The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-22 00:00:00

OF THE DUNCAN DUNBAR,

the question of the right of the Assembly to levy
taxes without its assent to the Judicial Committee
of the Privy Council, but the Assembly has refused
the invitation, " has declined to submit its rights
and powers to a mere court of law ;" which sounds
very like claiming to be the expositor of its own
powers, and determining to overrule any body which
shall venture to resist its action. The Assembly of
Victoria, in its omnipotence, presumes, probably on
the ground of being elected by universal suffrage,
to be placed above powers by which the English
House of Commons is content to be guided, and,
had the case of " Stockdale and Hansard" taken
place in Australia, would no doubt have committed
the Judges of the Queen's Bench to prison for ven-
turing to decide anything about its privileges. In
the meantime the matter is further complicated by
legal proceedings. The amount of duties collected
without sanction of law is about £130,000. At the
same time the Government has received about
£109,000, which it retains in its hands, being the
excess of certain taxes still legally due over the
amount to which they have been reduced by the
resolutions of the Assembly. Thus the colony is
taxed doubly on two distinct tariffs—the one which
is legally enforced,' and the one which illegally pur-
ports to repeal it. It is, probably, unique in the
history of the world that the same community should
be taxed by two tariffs at the same time. We,
in England, beggars that we are, grumble most
grievously at the imposition of a single scale of
Customs'. dues, but our wealthy colonists cannot,
it should seem, be relieved of their superfluous cash
without a duplicate scale of this very unpleasant
nature. We had thought that, whatever else may
admit of improvement, the most depraved in-
genuity of man could invent nothing more onerous
than we have already experienced in the way of
taxation. But we confess our error, and give all
the credit which is due to Australia for the invention
of two rival tariffs at work at the same moment—
an upper and a lower millstone, between which the
taxpayer must be ground very fine indeed. The
effect is that, if the Assembly is defeated, the Go-
vernment has to return £130,000 of duty unlawfully
received, and £109,000 if the Council is aefeated,
—the person who is sure to lose in either case being
the consumer, who has already paid the double duty.
Nor is this all. The Customs have, since October,
given up collecting duties under le existing Act
of Parliament, and legal proceedings have been
commenced against the officer for collecting less
than the amount imposed by law. The penalty to
be recovered in the action is double the amount of
the sum collected. It would seem as if the Assembly
must either yield in the conflict, or give further
effect to its lawless career by shutting the Courts
of Justice ; for a body claiming to be above all law,
and a body sworn to declare the law without respect
of persons, cannot long co-exist in the same com-
munity. i'hings could never have arrived at this
pass, however, had it not been for the assistance
to the Assembly given by the Governor, Sir Charles
Darling. This gentleman seems to have thought it
was his duty to prevent matters coming to a dead-
lock, at whatever price, and so, probably with the
very best intentions, he has entered into what looks
very like a conspiracy to levy revenue, by the Reso-
lutions of one branch of the Legislature, in fraud
of the other two, and thus to deprive her Majesty's
subjects resident in Austrialia of the safeguards by
which their property has been surrounded by their
free Constitution. We are not so absorbed in the
wrongs of the blacks as to have lost all sympathy
for our fellow-countrymen in Australia. Governor
Eyre has been superseded, without the opportunity
of defending himself, for alleged excess of power in
putting down a formidable outbreak. We wish to
know what course has been taken with Sir Charles
Darling, who has been lending himself to means of
collecting revenue in Victoria which have not been
heard of in England since the time of Strafford. We
have at least a right to expect that the representa-
tive of the Queen shall confine himself within the
strict precincts of legal and Constitutional duty,
and that, limited as may be his powers for good, he
shall not arrogate for himself an omnipotence for
evil by the abuse of of the power with which he has
been intrusted, not for the benefit of the Assembly
at Victoria, but for the empire at large. In these
days of deputations, can nobody be found to ask
the Government, not how long this revolutionary
state of things is to go on, but how long the revolu-
tion is to be headed by a governor whose function
is worse than useless if his duty be not to inculcate,
both by precept and example, obedience to the law
as declared by its authorised expounders ? It is
probably of little use to address any remonstrance
to the Government and the Assembly who have
committed themselves to these lawless and deplor-
able courses. They know well they have little sym-
pathy to expect from this country, and will probably
neither be surprised nor abashed to find that its
opinion is against them. But they must remember
that Sir Charles Darling will not always be Gover-
nor of Victoria, and that the present contest, if car-
ried much further, must inevitably assume the form
of a conflict between the Assembly and the mother
country. One condition of the relations between
the Colonies and England is that they should ob-
serve the law. If these communities are to remain
parts of the British Empire, they must be content '
to render that obedience to law from which no max
and no body of men in these islands claim to be
exempt. They must not seek for a licence which
we do not claim for ourselves, nor believe that they
can obtain allegiance to the Queen while setting up
the authority of a single branch of the Legislature
in defiance of the ordinances which have been passed
in her name.
