The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-04 00:00:00

A laurel wreath, decorated with the Hungarian
colours, was placed on his coffin, and never was this
token more deserved than in the case of this soldier,
simple and true, such as becomes the defender of a.
good cause.

The Road Murder.
(Fronz the Liverpool Mercury.)

s -
Of all the undetected crimes which within living memory
have perplexed and defied professional sagacity, leaving the
public mind haunted by an oppressive sense of the impo-
tence of human justice, the tragedy enacted at Road-hill
House on the night of the 29th of June, 1860, is perhaps
the most fearful, both in the accumulated horrors of its
details and in the hopeless impossibility of tracking out its
guilty author. That a sleeping child should have been
taken from its bed in the dead of night, in the very presence
of its nurse, and foully murdered, and not a trace be left of
the hand that did the cruel and bloody deed, was ono of
the most terrible recorded examples of the failure of society
and its institutions to shield helpless innocence and to
punish crimp. There wore suspicions, surmises, conjec-
tures, and faint glimmerings of evidence, or what looked
so, which alternately pointed to three inmates of the house,
by some ono of whom it was impossible to doubt that the
murder had been done ; but there was nothing on which
justice could take hold. So there was no choice but to
renounce in despair all thought of piercing the
dreadful mystery, and to leave it to wait for the
revelations of the day when the secrets of all hearts
will be made known. And now, nearly five years after
human justice has reluctantly accepted discomfiture'
and defeat, a young girl places herself at the bar of a poliss3-
court, and proclaims to all mankind that it was a sister's
hand that slew the sleeping infant.
It is not surprising that the confession of Constance Kent
is received with some amount of hesitation and distrust.
We do not, for our own part, share in this scepticism, but
it would be too much to assert that it is extravagantly
reasonable. It may be safely assumed that thdetoprtreisße
and
lawyerliko wording of the document presented
conw-.
Bow-
street magistrate, is not the spontane.ous and o
of guilt • and if extraneous interference
overpowering sense
how far
position of a girl in her 21st year, weighed down. under art
is once admitted, there is no saying how it may have
gone. We are casting no discredit on the sworn testimony
of Mr. Wagner, the Brighton clergyman, when we say that
a confession which comes through tho medium of a semi-
Romanist father confessor is viewed with excusable jealousy
by the English public. Nevertheless, there the confession
is, and, though it is as yet unaccompanied by a particle of
corroborative or explanatory evidence, there is no definite
having prompted a false self-accusation is
ground for doubting its literal truth. The suggestion of
adbisesoasluetedly gratuitous ; nor is there anything in the re-
whi
corded demeanour of the prisoner herself, on the two oc-
casions
slightest
on
countenance which she hasthe ahlayppearot
ehdesiisn
ofcourt,ad etliorigoiuvse the
to
hal-
lucination. It is still more to the purpose to remember that
justice had at the time its misgivings that Constance Kent
was tho murderess. Such fragments or hints of evidence as
there were pointed to her rather than to either of the other
two persons who alone, besides herself, could be regarded
as lying within the range of possible suspicion. There was
the fact of the missing nightdress, with the thalf proved
suggestion that it had been purposely made away with.
There were vague but significant indications of a rooted
dislike to the infant half-brother, though these were very
properly dismissed as utterly inadequate evidence of a
murderous design. Moreover, there was the character of
the girl herself—wild, wilful, eccentric, and passionate. As
a mere child she was unlike other children, having some
years before run away iu disguise from a home which she
apparently hated.
We are told that to this hour the local police had never
relinquished tho belief that Constance Kent, and Constance
Kent alone, was the slayer of her infant brother. It is im-
possible to forget these things when Constance Kent her-
self declares that the deed was hors. For ourselves, we
cannot disbelieve a confession which, after all, only con-
and fits in with antecedent
firms previous suspicions,
appearances and probabilities. We feel bound to accept as
authentic the horrible disclosure that a gently nurtured
gu
• of 15 or 16 years of age brutally murdered a little
brother as lie slept in his cradle.