the Home
Secretary, otherwise so mischievous, except a well-
founded confidence in its merits and in its probable
success. Can any such confidence be entertained by
any rational being in the case of Muller ? Surely not,
unless, indeed, new facts of grave importance have
been brought to light since the trial. Even when
an ex post facto discovery of this kind is alleged, we
are bound to regard it with great suspicion. If
adequate time has been allowed for the preparation
of a prisoner's defence, and all the resources of
advocacy have been exhausted in his behalf, it is
a tremendous responsibiiity to interfere with the
verdict, even on new evidence. Were such inter■
ferences more frequent, it would soon become the
practice to keep back testimony that might break
down on cross-examination, and virtually to reserve

a supplementary defence for the tribunal of the
Home Secretary. Still, it is just possible, though
highly improbable, that the key to a mystery may
be found after the judicial inquiry is closed, and in
these rare instances we must rejoice sentence is not
absolutely irrevocable. Before, however,we consider
whether this, or anything approaching to this, can
be truly alleged in Muller's favour, it is right that
we should once nine bring the cumulative proofs of

his guilt within the compass of a single view. Per
baps we shall best appreciate them by clearly con
ceiving what it is necessary to believe in order to
establish the supposition of his innocence, We
must believe, then, in the first place, if we trust Mr
Walker,the hatmaker, that the real murderer wore
one of the only two hats manufactured by him with
a lining of a certain pattern, Muller being the un-
doubted owner of the other. We must believe next
that, by the most unlucky accident in the world,
Muller had also purchased a hat by the same maker
as the one employed by Mr Briggs, a hat exactly,
corresponding in shape bud size to that of the de-
ceased, and of which Muller has never attempted to
explain the acquisition. We must believe that some
malignant chance led to this hat being cut down in
just such a way as would account for the only dif-
ference between it and Mr Briggs', in just such a
way as a tailor would have done the job, but not as
a hatter or as an awkward hand would have done
it, and in just such a way as would have obliterated
Mr Briggs' name. We must believe that by another
series of coincidences the watch and chain of Mr
Briggs came innocently into Muller's possession,
the latter so soon after the murder that he was found
disposing of it on the Monday morning following the
fatal Saturday night. All this we must believe, at
the least—for we have omitted minor details—re-
membering, too, that the discovery of a hat like
Mr Briggs' and of a watch known to be Mr Briggs'
on Muller's person was not the source of suspicion
against him, but, on the contrary, was the predicted
scone! of previous disclosures with respect to the
other hat and the chain. But a severer strain on
our credulity remains to be applied. We must be-
lieve, with all these damning circumstances staring
him in the face and marking him as the murderer,
Muller was unable to produce a single piece of posi-
tive evidence worthy to be weighed in the opposite
scale, to furnish any clue to the labyrinth of pre-
sumptions against him, or to clear up his own move-
ments about the time of the murder, except by the
suicidal suggestion of a transparently hollow alibi.
With this dead weight of probability against them
the indefatigable friends of Muller undertake to
make out a case for respiring his execution. What
are, or rather what can be, their grounds for repre-
senting this degree of moral certainty as " incon-
, elusive ?" We do not, of course, pretend to be in
the secrets of the German Legal Protection Society,
but, so far as we are aware, they are of the follow-
ing kind. Eaving obtained strong testimonies from
various quarters to Muller's character, they lay
great stress on these to show that " he was not the
kind of man to commit so atrocious a deed. In-
formation is also said to have been procured tend-
ing to verify his description of the man from whom,
according to his own story, he bought the watch
at the London Decks. In the meantime, a person
residing at Edmonton has come forward to state
that, some hours after the murder was committed,
a cab containing four persons drove past his house
and threw a parcel against his window so as to
break it. The parcel, on being opened, proved to
contain a pair of trousers, and it is said that these
trousers, on examination, were found stained with
blood,, In connection with this, a chemist living
near the Victoria Park states that a young man,
apparently drunk, and with a wound on the back of
the head, came to his shop, with one or two com-
panions, about half-past 10 or 11 On the same night.
We have thought it our duty to mention these
particulars, valeant quantum, that our readers may
form their own judgment upon them. It is equally
our duty to express our own strong sense of their
entire worthlessness for the purpose of shaking the
verdict against Muller. Murders are seldom com-
mitted by the people whom one might expect to
commit them. There is no class of professional
homicides as there is of professional thieves ; and
the blackest names in the "Newgate Calender'' are
those of criminals who never were known to the
police before they terrified the whole community by
the one act which raised them to that had eminence.
As for the Victoria Park and Edmonton stories, if
there is any truth in them, they only tend to sup-
port a faint conjecture that more persons than one
may have been concerned in the murder. The evia
dance of Muller's guilt remains where it was, and it
will not surprise us if the researches of the German
Legal Protection Society should contribute, if pose
Bible, to strengthen it. It is certain that the alibi,
confirming as it did, with a very slight variation,
the theory of the prosecution, promoted the ends of
justice rather than the acquittal of the prisoner.
Let these well-meaning but ill-advised gentlemen
rest content with that result. Their professed aim
was to aid in proving Muller "either innocent or
guilty." They have helped materially to prove him
guilty, and by further meddling, if they have no
better excuse than what we have already men-
tioned, they will only do him the worst service that
can be done to a felloweChristian during the last
hours of his existence.
POST.—The announcement that the Warrior has
within the present week been taken into Portsmouth
harbour previous to being paid off and dismantled
will probably excite no little astonishment. It is
true this step was resolved on by the Admiralty
some time since ; but as comparatively few of the
public are, as the Americans say, " posted'' in naval
matters, the intimation that the Warrior has
ceased to be an effective vessel of war at the dis-
posal of the Government must occasion conside-
rable surprise. The ways of the Admiralty are so
thoroughly inscrutable that we will not attempt to
divine the reasons that have prompted it to order a
ship to be dismantled which was generally supposed
to be one of the most efficient in the service. The
reasons are doubtless weighty, and we will assume
that the course now taken is that most conducive to
the interests of the public service. But the fact that
a vessel built at an enormous cost, almost new, and
which has never up to the present done any service
which could not have been just as well performed
by the oldest tub in her Majesty's dockyards, is on
the point of being dismantled, is one which cannot
fail to excite comment. It is necessary, we suppose,
that certain alterations should be made either in
respect to the build of the vessel, or her fittings, or
her rigging, or perhaps all three, and for this puns
pose sho must be taken into dock and dismantled.
But why those alterations should be necessary so
soon after she was placed in commission, and why
the public money should be, to all appearances, use-
lessly expended in the construction of ships which
are no sooner afloat than they must be redocked, and
in many instances rebuilt, are questions which will
occur to the minds of those who think that the
money spent on the construction of the Warrior
ought to have secured for the public a serviceable
ship. To these questions the answers which must
be given are, it must be confessed, not as satisfactory
as could be wished. The science of shipbuilding for
purpo-es of war must at all times be in a transi-
tionary state. Vessels are constructed to resist those
means of attack with which their builders are fami-
liar; but when those means are improved, the con-
struction of ships must of necessity undergo modifi-
cation. It might be suggested that the same train
of reasoning would equally apply to the science of
shipbuilding for commercial purposev ; tlzt although