The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-30 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 30, 1860.

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2111 Z SWISS MINIS?' MS REPLY TO

M. THOUVENEL.

This rejoinder was presented on Monday after-
noon to M. Thouvenel by M. Kern, the Swiss
Minister in Paris. It commences with the usual
recapitulation of M. Thouvenel's arguments, and
which, being already in your hands, it is useless to
repeat. The note continues thus :
" The Federal Council can the less refrain from
answering this note that it has not the same man-
ner of viewing matters as is expressed therein, and
that it does not consider as proved by history the
facts which are alleged in it. It will take the
liberty, in commencing, to examine the last part of
the note, which treats of the stipulations as of the
value that should be given to the said treaties. For
all that is essential it refers to the detailed memo-
randum nail° relations between Sifitzerland and
neutralised Savoy, which appeared under its autho-
rity at the close of last year, and which has been
communicated to all the high Powers. Neverthe-
less, it cannot do otherwise than insist on the fol-
lowing special points, to which, in his opinion, the
note of the 17th March (M. Thnuvenel's reply to the
protest) attaches too little importance, or which it
passes over in complete silence.
" The Treaty of Peace of 1564 was not concluded
exclusively between Berne and Savoy. It was the
result of an intervention by arbitrement exercised
by the eleven non-interested States, and it was
guaranteed formally by France and Spain, since the
signatures of those high guaranteeing Powers are
to be found on this peace treaty.
" There exists no sufficient reason to prove that
this treaty has been abrogated by the events which
have taken place since then. Even on recent occa-
sions France appears to have had a diXerent mode
of viewing this matter, as in 1798 she grcunded on
those very treaties of 1564 the right to a military
occupation of the Pays de Vaud. Can, then, this
treaty have lost all value, merely because it is now
appealed to by Switzerland ?
" The 23d article of the Treaty of Turin, of the
16th of March, 1816, comes in support of the actual
validity of this treaty. The article is couched in
these terms The provisions of the. ancient
treaties, and particularly of the 3d of June, 1754,
which are not expressly abrogated by the present
treaty, aro confirmed.' Now, we find nowhere an
express suppression of the Treaty of 1564, and we
are consequently authorised in maintaining that it
has been confirmed by the article alluded to.
" As to what concerns the origin and the bearing
of the Treaties of 1815, in so far as they concern
the rights of Switzerland on neutralised Savoy,
the minutes of the deliberations, and the notes
exchanged, supply sufficient information. The
report has been treated in full detail, and is
founded on authentic letters in the above cited
nzemoire. It appears positively from it that it
was the declaration from Geneva to the Congress
of Vienna that suggested the idea of a partial neu-
tralisation of Savoy, and defended it with great
energy. - It was then clearly demonstrated that
this neutralisation was as much in the interest of
Switzerland as in that of Sardinia; that without
it the cantons of the Valais and Geneva, and espe-
cially the passage of the Simplon, would be con-
stantly menaced; and that without the neutraliza-
tion it would be impossible to maintain the neu-
trality of Switzerland with any chance of success,
and consequently to defend the independence of the
Confederation.

