The Sun.
London, England, 1851-04-10 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON,

SPORTING NOTES.

No. XXXII.

SCRAPS FROM NEWMARKET.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SlR,—The race for the Column Stakes yesterday did not
end exactly in the manner I thought it would, but it was
very r early doing so; the horses that I selected to fill the
three first placas did accomplish that feat, only, instead of
Ariosto's being first and Payment second, as xed in my
Notes, they reversed the order of things; but Merry Peal
*us absolutely third. Payment won very easily, and at
once and for ever extinguished Ariosto's Derby pretensions;
and at the same time established her right to an equal fa-
vouritism with Aphrodite and Iris for the Oaks. She is
evidently in her spring form of last year, and " come
what will, come what may," she, like unto the
mighty mower of human grass, will fly through
the roughest day. Teddington was brought out for tt e
2 0 sovs. Stakes, and found so many admirers,
after achieving a ridiculously easy victory over Midas, that
he was forthwith elevated to the rank of second favourite for
the Derby, at 8 to 1 ; he •has much improved on his last
year's form ; hut, in my opinion, is barely good enough to
win the great event of the present year. The betting on the
Heath during the afternoon underwent some important
changes in additon to Teddington's sudden advance for the
Derby. The Black Doctor and the Knight of Avenel at 10
and 15 to 1, and the colt by Gladiator, out of Khorassan's
dam, at 20 to 1, were in considerable orce for the Chester
Cup ; as was Constellation at 13 to 1 for the Derby. For
the Port Stakes to-morrow I have reason to believe that
Officious will not run ; in consequence the race will lay entirely
with Beehunter and The Knight of Avenel, and although
the former is such an immense " pot " for it, it would
by no manner of means surprise me to find
The Knight the winner. The latest betting (up to half-
past twelve this day) is as follows :—Port Stakes-6 to 5
on Beehunter, sto 4 agst The Knight of Avenel. 2,000
Guineas-5 to 4 agst Grecian, offered; 6to 2 agst Mountain
Sylph colt; 7to 1 agst Sir J. Hawley's lo'. Chester Cup-
-10 to 1 on the field ; 15 to 1 agst 't night of Avenel ; 16 to I
agst The Italian; 20 to 1 agst Gladiator colt; 25 to 1 each
agst Hesse Homburg and Woolwich. Derby-6 to 1 agst
The Prime Minister, offered ; 8 to l agst Teddington ; 8 to 1,
17 to 2, and 9to 1 laid to a large amount agst Grecian (this,
after the enormous extent of pepper administered lately,
looks queer); 15 to 1 agst Constellation; Marlborough Buck
not mentioned. .

Mem.—A report has been in circulation for some time past
that Lady Evelyn is in " queer-street," and that she has
been put to the stud ; the report is not altogether without
foundation, but rumour, as usual, has considerably embe'-
lished the actual state of the case. I shall return to the
subject next week.
I am, Sir, yours, &c.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TURF.
April 10, 1551.