POST.—Crimes such as that of which Ernest ,
Walter Southey has been convicted, though com-
paratively rare, still occur sufficiently often to
satisfy every one that they do not proceed from the
promptings of an insane mind. When acts are
committed for which we fail to discover an adequate
motive, or, so far as we can judge, any motive at
all, we are-inclined to suppose that the agent must
be insane, and therefore irresponsible for his con-
duct. This principle is notoriously adopted almost
universally in cases of self-murder; and so motive-
less does suicide appear to a rational mind, that the
act itself is regarded as presumptive, and in many
cases accepted as conclusive, evidence of at least a
temporary aberration of reason. The policy of
adopting this course is at least questionable, as we
know that a tendency to suicide has been not un-
frequently checked by imposing some species of
posthumous degradation. It may seem barbarous
to impale the corpse of a felo de se, as was usual in
this country, or to bury it, according to the present
custom, at midnight without Christian rites ; but,
as the main object of punishment is prevention and
not vengeance, it may be doubted whether coroners'
juries exercise a sound discretion in acquitting almost
every person who falls by his own hand on the
ground of insanity. But, however reckless juries
may be in this respect, it would be very dangerous
indeed if they were to adopt the same views when
the murderer is charged not with slaying himself
but others, even though his victims are persons
towards whom he not only entertains no animosity,
but to whom he is attached by every tie of relation-
ship, natural affection, and love. When we hear
of a man deliberately murdering a wife with whom
he has no quarrel, and children who have never
injured him, and whose existence offers no impedi-
ment to his happiness, our first impression is that
the supposed criminal must be an unhappy
lunatic. But we must be careful how we give
effect to this impreseion when, as jurors, the
question of his guilt or innocence is brought
judicially before us. Of late years there has been
a growing tendency on the part of the medical pro-
fession to extend the meaning of the term insanity,
a tendency which the common sense of juries has,
however, done much to check. A man, we are told,
may be afflicted with moral insanity which, without
manife ting itself by any of the ordinary symptoms
of mania, would nevertheless exonerate the subject
of it from legal responsibility for his. acts. The ver-
dict returned yesterday at Maidstone furnishes a
satisfactory proof that the novel doctrine has not
yet found favour with the mass of the community.
It will not be necessary to enter into any detailed
account of the circumstances under which Southey,
alias Forward, murdered his wife and child at
Ramsgate, because the facts were admitted on the
trial, and the only issue left for the jury to deter-
mine was his state of mind at the time when the
crime was committed. But the various facts con-
nected with the prisoner's appearance and conduct
in Ramsgate, and more especially the history of his
proceedings immediately before his arrival in that
town, are particularly valuable as furnishing data
for determining the question of his sanity at the
time when he committed the offence with which be
was charged ; and for this purpose alone we will
briefly refer to them. After his arrest in Ramsgate
on the 10th of August he made a written statement
which we are justified in accepting as correctly de-
picting his state of mind during the three preceding
days. In this he declared that he had taken three
children to a coffeehouse in London on the 7th of
August, entertaining for them the feelings of a
parent, but after having " worn out and exhausted
every power of mind and body in efforts to secure
a home, training, and future for them." These
children were found murdered in their beds after
Southey had left them; and, although he did not
in express terms confess his guilt, he admitted that
he " could struggle and bear up no longer ;" that
his " last support had been withdrawn ;" his " suf-
ferings were no longer supportable ;" his " very
last hope had perished by bitter and painful experi-
ence of our present iniquitously defective social jus-
tice;" adding, " and for this I shall be charged for
murer, for criminal murders as well, in the truest,
strongest sense of the charge." Having left Lou-
don he proceeded to Ramsgate, where his wife,
whom he had eight years before deserted, resided,

~,~"

together with their child, a girl of about 13 years of
age. Their interview appears to have been such a
one as might have been expected under the circum-
stances. The woman reproached him with having
left her during so long a period unprovided for, and
told him that but for the assistance of friends she
and her child must have perished of destitution.