" For these reasons, based completely on the geo-
graphical position of the north of Savoy, some well
known clauses were inserted in the treaty of the
29th March, 1815, which, at the present moment,
have acquired fresh importance. The provinces of
Chablais and Faucigny, and all the territory situate
to the north of the Ugine, wore declared to be com-
prised in the Swiss neutrality. It was stipulated
that in case of war no troops of any Power could
either remain in or traverse them. Finally, power
was given to Switzerland to place troops in the neu-
tralized provinces, in order to defend her own neu-
trality with a chance of success, and that without
prejudice to the civil administration of the provinces.
The European treaties of the 29th of March and
the 20th of November, 1815, evidently did not give
Switzerland simple duties; on the contrary, they
conferred on her very important rights, which are
intimately connected with the right of her own
preservation. There can, therefore, be no question
of an obligation imposed for the performance of a
certain duty. Switzerland made no objection as
far as regards the north of Savoy ' • but she offered
opposition only when the second peace of Paris
placed the territories beyond the mountain in the
same category as Chablais, Faucigny, and Upper
Geneva, and for which there did not appear to
exist sufiicient,motives to call for their being made
part of the Swiss neutrality.
" To the surrender of the neutralised provinces in
the restricted sense, or of the north of Savoy, has
been often suggested the opposition that the pas-
sage through Savoy would meet on a certain side.
It has been demonstrated in another place that such
a dismemberment would not be a new fact in the
history of Savoy. Even a recent period supplies a
formal proof in support of this allegation. In 1815
some portions of the territory of Savoy had already
been restored to Sardinia, while other parts re-'
mained in possession of France.
" If attention be paid to the feelings of the people,'
who on this occasion appear to supply the motives
for decision, and of which the Federal Council by
no means disregards the importance, a claim may
be made for the population of the north of Savoy,
in conformity with all the rules of equitys—the
right to express freely their opinion. Or perhaps
no attention should be paid to the 12,000 citizens
who have already declared for annexation to S wit-
zerland, who have declared that their interests and
their wishes—their tendencies, their wants, their
sympathies, are quite different from those of the
southern provinces.
" If at present Switzerland has been the first to
declare for the maintenance of the status quo, she
has taken no step from which an absolute resistance
to the cession of Savoy can be inferred—she does
not wish in any manner to infringe en the preroga-
tives of his Majesty the King of Sardinia. She ab-
stains from all new political discussion on that
subject: What Switzerland demands, and on
which she thinks she has a right to insist with-
out in any manner violating the principles of
justice and equity, is, that regard shall be paid
to her rights, duly acquired and solemnly guaran-
teed by the Powers, and that they shall not be dis-
posed of without her knowledge and cosicurrence.
The Federal Council have set forth their pretensions
specially in the notes of the 9th of March addressed
to Paris and to Turin.

" The Federal Council have not for a moment for-
gotten the proofs of friendship and goodneigh-
bourhood affbrded by France. They have accepted,
with full confidence, the promises made to them
on the 6th of February; and they feel pleasure in
remarking particularly that the note addressed on
the 21th of last month, by M. Thonvenel, to the
French Legation at Turin, expresses, the decided
intention of taking into account the interests of
Switzerland in a suitable manner in the new ar-
rangement. _

"-Now that the question of the cession has been
submitted to the great Powers, no one can offer any
reproach to Switzerland for having addressed her-
self to the Powers guaranteeing the treaties, to
demand of them that a matter in which hergravest
interests are at stake shall not be decided upon
Without her concurrence. On that, in fact, rests
all the importance which must be attributed to The
steps taken by the Federal Council, and Switzer-
land. may hope that her reasons will be considered
with impartiality, and that France in particular•
will be disposed to take them into, account.
The point of view which in this matter is the
dominant one for Switzerland, may be noticed in
the following terms :—For the maintenance of her
neutrality and of her independence the rights
which the treaties have guaranteed to Switzer-
land on neutralised Savoy are indispensable
to the Confederation. Those rights were
stipulated by the Powers for the interest. of the
whole of Europe.
"Now, according to the principles of interna-
tional law and the rights of peoples, it is
.not lawful
to dispose of such rights without the concurrence of
one of the parties principally interested. Therefore,

it may be expected with entire confidence that the
question of the cession will not be resolved but with
the participation of Switzerland, in accordance with
her, and with a due and honest regard for her in•
terests France certainly will not refuse her friendly
concurrence as a good neighbour towards the at-
tainment of that object.
" You are requested to retid this note to the Mi-
nister of Foreign Affairs, and to leave a copy with
him;
" Receive, &e.,

" En the name of the Swiss Federal Council,
" FREY. I-lEROSE, President of the Confederation
" SCHIESS, Chancellor of the Confederation."

THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.

(Conc:ucled from the Tiincs of March 29.)