THE FRIMLEY MURDER.
(From the Times.)
The decision of the• Government with reference to the
fate of three of the principal actors in the Frimley tra-
gedy has relieved us from the necessity of any longer
keeping silence on a subject which seems to call loudly
for the animadversion of those whose duty it is to
watch the administration of criminal justice.
The Learned Judge who sentenced Levi Harwood
and James Jones to death did not accompany
his judgment with the usual announcement that the pri-
soners had no mercy to look for in this world. The
matter, therefore, seemed to be left completely open to
the discretion of the Secretary of State of the Home De-
partment; and we were unwilling, while such was the case,
to invade, by any premature observations of our own,
the awful prerogative of mercy which the constitution
reposes in his hands. But now that the fate of these
men has been decided, and the Secretary of State has
come to what appears to us the just and reasonable con-
clusion, that the lives of the two criminals are justly
forfeited to the law we feel it our duty to pre.
sent our view of the remarkable proceedings which
have terminated in this result. After the mur-
der of the Rev. Mr. Holiest last autumn,
our readers are aware that a proclamation was
issued, offering pardon and reward to any person who
should make known the perpetrators of the crime;
and to this general offer there was but a
single exception—the person, namely, by whose
hand Mr. Holiest met his death. Four persons
were taken into custody en suspicion of having
been engaged in the robbery and murder, property
belonging to the deceased gentleman was found upon
one of them, and a chain of circumstantial evidence con-
nected each of them with the other, and all of them with
the crime. But the matter was not left to circumstantial
evidence; a witness of the murder survived in the
person of Mrs. Holiest—a lady whose testimony
is entitled to the greatest weight from the extra-
ordinary courage and self-possession which she dis-
played throughout. She identified three of the men
as concerned in the robbery—one, Levi Harwood,
as having personally attacked her; another, Jones, as
having been engaged in the scuff) with Mr. Holiest; and
the third, Hiram Smith, as having fired the fatal shot.
Under these circumstances an offer is made to confess, and
made by the very person to whom the only evidence which
was attainable pointed as being the one person exempted
from the proclamation—the man who fired the fatal
shot. Strange to say, this person was admitted as ap-
prover—that is as an accomplice who is to receive a
pardon if be speak the truth, and whose evidence is
only to be believed if corroborated in material points by
the testimony of unexceptionable witnesses. What could
induce the authorities to consider that Hiram Smith was
a witness of truth we cannot imagine, nor from what
quarter he was to receive the necessary corroboration,
when as to the very matter on which his evidence was
reqnired he was contradicted by the only untainted wit-
ness who could be called. Hiram Smith had of course
the strongest interest that man could have to shift the
guilt of having fired the fatal shot from himself to Levi
Harwood. Life, impunity, and reward, would be the
results of success, and death the punishment of failure.
He did not come forward like an ordinary approver to
detail a crime of which he had been a participator, but
rather to exonerate himself and cast upon his accom-
plices the principal and prominent guilt in the transac-
tion. He was therefore triply discredited—first, as
being a person, by his own confession, of infamous cha-
racter; secondly, as having, from the peculiar circum-
stances of the case, a strong interest to misrepresent the
facts; and thirdly, as being contradicted by the only
person, other than the criminals and their victim, who
was present on the occasion. Under these circumstances
he was admitted an approver, and the authorities thought
fit to put forward his testimony as fitting ground for the
jury to act upon in a question of life and death.
We cannot imagine a more injudicious use of the
power of admitting accomplicies to betray the secrets
of their companions in crime. Perhaps it may be urged
that the admitting an accomplice to give evidence is at
all times a most unwelcome and distasteful expedient,
only to be resorted to or justified by necessity, and that
where that necessity exists such a practice tends to pre-
vent the perpetration of crime by sowing mutual dis-
trust among its perpetrators and by preventing their ulti-
mate impunity. We may grant this—but where was the
necessity here? In the first place the approver was, as
we have shown, not likely to be believed, nor, indeed,
deserving belief from a jury; and, in the next place,
except as to the matter of the fatal shot and the incri-
mination of Samuel Harwood, he did not carry the case
any further than the circumstantial evidence and the
direct testimony of Mrs. Holiest. The. result has
proved that the admitting Hiram Smith as an approver
was unnecessary, for the jury, totally disbelieving him
and putting his evidence aside as of no value whatever,
has yet found sufficient evidence to convict Harwood and
Jones. The judge has not hesitated to sentence them
on that evidence, and the .Secretary of State is moat
properly about to suffer the law to take its course. The
admission, therefore, of such a person as Hiram Smith
as an approver, the placing him before a jury as a per-
son on whose evidence any one in any matter would be
justified in reposing the slightest reliance, is a most de-
plorable error in itself, and one which in its consequences
tends to bring contempt on the administration of justice,
and has caused no little risk of defeating its ends alto-
gether.
The jury having convicted Levi Harwood and James
Jones, against whom there was other evidence than that
of the approver—having acquitted Samuel Harwood,
against whom there was no sufficient evidence without
that of the approver—and having distinctly recorded
their conviction of the falsehood of the statement which
transferred the guilt of firing the shot from himself to
Levi Harwood—the embarrassing question naturally
arises, what is to be done with the approver? He has
given at the trial substantially the same statement as that
on the strength of which he was admitted as a witness
for the Crown; and on the strength of his evidence he
claims impunity and reward. He has done all that was
expected from him, and if the judge and jury have been
less credulous than the authorities who admitted him as
a witness, that, he would doubtless urge, is their fault
and not his. On the other band, is it to be tolerated
that because a man, in addition to the guilt of robbery
and murder—a murder not consisting in construction of
law, but as there is too mach reason to believe, perpe-
trated by his own hand—lays upon his soul the addi-
tional guilt of perjury, he is therefore to escape the
punishment which will overtake his guilty but leas
criminal accomplices? Surely not. Hiram Smith was
admitted as an approver on the condition that he should
give true evidence. The falsehood of his statement
should have been seen through in the first instance; but
because its manifest infirmities were overlooked it is not
the less false. He claims the performance of the con-
tract, his own part of which he has signally failed to
perform, and after the addition of perjury to his other
crimes he has no right to complain if he were placed in
a situation no worse than that which be would have oc-
cupied had such perjury never been committed. It ap-
pears to us, therefore, quite fair that he should be left
to take his trial upon the same evidence as that which
has convicted his accomplices, and we regard this
course as the more necessary since, unless it be adopted,
it will hardly be possible, without an apparent violation
of distributive justice, to inflict upon those accomplices
that punishment which the law and the interest of
society alike require that they should undergo. It could
never be tolerated that persons convicted only as princi-
pals in the second degree should suffer capital punish-
ment, while the person whom the same jury undoubtedly
would, had they had the opportunity, have convicted of
being the actual perpetrator of the crime, should escape
unscathed. It is a stern necessity which requires society
thus to vindicate its outraged rights, but it is a necessity,
and the rule which that necessity prescribes must be ad-
ministered with no faltering hand.