The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-29 00:00:00

ing the policy of his predecessor, or when he published
what the Duke of WELLINGTON called a " song of
triumph," or when he excited universal wonder and
ridicule by his ordinance about the gates of Somnauth,
no man would have been surprised ; but after he has
carried into effect with more than ordinary glory,
great plans for the consolidation and protection of our
Indian Empire, and has restored that vast country to
universal peace, all men must wonder that the Court
of Directors should have chosen the present moment to
denounce his policy. On reading his public documents
no man could entertain a high idea of his intellectual
powers, but as words are not acts, and as the Noble
Lord had for a long time paid great attention to
Indian affairs, and moreover was regarded by his
colleagues as a person peculiarly fitted for the office
of Governor-General, we waited patiently to see
whether his deeds corresponded with his words, and
we were not disappointed. It would be difficult,
nay impossible, to point out any man filling that high
and responsible situation who has, in the same period,
produced such important results. There is no in-
stance on record when the bravery and discipline of
the Indian army stood so high as it does at the pre-
sent moment. There is no instance on record when
a handful of men, not exceeding 2,500, chiefly com-
posed too of Sepoys, defeated an army of
40,000 troops, regarded as the most war-
like in. India. The battle of Plassy will
bear no comparison with the battle of Meanee, and all
the conquests of CLIVE, HARRIS, and COENWALLIS
dwindle into insignificance when compared with the
all bdt peaceful occupation of the Indus. This great
conquest cost us two battles, and not more men than
were lost often in a partial skirmish in the Peninsular.
The affair of Gwalior was equally honourable, and
probably equally necessary, but on that we do not
presume to give an opinion, further than to say that,
if the aggressions under WELLESLEY were justifiable,
and the Court of Directors considered them justifiable
by their votes and grants to that great statesman
and ruler, the same Court cannot, with any plea of
justice, condemn Lord ELLENDOROUGH. He put down
a body of men that misled and kept in constant tur-
moil the neighbouring districts ; he placed on the throne
the rightful heir, and after arrangements were made
for securing further tranquillity, the British troops
evacuated the country. For- what then is he
cashiered ? It cannot be for pounds; shillings, and
pence. Gwalior paid the expenses of its regenera,
tion. The treasures captured at Hyderabad more
than paid the expedition into Sinde, and if there was
any fruitless expedition, it was that to Caubul, in
which the troops under PoLLocx, and NOTT, and
SALE, gloriously avenged the disasters sustained by
ELPHINSTONE, and established a prestige for British
valour which no money could purchase. We give
Lord ELLENBOROUGH little credit for this expedition,
but still it took place under his government and
with his permission, and if he were to blame
the Directors, after allowing such a period to
elapse, cannot include this in their catalogue
of crimes. Neither can they include his bombastic
proclamations, or any new song of triumph, for lat-
terly, in that respect, he has manifested great im-
provement. The public, therefore, must presume—
nay, they have a right to assert—that this sudden re-
solve is not grounded on any overt act. But the
most singular circumstance in the whole history of
this affair is, that the Board of Control and the Board
of Directors have taken different sides. Lord
ELLENDOROUGH is recalled against the wishes of the
Government. Of what use then is a Board of Con-
trol If the Directors can recal a Governor-Ge-
neral at pleasure, they are in every sense supreme
rulers in India. The office of Lord RIPON should be
at once abolished. We trust, however, that this col-
lision will lead to good, and that Parliament will not
suffer the important results of the last two years to be
neutralised by any selfish or niggardly policy. Eng-
land has entered on a great undertaking in Asia.
She cannot submit to half measures—she must main-
tain the boundary of the Indus, and put down all op-
position to her power in the interior, at every cost.