The article in our impression of the 29th on this
subjact merely pointed out the deficiencies which
attract notice even from the least observant visitor
to St. Martin's-le-Grand. The cause of them are,
however, less apparent until the whole postal sys-
tem is scrutinised, when we, at once see that the
shortcomings which occasionally so puzzle the
public are due entirely to the most anomalous mis-
management. Utter-carrying, our readers must
remember, was made a Government monopoly at a
time when, for State reasons, it was thought ad-
visable that the authorities should have some check
upon private and public correspondence, and when,
in fact, no other machinery existed or could then be
relied on for the transmission of letters safely. Both
these reasons, however, have long since ceased to
have any weight—first, be use
the carriage of
public letters—the newspa ' s--has passed into
elthe hands of the news-ag s Oand, secendly,' be-
cause the greatest machine of all for rapid com-
munication, the electric telegraph, and also the
railway parcels' post, is entirely in the hands of
private individuals. To these causes may bo at-
tributed the opinion which has latterly grown up
extensively, that the carriage of letters, like mail
contracts, should be also entrusted to private com-
panies, and that the Government should not wring
a profit larger than the paper duty from their
having a legal monopoly of the means of meeting
the chief daily want of the age. At all events,
there arc few who will not agree that when the
profit is so great the service should at least be well-
conducted
and made in all things subordinate to
the convenience of the public.
The carriage of newspapers, though not claimed
as an exclusive right by the Legislature, was at
first obtained by ectraordinary pecuniary facilities
being granted for their transmission through the
post. Thus, while one scale of charges •was adopted
for the private letter, another and a much lower
one was provided for the public or "news-letter,"
,I
as papers were then called. By the carriage of
these latter papers, then, the post-office; gradually
ceased to be a political organ for giving Government
control over the correspondence of the country, and
assumed its modern aspect of a State machine, for
the rapid and cheap transmission of private letters
and public intelligence. In this state the penny
postage was introduced, at once granting an im-
mense boon to all classes, though it was attended
with some drawbacks, which it may be worth while
now to 'glance at for an instant, Since the penny
postage there has been an immense increase in the
business of the General Post-office, an increase
which daily continues, though there has been no
corresponding extension of the system or any sim-
plification of arrangements for meeting that extra
duty. The authorities could not evade their direct
responsibilityin the matter of letters, but have met
it as best they could, which, as we think has been
already shown, is badly enough. Ne wspapers, how-
ever, were very differently circumstanced from
letters. ' Latterly, they have always been looked
on with a disfavour that has steadily increased,
for the simple reason that their sorting and
despatch gave a great deal of trouble, while
the proceeds of their impressed stamps went
altogether to another department. As this feel-
ing of disfavour was safely indulged in it gave
rise to restrictions on their postal transmission,
which has gradually created out of doors a sort of
independent post by means of news agents, who
were compelled to undertake their transmission for
the sake of despatch in the first instance, and now,
also ,for the sake of economy. This aid, which it
certainly had no right to expect, has emboldened
the Post-office to add yet ansither restriction tend-
ing to get rid of newspapers altogether.- -Reoeurea-i
has been had to the curious artifice of pretending
not to be able to distinguish between a newspaper
and any other printed matter, and so to get a book
post established, which has been gradually worked
up to a small parcels' post, and -which is now, in
fact, a small parcels' post altogether. Newspapers,
which in the first instance were not distinguished
from letters and were entitled to the same despatch
in transmission, have thus been gradually turned
over to the book or small parcels' post, and so left
entirely to the convenience of the office as to \the
price and rate of forwarding. Any one who will
take the trouble to visit St. Martin's-le-Grand will
find that in practice there is not the least
difficulty in distinguishing between newspapers
and books sent by post, though it is stated thatthe
great difficulty does exist in distinguishing between
a book sent through the book post and a letter or a
parcel that should be charged according to the
letter rate of postage. So nice, indeed, is the dis-
tinction between these two that in a number of
1 instances the doubt can only be resolved by open
ing and inspecting the contents of the letter or
parcel in question.