These friends were persons of the name of Ellis, and
in their house the interview took place ; and it is
worthy of note that Southey was particularly
anxious that his wife should accompany him to some
place where they might be alone. This request,
however, apparently from some instinctive forebod-
ing. of danger, she refused to comply with, and
t
was arranged that on the following morning be
should again meet his wife in Ellis's house. The
meeting took place, and Southey having again re-
quested a private interview with his wife, they pro-
ceeded to an unoccupied room, accompanied by the
child. A short time afterwards, the reports of two e
pistol shots having been heard, Ellis entered th
room and found the woman and child lifeless on the
floor, and Southey with a revolver, two of the chant"
bers of which had been discharged, in his hand.
few moments later he saw that Southey had removed
a false moustacheand beard which he had worn since
his arrival in Ramsgate. The defence relied upon,
was the supposed insanity of the accused, and that
plea was sought to be established by the motiveless
nature of the murder, by the evidence of medical men
who had examined the prisoner, and by the extrava"
gant conduct of the accused' at the time of trial. As
regards the first ground all that can be said is, tirt
if the inadequacy or apparent absence of a motive
were to be accepted as an apology for homicide, ail,
one who should • chose to indulge in the freak- of
taking life might do so with impunity, by siult4Y
showing that the life or death of the person slal3
was an object of indifference to him. But it is not
correct to say that either the murders committed by
Southey in London or those in Ramsgate were ab-
solutely motiveless. He killed his natural children
at the coffeehouse in Holborn because he thought
that it was better for them to die than to live in it
state of destitution, and because he despaired of •
being enabled, either by industry or beggar-3r! to
secure the means of supporting them. The motive,
we are prepared to admit, is inadequate for such
grave crime as murder, but it is only so in the same
sense as a desire to appropriate a traveller's purse is
inadequate as a reason for shooting him through
the head. Both motives
.spear trivial to God"
fearing, law-respecting men ; but both are motives
which, nevertheless, may find a field of operation !D-
a rational mind. In the celebrated soliloquy 111
"Hamlet," Shakspere sets forth the pros and coil
of suicide, and the same motives which he says would
induce many to terminate their existence d t
would
equally prompt them to take the lives of those e,
were dear to them. The excuse offered by a paren
for murdering his children, that he is unable to OP;
port them, is every whit as rational as the excuse 01
murder with a view to robbery. And it would be
equally incorrect to say that the murder of his w Ile
and child was motiveless. He must have felt confi-
dent that he could not escape justice, and he 1794
have wished to spare them the pain of knowing
that he perished on the scaffold. Many of thise
adMissions made by him would seem to justify
presumption. It is, at all events, manifest Iron!
the fact of his disguising his appearance, tbsAb
he meditated the crime when he left London, an
probably hoped, if he had been enabled to decoY
his wife to some lonely spot, to escape &tee;
tion by removing his false beard after be hr
murdered her. As to the medical evidence given 111
support of his insanity, it was simply puerile, and
calls for no comment ; and the pretended madness
of the prisoner in the dock was so transparent a
sham that at times Southey himself appeared to. be
ashamed of it. The only question which the PI
had to determine was whether, at the time Southey
killed his wife and child, he knew that he was 40'
ing that which was wrong, and the verdict affirming
that knowledge upon his part will be endorsed by
the entire country.