We quote the following paragraph from the Times
of Saturday.:—" Mr. Sheriff MUSGROVE attended
at Newgate yesterday to perform the painful duty of
fixing a day for the execution of MART PURLEY,
under sentence of death for the murder of her infant
child, and he has appointed Monday, the 6th of May,
at eight o'clock A.M. He afterwards visited the un-
happy woman, in company with the Rev. JOHN
DAVIS. Piclinstm and Mr. r'0:72.; GoViiiibi: The
prisoner received the announcement in the greatest
agony of mind, and in a few minutes became almost in-
sensible from grief. She has conducted herself with great
propriety in the prison, and exhibits every sign of real
penitence." Our first impression on reading the above
announcement was that of astonishment, our second,
that of unmitigated disgust. We could scarcely be-
lieve it possible that, in the nineteenth cen-
tury, which prides itself, and not unjustly, on its
humane endeavours to diminish the severity of our
criminal code, and to do away with capital punish-
ment, except in aggravated cases of atrocity, a poor
wretch—and she a woman, too !—could be forcibly
hurried out of existence on a public scaffold, for no
more deadly crime against society than that of having
attempted to commit suicide with her infant in her
arms, under the pressure of intolerable agony and
destitution, which had driven her to the very verge
of insanity. GOD forbid that we should seek to exte-
nuate the crime of murder ; it is one of the blackest
in the long calendar of guilt ; but here there was
no cool, wanton, deliberate attempt at murder,
prompted by a heartless and malignant nature; the
act sprung out of the very intensity of ma-
ternal affection ; the poor creature, MART. PURLEY,
had just lost her sole remaining chance of pro-
viding a day's meal for herself and starving child ; after
having, with incredible difficulty, scraped together a
few paltry shillings by making shirts at three half
pence each, and small dress caps, she was robbed of
every farthing she possessed ; and, under the over-
whelming agony of mind produced by the sudden
discovery of this loss ; feeling that nothing was left
her but death by a lingering process of starvation, or
a resort to a union workhouse, of which she had
already had a most painful and humiliating experi-
ence—the wretched mother, we say, under the
overwhelming influence of one of those pa-
roxysms of bewilderment which are so apt to
beset people in her situation, when the mind
has wholly lost its balance, and madness flashes
across the brain, resolved at once to put an end to her
griefs by suicide, and involve her child in the same
fate, knowing well what would be its condition,
should it be left on earth, when the only friend and
protector it had was gone. It was not a callous na-
ture, but an exquisitely sensitive one, that was exhi-
bited in this phrenzied determination—it was not
that the feelings of the mother lay dormant, but that
they were too painfully awakened, in the heart of
Maar FURLET ; had she been a merely selfish
parent she would have acted otherwise, and hur-
ried herself only out of life, while she left
her child behind, to take its chance in the great
struggle of existence. At the trial which took place
before Mr. Justice MAULE, there was no positive proof
that she had flung herself and infant into the water;
she herself observed in her defence, " I fell off the
plank into the wharf;" and the only evidence that
was adduced in contradiction of this assertion, was a
remark which she had been heard to make a few days
before, to the effect that she and her child would
meet a watery grave. If ever there was a case that
demanded the lenient 'consideration of the autho-
rities, this is that one. Legally speaking,
the sentence passed on her may have been
a just one ; but, morally speaking, it is a
most merciless and unrighteous one ; and pity
in
shot,
—benevolencer humanity— equity—every feeling,
of our common nature, alike shrinks
with horror from the idea of its being carried into
execution. Are there no degrees in such criminality
as that of which MART FURLET has been found
guilty ? Is the starved, hopeless, heart-broken, half-
frenzied mother, who, if she really did endeavour to
destroy her own offspring, did so out of the.
very excess and agony of her maternal love,
to meet with the same punishment u that
awarded to such heartless, deliberate murderers as
GREENACRI and COURVOISIER, who set about their
work with the cool, pitiless malignity of fiends ?
Even now, though the day of execution is fixed, we
can scarcely believe that the sentence will be carried
into execution ; for though in the eye of the law, the
sacrifice of' MARY FURLET may be just and orthodox,
"in the eye of humanity it cannot fail to be looked on
as a murder.
Since these observations on this singular case were