Being aGovernment department, the Post-office
has also used, or aather abused, its authority from
time to time to fix most arbitrary rules of transmit
sion and standards of weight levelled at the daily
press especially, the'power of which has been as
little liked by successive Administrations as i's
immense circulation has been inconvenient to the
Post-office. So it has come to pass that for all
practical purposes the transmission of news, while
it is still fresh and valuable to the public, has been
choked off from the General Post-office altogether,
which prefers, to that important function of its
duties, the profits to be obtained by competing
with the carriers of the country in transmitting
every conceivable description of small parcel under
rates obtained from the railways for the carriage
of letters and papers only. Of all the immense
number of daily papers sent from London each
morning the Post-office only takes from 6,000 to
7,000, by its early mails, and even of this number
it not unfrcquently happens that many are left be-
hind. The cheap papers and the high-priced are
alike sought to be excluded from the use of this
establishment by a tariff, which is either an entire
prohibition in the case of penny papers, or a most
severe restriction with the other journals. To check
the use of the Post-office when most required, the
old twopenny rate, abandoned on all other corre-
spoodence, is still specially retained on papers
posted for delivery in the metropolis—that is, within
three miles of the Post-office—viz. the penny im-
pressed stamp paid to the Stamp Office, and the ad-
ditional penny on delivery. Like all over-severe
enactments, this de facto prohibition in the case of
several journals defeats itself, for, as we have said,
a number of these papers are posted at Greenwich,
and thus the Post-office merely reaps this extra
trouble of their longer transmission without any
extra fee at all. The impressed stamp on the news-
papers is not now obliterated in passing through
the post. If under Mr. Gladstone's proposed ar-
rangement each paper is to have a common penny
stamp affixed, its obliteration will become impera-
tive ; and, as there is not a sufficient amount of
space at St. Martin's to meet this great increase of
work, it will, it seems, be almost necessary to ex-
clude newspapers from the use of the post entirely.
The recent attempt to save labour in the letter de-
partment of the office by making the public to affix
the initials of the postal district has proved almost
a failure for letters posted in London. At the Ge-
neral Post-office it is stated that the sorters never
sow look at the initial letter at all, and that, when
they do so, the public, in a large proportion of in-
stances, were found to have affixed wrong initials,
which led to the letters being missorted and
actually delayed in consequence, while there are
instances of letters marked N.W. and S.W.,
being sent to North and South Wales. For
letters coming to London which are sorted in
the trains the initial • letters may to a certain
extent render the duties of sorters easier, and
therefore enable more profit to be derived from
the Poet-office by its employing.,a few:er number
of hands. But this most short-sighted system,
which leads to neglect of efficiency ill order to wring
from the establishment the greatest amount of pro-
fit to the Government is one which the public are
scarcely called ur on to further, for it has already
been pushed to the utmost limit to which it is en-
durable for the employes, and no further saving can
be effected in the department save by sacrificing the
interests of,the public. Nearly 90 per cent. of those
employed by the General and district post-offices in
the metropolis fill the subordinate positions of mes-
sengers, letter-carriers, or sorters, and the hours of
labour of these unfortunate functionaries have been
so much increased, while their rate of remuneration
has been so din4i§hed, that the pcsitions we have

mentioned no longer offer inducements for men of
average education and good character to enter them
at all. We know very well the maxim that labour
always commands its price, and it is because we are
impressed with the truth of this axiom, and know

that when a fair remuneration is not paid neither
good men nor _good work are to be got, that we
direct attention to the dealings of the Post-office
authorities in this matter. The three classes we
have named number about 4,000 men; the first
class, that of mcs-.engets, mesive 10s. a-week ; the
second, letter-carriers, from 18s. to 235. ; the third,
the ortcrs, from 30s. a-week to £2.• . Of this num-
ber• heady 3,000 are letter-carriers or messengers ;
for, in order to reduce still further the expense and
increase the profit to the establishment, a number
of the sorters lin;o been made to do what was for-
u-.0 ly clerks' w o;•k, while the letter•carriers and
sorters are employed indiscriminately in either sort-
ing or taking out the mails, Let us take the case of
the letter-carriers and sorters. These men come to

