The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-01 00:00:00

the year anything but satisfactory. During
this last Quarter the Revenue of the Country has ap-
preciably improved. There is a net increase upon it
of £731,000. But—exclusive of an increase upon the
Property Tax of £204,000, and under the head Mis-
cellaneous of £179,000—the actual net increase may
be set down at £410,000. That, we repeat, is the
net increase upon the Quarter. The gross increase
amounts to £472,000, or not far short of half a mil-
lion sterling. And that gross increase has been ob-
tained by an improvement to the extent of £l,OOO on
the receipts from Crown Linds, of £17,000 from the
Taxes, of £44,000 from Stamps, of £lOO,OOO from
the Post Office, and of £248,000 from Excise—
altogether, as we have slid, £172,000 as the gross
increase on the Quarter. Deducting, however, f, om
this total of £472,000, as the gross increase upon the
Quarter, under the heals just mentionel, a falling off
upon the Cuitoms to the extent of £62,000, we arrive

had been murdered, and the ill-fated woman must,
therefore, have been a foreigner. The relatives of
sliEwAnn's wife accepted his vague, and certainly
not satisfactory, replies as to her disappearance; the
police never searched his house ; he appears to have
miraculously escaped suspicion altogether. The
tragedy naturally excited more than usual attention,
but, like all other events of the kind, it ceased to be
thought of.

Justice slept from 1851 to January 2, 1800,
when SHEwArtn supplied a clue to the mys-
tery by a confession that the body was that
of his wife, and that he had murdere 1 her. He
gave himself up to the police of Walworth, London,
made his statement, had it read over to him the next
morning, and adhered to it. In Richmond-street,
Walworth, was the house in which he and his
murdered wife first met, and the sight of this place'
had aroused the voice of conscience beyond the power
of control. But when brought before the Norwich
magistrates SIIEWARD denied the truth of his
confession, pleaded not guilty, and on that
plea has been tried for his life. Did he
commit the murder ? The arguments are certainly
not wholly on one side, and in part the mystery
seems incapable of solution. It is remark-
able that SIIEW ARD'S confession disclosed no
new facts. His voluntary acknowledgment
after eighteen years' concealment is, indeed, weighty
evidence, but he withdrew and denied his confession,
and it is notorious that false self-accusations are
by no means uncommon. Then the medical
evidence unhesitatingly held that the body was that
of a very young woman, whereas SHEWARD'S wife
was 54. No blood had been noticed on the prisoner's
clothes, or about his house ; nor had any incrimina-
tory circumstances directed attention to him at the
time the fragments were picked up around Norwich.
It has not been shewn that he and his wife
ever did meet at the house in Walworth. But, on
the other hand,the pieces of flesh were so small that it
was difficult, if not impossible, to determine the age
of the woman of whom they had formed part. Mrs.
SIIEWARD disappeared, was never heard of again,and
a woman's body was found in the neighbourhood of
her residence. If it be impossible to prove that the
body was that of Mrs. SHEWARD, it is equally diffi-
cult to prove the contrary. Identity must always
be established in cases of murder, but the con-
fession was held to supply the place of the necessary
evidence on this point. The whole testimony is
slight, and had it not been for the avowal, must have
been held insufficient ; but the confession could not
be got over. The evidence points on the whole t o the
justice of the verdict; but the enigma in many
respects is still insoluble. We know nothing as to
the motives which actuatedthe crime or the manner in
which it was committed, and equal doubt exists on
other points which, without the confession, must
have been deemed material.

at the net improvement upon this last Qiarter of
£410,000 as already mentioned. Upon the Year,
and not simply upon the quarter, the result appa-
rent is in no way so gratifying. 03tensibly, no doubt,
there is a gross increase upon the whole year

of £3,555,000, an 1 an actual net increase o
2,991,000. But—how attained? By an in

crease upon the Property TAX to the extent of
£2,411.000, and by the additional sum of
£769,000 obtained through the higher rate and the
arrears left from the previous twelvemonth. The
lamentable fact being only too apparent, when we
come to examine the regular and ordinary sources of
revenue, that there has been a falling off upon the
whole year to the extent of £15,000 in Taxes, of
£226,000 in Customs, and of £323,000 in Stamps.
Against this diminution there has to be balanced,

