The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-27 00:00:00

translated and dramatised in France in all sorts of
ways. Ducis founded tragedies upon him ; Alfred
de Vigny, Emile Deschamps, and Frederic Soulie
gave Shaksperian readings, and Lamartine's tran-
slations were revised and annotated by M. Guizot.
The Court of Assize of La Seine has been occupied
with the trial of one of the most hardened and atro-
cious villains of modern times. He is a young man
of 19, named Charles Felix Lemaine, and the evi-
dence, chiefly supported by his own confession,
proves that he murdered a woman named Bainville,
simply because she was about to marry his father,
a widower 68 years old. The prisoner is of very
vicious and dissipated habits. Ile often told his
father that he hated him, and said he wished to enjoy
his little fortune himself. Towards the month of Octo-
ber last the father told the prisoner that he intended
tarnarry the widow Bainville, a washerwoman, who
had a daughter. On the 20th of December the
father and son worked together, and the former re-
marked that his son was more gay, and almost affec-
tionate. The prisoner left work about seven in the
evening, and then went to the house of the deceased,
who was working with her daughter, and three
workwomen. He asked the deceased to go down
stairs, and accompany him to his lodging, as he had
a message to her from his father. She had been
there but a very short time when piercing cries were
beard. The door was broken open, and the woman
was found insensible and covered with blood. Her
daughter caught her up in her arms, but she fell
dead at her feet almost instantaneously. Behind
her was the murderer with long bloody knife in his
hand, the point of which had been broken by the
violence used. The wretch was unmoved. He
went up to the girl and said—" I am very happy at
being revenged. I only regret that I have not
killed the three others (the three workwomen), be-
cause I wanted to murder the whole four. lam
neither mad nor drunk, and I shall know how to
mount the scaffold." When arrested and examined
before the magistrate, the murderer said that
eighteen months ago he bad resolved to
assassinate his father, because he spent too
much money upon his mistresses. (This insinuation
is said to be completely unfounded.) The prisoner
added that the moment he heard that his father
meant to marry the widow Bainville he had made
up his mind to murder her. He very calmly de-
scribed his plan. He knocked a nail into the wall
and made a running knot to a cord fixed to a trap-
door which led to the cellar, and prepared himself
with a knife and razor. His idea was that when he
bad murdered the widow he would throw her body
into the cellar, and then one after the other induce
the daughter and a young apprentice girl named
Barbe Fogelback, aged 15, to make them come in
and suffer the same fate. This done, he intended to
wait until his father returned, and, feigning to be
asleep, he intended to rush suddenly upon him and
assassinate him. This little game being played, he
meant to take away all the money he could find in
the house, and enjoy himself with it somewhere
where he was not known. The magistrate at the
first examination endeavoured to make the prisoner
exhibit some show of repentance, but, on the con-
trary, he only expressed his regret that he had not
been able to carry out his whole plan. He was par-
ticularly sorry that he had not been able to kill his
father. At the trial the prisoner exhibited still more
effrontery. The Advocate-General, in support a

the accusation, said he could only find one excuse
for the prisoner's madness. The prisoner had a
counsel, M. Colin de Verdieres, but when his advo-
cate rose, the prisoner, in spite of the remonstrance
of the judge, said he wanted to address the jury
himself. He then proceeded, in a solemn tone, and
with great volubility, to launch diatribes and invec-
tives against his father, who, he said, was a bad
parent, addicted to all the evil passions, and passing
all his time in debauchery and drunken orgies. He
concluded by saying, I had to revenge myself
upon a woman. I killed her. Society will avenge
that woman. It ought to avenge her. It owes me
the scaffold. I claim it. Have no pity for me ; I do
not desire it. I have told you that I am lazy. I did
not like work when I was free. Don't send me to
forced hard labour. If you destine me for the hulks
they shall not have me. I will die of hunger, and
then you will not be able to hold me up as an ex-
ample to frighten criminals. Justice will be van-

quished, and will not be able to pursue her course."
[This speech created long-continued excitement. The

prisoner's -counsel then addressed the Court, but the
prisoner seemed to treat his remarks with indiffer-

ence or contempt. The jury found the prisoner
guilty, and he was sentenced to death. He smiled
and looked round the court on hearing the sentence,
and said, " I have got what I asked for; gentlemen,
I heartily thank you."

Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Goldwin Smith.

At the conclusion of a lecture on " John Pym
and the Long Parliament," delivered at Guildford
on Monday evening, Mr. Goldwin Smith thus re-
ferred to Mr. Disraeli's recent attack upon him.
" And now one word in self-defence. Mr. Disraeli
in the last Reform debate fell foul of me. The
right hon. gentleman in that debate showed by his
attack upon me that he still retained the power of
calling names. He showed by the miscellaneous
epithets in which he indulged that he had not ex-
hausted the vocabulary which he exerted on Sir
Robert Peel. The right hon. gentleman in that
debate said that I had passed my life 'in a cloister.'
This was an assertion uttered, like many of
Mr. Disraeli's, at a venture, and, like most
of his random assertions, simply untrue. He
then told the house that maligned all things
and all men.' I beg to say that I honour all
things and all men worthy of honour. I cannot
honour that which is false and base, and standing, as
Mr. Disraeli stood, where English power and great-
ness once stood, I notice one point of difference be-
tween him and those illustrious men. In the time
of Hampden the leaders of the Commons were re-
markable for their control over temper, and they
never forgot themselves to indulge in silly personali-
ties against people out of doors. I now come to
the matter of the freeholders in Buckinghamshire.
Rushworth says that 'in 1641 divers knights,
squires, and other freeholders of Buckinghamshire,
to the number of 4,000, marched to London, each
man with a copy of the protestation in his
hat ;' but I am told that if there were 4,000
freeholders then, so there are now. Well, I
find on the electoral roll of Buckingham-
shire 4,500 freeholders.. But are these free-
' holders independent yeomen cultivating their Own
r. land ? No. Investigation shows that these free-
Jaolders are composed of men .holding freehold
'houses, cottages, and small pieces of land. Take
any place within the parliamentary limits of the
county, and this statement would be borne out. I
will instance Chalfont, a place of some historic note,
and celebrated as the refuge of Mr. Disraeli's great
rival in epic) poetry, John Milton, when he was flee-
ing from the Tory mercies of the Restoration party.
I find that in this place there are 11 occupiers of
£5O value, 30 freeholders, one squire, one rector,
and that the freeholders are holders of houses, cot-
tages, and small pieces of land ; out of them 18
are not resident—rather small change, I think, for
the Ironsides. I know but little of the county of
Bucks, but it is notorious that, except in the very
north of England the yeomanry have almost ceased
to exist. The estates of the small gentry have been
bought up by the large proprietors. This is a great
evil, as it makes the nation but tenants at will of its
own soil. It is a sad fact that we are merging to
an aggregation of the land into the hands of a few
commercial and manufacturing millionaires. The
laws of primogeniture and entail aggravate the evil.
It is true that in the county of Bucks, owing to the
exceptional circumstance of the Duke of Bucking-
ham's estate being taken out of entail, there has been
an addition of 500 freeholders to the electoral roll.
I am willing to admit that these 500 are good
change for a duke. It is said these laws are neces-
sary to keep estates together, but let good sense and
frugality keep these together, not unjust laws. His-
tory proves that in proportion to the diminution of
the yeomanry and the increase of the great pro-
prietors, so have the constituent elements of our
Home of Commons diminished in strength and
vigour."

GOOD NEWS FOR THE CITY.—A turtle weighing
over 2 cwt. was captured off the Lizard on Friday by a
Penzance flailing boat.