,he Post-office at 5 in the morning, and work at sort-

ing the letters and papers till 8, some of them find-
ing time in the interval to swallow down their break-
fasts in the shape of a lump of dry bread. At 8 o'clock
they have to take out the letters for delivery till 11
or 12, and they are then supposed to have the inter-
val between 12 and 5 in the evening to themselves,
though they must not be out of the way, as they are
held to be liable for duty when called upon. At 5
they return to the Post-office, where they again sort
the letters, and again at 8 take them out for deli-
very till 9 or 10. Nominally the messengers are
not supposed to sort or take out letters at all, but in
fact, as these men are employed at only 10s. a week,
their number has been increased, and they discharge
each duty as much as the letter carriers themselves.
The great chiefs-6f-the Post-office, indeed, endea-
vour to excuse this dreadful system of underpay-
ment by asserting that those employed at 10s. can
make a shilling a night extra by over-hours. But
in effect this is denied by the working chiefs of de-
partments, who allege that the men cannot always
find :this extra work to do, and that, as an over-
tasked and ill-fed man has not an inexhaustible
fund of energy in him, those who do work over-
hours one night are next day unable to get through
their regular labour, and die public service suffers
in consequence. Again, iris said that the letter-
carriers de facto work at tailoring or job-work of
various kinds in the interval they are supposed to
have to themselves between 12 and 5 in the day.
But this, if true, only shows that the men are driven
to seek other aids, besides their regular Govern-
ment duty in the Post-office, to keep life and soul
together. The wages were formerly some three or
four shillings a week higher, but, without the least
reason assigned, they have been reduced, and the
characters of the class of persons employed have
sunk in proportion. Hard-worked and ill-paid,
the men are discontented and sullen—they are
indifferent to the proper performance o f their
duties, and hold the threat of dismissal in utter
disdain, feeling sure, as they say, that even
stonebreaking on the roadside would not be harder
labour, and scarcely less remunerative. These
things have borne their natural fruits, and there
is no concealing the fact that Post-office robberies
are certainly not on the decrease, though they are
less discovered than formerly, notwithstanding
the immense extent to which the system of
espionnage has been developed. It may seem.in-
credible, yet we are informed on the most reli-
able authorities that there is scarcely a person
at the General Post-office, from letter-carriers up to
heads of departments, who has not at some time
or other been suspected and placed under the sur-
veillance of Post-office detectives. Many, indeed,
have even been actually searched for missing letters
specially marked, and sent through their division to
detect their supposed felonies. No one can tell with
accuracy the extent to which this espionnage has
been carried. It is only felt to be everywhere, and
shrewedly guessed to cost a far larger sum for its
maintenance than would, if divided among the
salaries of the subordinate officials, be sufficient to
secure men of a higher class and better character)
As it is, even this all-pervading system of detec-
tives fails, as we have said, to cheek peculation. The
Custom-house used to hold it as a principle that
when the duty on any article was more than 30 per
cent. it was impossible to prevent smuggling; and
so, we suppose, even the most jealous system of
police will fail to prevent robbery when ill-paid
men have letters passing through their bands
directed to bankers, and which their experience
"teseltes-them --often enntaiTriargc mains-in-cheques
notes. We need scarcely say that the system of
inadequate remuneration is by no means confined to
the subordinates, for Post-office payment of all
kinds is proverbial, though in the case of the clerks
and others the feeling it excites is simply one of
deep discontent, and of course it never manifests
itself in peculation. But this discontent has passed
into a feeling much deeper than is generally im-
plied by the term, and we may be said to speak in
the names of two-thirds of those employed at St.
Martin's:le-Grand when we state that the great
wish there now is for a Parliamentary inquiry into
the whole postal system, both as regards the in-
terests of the public and the interests of those em-
ployed. If any mem oer of the House will take the
trouble to visit the Post-office and investigate this
matter for himself for a few days, he will find that
want of room, want of improved system, and want
of a properly paid and efficient staff, are fast giving
rise to such disorganisation as almost calls for the
interference of the Legislature. Unless some such
step is taken the public may depend that the mis-
management and discontent which have been so long
accruing will continue to show themselves even
more rapidly than of late, and till one of the most
important of our national institutions loses all claim
to the character of efficiency. •

TIM' BURGLARY AND 01.U.RDER. AT

8TAME0111).

Henry Corby was yesterday charged before the
borough magistrates with the murder of Elizabeth
Pulley, by suffocating, choking, strangling, and
burning her ; and also with breaking into the
dwelling-house of the deceased and stealing there-
from 100 sovereigns, a £lO note, six gold rings, a
quantity of silver plat; and a writing-desk, her
property. The prisoner is about 50 years of age
and a carpenter.

Sergeant Harrison, of the Stamford borough
police, examined—On Monday, March 19, I was
directed to enter the premises of Elizabeth Pulley,
who lived in the High-street, St. Martin's. I went
in company with Mr. George and constable Dal-
rymple, and with a ladder toiled the south wall of
Miss Pulley's back premises. I got over into the
garden, and then, by opening the garden door, let
in Mr. George and the Rev. J. Place. We went
down towards the house, and found the passage
door wide open. • We looked into the side of the
back entrance, and saw nothing there. We then
looked into the room on the opposite side, the door
of which was partly open, and there, on the hearth,
I saw the body of the deceased, Miss Pulley. The
body lay within about three or four inches of the
fire-grate, on the east side of the room. Deceased
lay on her back, with her head on the hearthstone,
and the body in a slanting direction, in front of the
grate ; from the shoulders downivards the 'body
was on the boarded floor. It was an oak floor. The
head was turned a little over, the left shoulder to-
wards the grate, and the legs were crossed. Parts
of the clothing, and also of the body, had been de-
stroyed by fire. The remains of the clothing showed
deceased to have been fully dressed. A brass can-
dlestick (produced) was lying between the left arm
and the body, the top of the candlestick inclining
a little towards the body. The clothes were wholly
burnt off both arms, and partly off the upper portion
The legs wcre not all burnt. There ap-
of the body.
peared to be the ashes of some covering, as a vest,
lying over the fore part of the face, so tat the up-
per part only could be distinctly seen. A bonnet
which the deceased had on was partly burnt away.
The right arm was elevated by the side of the
body, with the elbow resting on the floor. The fingers
were porgy burnt off, and the remainder cf the
hand was charred. The left hand, which lay out
from the body, was also a good deal burnt, but not
so much as the right. Some ashes from the cloth-
ing lay between the left arm and the body. The
body did not appear to be at all elevated from the
floor. I did not perceive any rings or jewelry any-
where about. The fire was out, but there was a
strong smell of burning still in the room. In the
grate I saw some peat and some paper, apparently
laid ready for lighting, but which bad not been
lighted. There was no carpet on the floor ; a table
stood in the centre of the room ; the fender and
fire-irons stood on the south side of the room, away
from the fireplace ; there was no coal in the grate.
I locked up the room, until it was visited by the
coroner's jury, between 6 and 7. o'clock the same
evening. I accompanied the jury to the house, and
unlocked the door for them. The body was then
in the same state as when I left it in the morning.
I saw the body moved by one of the jurymen, _Mr.
Hibbing. He took hold of it with the tongs, and
raised it partly upon the left side, to search for the
pocket. I then saw that the floor was burnt and
covered with ashes. Mr. Holkings, another jury-
man, took hold 9f the fingers of the right hand, in