of course, an increase upon the whole year to
the extent of £15,000 on the Crown Lands, of
£30,000 on the Post Office, and of £300,000
on the Excise. Altogether upon the financial
year just expired there is a total loss of £564,000—
deducting from which the total increase upon the
three items last-mentioned, amounting to £345,000
shows a net falling off upon the year of £219,000.
The fact is, that the result of the monetary panic of
1866, beginning upon the ever-memorable Black Fri-
day, has been bitterly felt during this last past
twelvemonth. Besides which the deplorably un-
favourable returns of the first two quarters are very
far from having been as yet tided over. Comparing
the year just gone with its immediate predecessor—
whereas upon this last year we have bad, as just
now remarked, a net loss of upwards of
£2oo,ooo—upon the previous year we had had a net
gain of somewhere about £BOO,OOO. Happily, the
ebb has—slowly, it may be, but perceptibly—com-
menced. So that we may hope : and what is more,
hope reasonably. However unsatisfactory the year has
been financially as a whole, the two first quarters of
' it were bad quarters— the two last quarters of it
have distinctly and obviously evidenced improvement.
The worst of the matter, at the same time, is this,
that looking at the annual income upon the year,
and comparing it with the income anticipated by
Mr. IVNRD HUNT in his Badget Speech, delivered
a year ago, the result is really lamentable. In
that speech the late Chancellor of the Exchequer
estimated that the receipts upon the ensuing twelve-
month would be as nearly as possible £73,150,000.
They have, in point of fact, been £72,591,000. The
actual deficiency happens to be £559,000. But it would
have been as much as £784,000 only for a wholly un-
looked for improvement, under the head Miscellaneous,
to the extent of some £225,000. The late Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, to , descend to par-
ticulars—calculated upon having £22,800,000
from the Customs ; whereas there have been,
from that source of Revenue, £376,003 less than
that anti :ipat►on of Mr. llcyr's, the return being
no more than £22,421,000. t corn btarnps he expcted
we should have £9,650,00. We have had £432,000 less
or £9,218,000. He loakel for £3,510,003 from Mixes.
The receipts from Taxes have been £46,000 less, or
£3,401,000 altogether. From the Property Tax,
he thought the country would have derived
£8,700,000. It has obtained, in point of fact,
£82,000 less or a total from Property Tax of
£8,618,000. The entire deficiencies, when we come
to look back upon Mr. Huyes anticipations,
amount to the chief part of a million
—at any rate to £936,000 sterling. Taking
into account, however, the advance upon his conjec-
tured receipts on the three items previously named,
that is to say, on the Excise, Post Office, and Crown
Lands, amounting, upon the year, all tiaem together, to
£152,000, the gross deficiency just now mentioned of
£936,000, is so far diminished to a net deficiency
of £784,000. Remembering that Mr. BUNT in the
midst of all his favourable anticipations, calculated
at the same time upon having to encounter at the
end of the year a comparatively small deficit of
some £278,000 one recognises the some-
what startling fact that he was actually
out in his calculations, as a whole, by somewhere
about a round million, as the humorists have
it, a " cool million" sterling! The Revenue Re-
turns are such, in point of fact, that we cannot
but look forward with more than ordinary solicitude
to the Budget about to be unfolded, npoa this day
se'nnight, by the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor
of the Exchequer.

IT was hardly possible, under the circumstances;

hat any jury's verdict could set the public mind al

rest respecting the Norwich murder. It would be,
perhaps, too much to conclude that the evidence
given was sufficient to admit of anything more than
a Scotch verdict of " Not proven." But it is clear
that the evidence has not been able to dissipate the
whole mystery in which this extraordinary case is
involved. Many of the circumstances remain
unexplained ; and in all probability will so
remain to the end. The story is almost un-
paralleled. Remarkable criminal trials have been
curiously abundant of late, but the Norwich
murder is the strangest mystery of all. In
the year 1851 a series of suspiciously concurrent
circumstances occurred at Norwich. The wife of
WILLIAM SIIEWARD, a woman considerably older
than her husband, suddenly disappeared, and was
never seen again. The pair had not lived on good
terms, Mrs. SHEWARD had paid the too common
penalty of marrying a young husband, but their
relations were not obtrusively bad. SHEWARD gave
it out that his wife had gone on a journey ; he after-
wards asserted that she had left him and would not
return. When one of her relatives died, SHEWARD
refused to have the share of the property which fell
to hiM. His statements were believed, or at least
not questioned, and the missing woman gradually
ceased to excite attention. But about the time when
she first disappeared a fearful discovery was made
in the neighbourhood of Norwich. A human hand
was found in the suburbs, then other pieces of flesh
were discovered, and at length diligent search
enabled the police to gather up a human body,
which had been sawn and cut into fragments, and
scattered in every direction—in ditches, meadows, and
plantations—around Norwich. The hideous work of
dissection had been performed by an unskilful hand,
and this, as well as other indications, pointed to the
conclusion that the person had been murdered. But
all efforts to identify the mangled fragments
utterly failed. Nobody seems even to have
thought of accusing SHEWARD. The evidence,
such as it was, was in his favour. The doctors
decided that the body was that of a woman,
and they agreed that she could not . have been more
than 26 years 'Of age. 'The police firmly maintained
that no giabelonging to the town or neighbourhood

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, APED, 1, 1869.