The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-20 00:00:00

a very few of the lowest cases, she hears with unut-
terable feelings of tenderness the first cries of her

new-born babe. An instinct, common in part to her
with the inferior animals, would prompt her rather to
endanger her own life than to hazard that of her
babe's. Where the natural barrier is thus all but insur-
mountable, it must be some almost irresistible impulse
which carries the unhlppy mother over it—an impulse
far less controllable than that which impels to ordinary
murder. It is also to be borne in mind that feelings
which, unlike revenge or avarice, call rather for our sym-
pathy than our reprobation, really drive the distressed
and almost bewildered mother to the commission of
her dreadful crime. Do we then apologise for in-
fanticide ? Assuredly not. We only suggest that it
does differ from ordinary murder. The female, sensi-
tive enough to find in the shame of her fall a rack on
which she is tortured out of her natural feelings, is
just the one to have had those feelings most strongly.
We could hardly be human not to sympathise with
the unbearable mental distress to which not unfre-
quently a too generous confidence has brought her,
while we should scarcely be human if we could sym-
pathise at all with the motives to ordinary murder.
If a father, or any other man, had murdered the help-
less infant, no punishment could be too severe when
the motives must have been so mean and so vile. It
may be added, too, that in the adult the law has,
after all, more to protect than in the new-born child.
Every juror, we apprehend, intuitively perceives that
the mother who has destroyed life as it was com-
mencing has not done the same thing, nor caused
the same amount of suffering as the murderer of the
adult. The death of the latter is a cruel infliction
generally on a circle of mourning relatives and de-
pendants ; but vve need not dilate on the obvious dif-
ference here.

i d
soning, the sentiment so happily distinguishing
civilise would
from
feudal times, of the sacredness of
human life ; yet it is this very sentiment, which, in
the jury-box actually acquits, if possible, the
mother who takes the life of her babe ! We
apprehend, then, that some modification of the
civilised
law might do something towards arresting the pro-
gress of thi.A.Tainful crime. In an over-peopled
country, whEn early marriages are frequently impos-
sible, and yei the shame of forfeited virtue so great,
the temptation to the unnatural crime of infanticide
may often be great, and severely punished it must
he. But if a punishment could be found which
would be sufficiently severe, and at the same time not
cause juries and judges to waver in the discharge
of their office, it surely were well worth the trial.
With the maudlin tenderness for crime indulged in
by some sentimentalists, we have no sympathy what-
ever. It harmonizes neither with the dictates of
morality nor religion, nor, indeed, with the manly
good sense of Englishmen ; but, on the other hand
punishments at all severer than the safety of society,
or the nature of the offence demand, are proverbially,
known to defeat their own end. We commend the
subject to the consideration, at least, of humane and
intelligent law-reformers.