~earth of a ring, and the ends crumbled off. From
this examination by the jury the burnt clothes were
a good deal disturbed, and swept off. They swept
off that which lay across the face. The face ap-
peared to he swollen, and very brown, as if it had
been a good deal smoked.

Mr. Mark Johnson, surgeon, of Stamford, said,—
I knew the late Miss ,Pulley. On Monday, the
26th of March, I made a post mortem examination
of her body, assisted by Mr. Reward. Previous
to doing so I inspected the room where she was
found dead. Sergeant Harrison pointed out the
position in which the deceased was found. I saw
a hole in the floor, about six inches in circumferenee.
The floor was of oak. The hole was prodawd
the board having been burnt thr'ough. The-linru.
ing had extended to and charm:4lw htittni,on whic'
the board lay.
Mr. Pollard proved that the bo%was.in the floor
when the body was removed,' Ttidboily lay partlx
over the hole. On the SiaY-t ber. the funeral
witness cut the burnt board cpt,- and found
underneath some charred ash of tile clothing of the
dceeased.

Mr. Jackson then resumed his evidence as fol-
lows :—I was informed that the body had lain
upon the burnt hole in the floor. The pest-mor-.
tem examination took place at the nail and Swan
Inn, in a coach house, to which the body was re-
moved previous to being opened. The body was
taken out of the coffin inlny presence, and placed
upon a table. I recOgnise'd the body as that of
Elizabeth Pulley, 'whom I knew very well. • The
body appeared as if parts of it had been burnt to a
cinder. I removed the burnt clothes. Both sides of
the chest, particularly the left, and the arms were
completely burnt to a cinder. The right hand
was similarly burnt, no vestige of muscle being left.
Part of the metacarpal bones of the hand were burnt
and broken off. The left arm below the elbow was
not so much burnt; above the elbow it was
charred much the same as the right. The left
hand was very firmly clinched. There was blood
on the back of the head and shoulders, and it had
spread round the back. I thought the blood had
proceeded from the left car and from the nose and
mouth. 1 did not find any wound on the head.
'The linen was stained with blood, which I thought
came from the mouth and ear. The face was singed
over and scorched, but not so much as the other
parts named. The eyes were suffused with blood,
and were also burnt; the eyebrows wero burnt,
and the tongue was swollen as if about to protrude
from the mouth, and there was a good deal of
bloody saliva. There was an opening on the ex-
ternal surface of the body, between the ribs on the
left side, which communicated with the chest.
The hole seemed to have been caused by burn-
ing. I could probe the chest through this opening.
The lungs were very much go..ged with blood, and
in a highly congested state. The heart was some-
what small and somewhat fat, and its cavities
were empty. The lungs cut fleshy, and full
of blood. They were by no meens in a natural
state. I have no doubt the deceased was
knocked down, strangled, and then burnt
to a cinder. I think there might be some little
life remaining when the body was burnt, but of
this I cannot be sure. There was a blister on the
top of the chest, which would rather lead to the
supposition that vitality- remained in some degree
after the strangulation. Blood never flows from
a burn only.
Mr. Howard, a surgeon, minutely described the
appearances which the body presented, and gave
his opinion that the fire had acted on it before
death. The prisoner was then remanded till Wed-
nesday week.