The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-18 00:00:00

HORRIBLE MURDER IN FRANCE.

PARIS, Saturday.--The crime of murder is mak-
ing lamentable progress in France, but, strange to
say, the cases are comparatively few in the great
'towns. The villages and agricultural districts in
general supply the hideous announcements which
are to be found in every number of the Gazette des
Tribunaux. The case lam about to record will
astonish even those who still remember the name
of Thurtell and other miscreants of his class. M.
Lechaux, a retired builder and a member of the
Municipal Council, 64 years of age, resided with
his son and two daughters in the village of Olivet,
in the Department of the Loiret. The old gentle-
man, who had lost his wife some time since, was
paralytic. A misunderstanding existed between the
father and son relative to the partition of the pro-
perty belonging to the late Madame Lechaux. One
day last week the •old man returned home after a
drive in his carriage ; his daughter assisted him
to alight, and at the same moment his son ap-
proached, and, in an angry tone, asked his father
how he dared to dispose of some timber without
his permission. Thence an altercation ensued, when
the son laid hold of his father by the collar, and the
latter raised his cane. The son seized the end of
the cane, and by means of it drew the old man
towards his workshop. There be loosed the cane,
and suddenly seizing a carpenter's axe struck at his
father. The daughter, however, who clung to her
father, war,ded off the first blow. The parricide,
who is a man of herculean strength, struck again,
and wounded his father in the shoulder. Not
satisfied with that, he struck a third time, and
with such force that he cut through the face and
severed the carotid artery. Lechaux then fell,
and the daughter, who had used every effort to
prevent the perpetration of the crime, fled, terri-
fied at the ghastly sight, and screaming for assist-
ance- The parricide in the meantime quietly
picked up, the murdered man's cane, plhced it care-
fully beside the axe, and went upstairs to his room
and locked himself in. There he sat down at his
desk, receipted some accounts, and, to use his own
expression, " set his affairs in order." The officers
of justice having been apprisnl of what had occurred
went to the house, knocked at the door of the par-
ricide's room, and commanded him to open it in
the name of the law. "Presently," replied he,
"in a few minutes. . . Have patience ; I
will not destroy myself ; I will not do my family
that honour. I will die on the scaffold." The
officer insisted, and the door was finally opened.
The Imperial attorney, accompanied by an officer
and two. Gendarmes, proceeded to interrogate the
parricide, who coolly confessed his crime, adding,.
" It must have happened sooner or later." Antoine
Lechaux, who is 40 years of aee, unmarried, and
possessed of an independent fortune, was committed
to the prison of Orleans at 10 o'clock at night, fol-
lowed by an immense crowd, who waited several
hours to catch a glimpse of the assassin. His trial
will take place at the approaching assizes.

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119)4

93

THE LAW OF MARRIAGE.

(Front the Morning Post.)

A fourth edition of that remarkable pamphlet,
Mrs. Norton's " Letter to the Queer'," is new out,
and while the subject of a revision of the marriage
laws is under discussion in Parliament, even our
legislators might profit by some of the arguments
in its pages, especially these which point out the
strange anomaly between the Scotch and English
method of dealing with these subjects. Against
the extraordinary alarm displayed by some of
those who speak of any change in trio marriage laws
as an experiment fraught with danger, Mrs. Norton
quotes, with quiet humour, the story of the Gor-
man peasant, who, being warned that Le would be
drowned if he a-Lempted to cross a certain bridge,
replied, " I have already crossed it ;' and she puts
this puzzling question to English legislators. "fn
Scotland, the ',ridge to justice has been crossed:
are English lards prepared to assert that Scotch
virtue perished in the experiment ?" The argument
of her book, however, is neither for facility of di-
vorce, nor for a "strong-minded" assertion of
equality, nor even for a pertinacious claim on sepa-
rate property between man and wife ; but sitnplY
for a tribunal of marriage and divoree,with a large,
indeed an unbounded, discretion of control over
married persons of either sex, who are living in 3
state of disunion ; so that both husband and wit.°,
may be under the law, for the better protection eL
the woman, and for the entire avoidance of the
prolonged and revolting scandals which result from.
the present struggle between 'contending parties-
Certainly if no other good resu'ted from a revision
of the laws of marriage and divorce, such suP-
pressiou of public warfare would be a boon to
society in general.
Some striking remarks are added in an appendix
to Mis. Norton's present edition, on the late ease
Baring v. Gordon, in which two married pa_ rt
equally injured, are in this position, that the in-
jured husband has a prompt and effectual remedYt
and the injured wile has no remedy at all. though
the.cireumstances of the wrong are identical for
either party.
Several women have lately attempted to argue
on the undoubted oppression, the admitted op-
pression, of the present marriage laws, but none
have argued with as Much combined intelligence
and moderation as the author of "A Letter to the
Queen ;"' and the observations with which she con;
eludes her appendix may not inopportunely fin
a place in our columns, as an effectual answer to
the somewhat unchivalrous speech of Mr. Hope dur-
ing the brief discussion of Sir Erskine Perry's 1311i"
Mrs. Norton says—
" It is time this timid handling of the scales of Justice
should cease—it is time that the aristocracy of judgment'
which so readily commits to prison the hi-tad finder
poor family for beating his wife, should venture on ogee
cing cing bad gentlemen. The quotation still holds good;
in 1611—

The laves like spider-webs are wrought ;
Great flies escape—the small are caught.'
and it is a quotation little to our credit.
" Above all, it is time, since the feelings of chiva!rc
have not vanished with the fashion of tournaments,
the gentlemen of England should cease to answer with:
mocking sneer the attempts made by women "
plead their own cause. Let male indignation be sr•
peased by the thought, that for one 'strong minded *lc;
man' —for one woman strong.hearted enough to bel'
ridicule, and intelligent enough to argue—a hundred, t
least, are sitting, feebly weeping by lone firesides, a°
writing quires of letters to brothers and friends to
them righted,' without the smallest inkling of coinPfe",
hension of any law whatever, except that law of necees'
which compels them to suffer 1
" Nor will women band together. That is an idle
dread. Their feelings are strong ; their experience Ore.
row. Each thinks the hardship of her own ca,e tn°,
specially calculated to move compassion or rouse innlb;
nation than any other ; each fears to associate that oos,,
with (Alms, lest those others should seem less weilPft
of aid than she deems her own; each judges beret
i
with the utmost possible favour ; each calls ei4o,
for help. They have a sort of true unreasoaing I
stinct that ;aggregate resistance could not serve
i
them. They call with separate, jealous voices, 0°':,11
plaintive, some vehement • but call as they may, tbero
leel in their hearts (and none more truly than 1) t'bg
they are zilt summoning equals to do battle, but gulf
superiors for protection. In no way confederrtted--4i
cept as classed instances of a similar wrong—they doff,
group to4ether to demand a right ; but meet by chon
like other poor suitors, on the common ground of tilt.
court where they needs must deliver their several Pe
tions. irg
"Let law, authority, and justice overrule all accord
to their deservings. Amen."

Country Markets.