The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-18 00:00:00

et irb Zbition

SUN OFFICE, Seven o' Clock.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
GLOBE.--Sir James Graham's inexplicable course
with respect to the convict Dalmas has occasioned much
Surprise in the public mind, and has been made the sub-
ject of well-merited and strongly-marked censures. A
snore cold-blooded, premeditated murder than that of
which Dalmas was convicted, on evidence that afforded
no possibility of doubt as to his guilt, has not been often
perpetrated. While the penalty of death for deliberate
murder, remains unrepealed on the statute-book, no
imaginable reason can be assigned for exempting
Dalmas from the punishment to which he was sentenced.
The object of the -law, and the duty of those intrusted
with its execution, arc alike—to prevent murder; to
render life secure from the machinations of the mali-
cious, and from the violence of the cruel—to repress the
commission of an enormous crime, which none but the
most desperate of men will commit. Admit that putting
the convicted offender to death has sufficient effi-
•cacy, by way of example, to prevent the com-
mission of such offences—and this is the only
rational ground on which capital punishment is defen-
sible —there can be no reason w by Dalmas was reprieved;
except that which was implied by the medical examina-
tion to which he was subjected after sentence, viz., that
he was of unsound mind, and therefore not responsble to
the law for the death of the peor woman who was his vic-
tim. No suggestion of insanity was made by his counsel
on his trial—a line of defence, in the case of persons ac-
cused of flagrant offences,wh ich has of late become common
from the success that has attended its adoption in several
recent instances. Such a plea would, doubtless, have been
set up on his trial, had there been the slightest evidence
to sustain it. The defence was made to rest on a simple
denial of guilt; a legal objection to the reception of
the dying woman's declaration, which was admit-
ted to be valid by the Judges; and an attempt to shake
the testimony of the witnesses who identified the pri-
soner as the man they saw with the woman, or near
the spot, about the time the murder was perpetrated.
Notwithstanding this, if any statements, tending
to raise a doubt of the convict's sanity were forwarded
to the Home-office, we think Sir James Graham was
bound to direct a 2edical examination, and to stay exe-
cution of the sentence to ufford time for the medical
practitioners to obtain the necessary information. Per-
suns acquainted with the history of the criminal, as
well as those whose besiness it was to watch him care-
fully while in their custody, should be, and doubtless
were, examined. The medical examination of the'
wretched man ; of the chaplain of the prison ; and
of the gaolers to whose custody and watchful
care lie was committed during the considerable interval
. which elapsed between his being committed fiir
and his subsequent remand to their custody after sr n-
tence of death was passed upon him ; left no reason to
infer that Dalmas was of unsound mind, or in any re-
spect incapable of exercising a proper control over his
own conduct. The fact of the sentence being com-
muted into transportation for life is, in itself,
sufficient to show that the Home Secretary was satis-
fied as to the sanity of the murderer. For
what Minister of Justice, who was nut himself
the subject of mental aberration, would direct a lunatic
to be transported ? Bedlam, and not Van Diemen's
Lard, is the appropriate place of restraint, and affords
the only suitable discipline, for lunatics. If Dalmas
were insane, and if his insanity were indicated by a
propensity to murder, what a fearful responsibility has
Sir James Graham assumed ! What, if on his voyage
to the penal settlement to which the Home Secretary
has consigned him, Dalmas murder one of 'the un-
happy beings who are expatriated by the sentence
of the law, but whoso lives are as precious in the law's
eye as that of any other person? What, if in the
colony he, with the craf y vigilance for which lunatics
are distinguished, watch his opportunity, and slack his
thirst for blood by cutting the throat or knocking out
the brains of a convict, or of one of the overseers ?
Who would be responsible but the Home Secretary ?
—who, with an inconsistency partaking of insanity,
consigned a murderous lunatic to a penal settlement,
instead of confining him in a lunatic asylum
But it is suggested, that the evidence, upon under-
going revision, was not deemed satisfactory. Insanity
and innocency, combined, are incompatible as pleas ;
whether in answer to an indictment, or as the ground
of an application to the Crown for a commutation of
punishment. The one necessarily destroys the other.
if the evidence be deemed insufficient to sustain a
conviction—if discrepancies appear in material parts
of the testimony sufficiently grave to engender doubts
as to the actual guilt of the accused, the duty of
the Home Secretary is clear. A pardon should have
issued under the Great Seal, by which not only the
life of the convicted party would be saved from the
death to which be had been improperly doomed, but all
the civil consequences of a conviction be averted. To
transport an innocent man fur rife—i. e. a man who, it ie
admitted, ought never to have been coneicted—to consign
such a one to all the horrible deprivations and inflictions
comprehended in dragging out existence in a penal set-
tlement—is manifestly as much opposed to justice as send-
ing a lu.nate to a penal settlement is inconsistent with
reason, and dangerous to the safety of those, however
degraded by crime, with whom he may be associated.
We do nit, by any means, adopt the hypothesis of.
the statement, that Dalmas' conviction was not justified
by evidence. On the contrary, we consider that the
proof was irrefragable. But assuming that well-sus-
tained doubt was raised in the breast of Sir James
Graham as te its sufficiency, we contend that to cut
the knot, which he was unable to untie, by transport-
ing the convict for life, was neither just to the indi-
vidual, respectful to the laws, nor safe to the public.
The ease of Dalmas naturally induces a comparison
of it with the circumstances attendant on the case of
Crouch, recently executed at Newgate for the murder
of his wife, and the different treatment he received from
Sir James Graham with that which Dalmas has received
at his hands. The cases of Crouch and Dalmas occurred
within a month of each other. The execution of Crouch
Was by no means in accordance with public opinion.
Ile was generally regarded as a man " subject to fits
'of insanity," caused by the accident which had hap-
pened to him, and by which his brain was injured. No
such defence was offered, or even suggested, in the case
of Dalinas; whose exemption from the extreme penalty
of the law is regarded as extraordinary, if not un-
i;etstifiable. The public opinion upon a comparison of
both cases is, that as Dalmas was saved front the death
'to which he was consigned by the law, Crouch, who
suffered its penalty under circumstances which rendered
his sanity more than doubtful, was unjustly executed.
STANDARD.—Courtesy commands that we reply,
though we shall discharge the duty in few words, to the
e.emarks with which the Courrier Francais has honoured
this journal. It will probably be recollected that we
engaged in controversy with our Paris Contemporary
with the simple design of proving that England can
shave no motive for exciting hostility against France,
either in Morocco or in any other part of the north of
Africa; and that the arguments by which we endeavoured
to establish this proof—first, the direct and immedi-
ate interest which England, as a commercial nation,
• has ie. the preservation of peace—we will add, the pro-
mofron of prosperity and happiness t very% here, more
ereec'ally in our own neighbourhood ; secondly,•the full
oididence to that effect—the conviction, whether well
or ill-founded, universally prevailing in this country=-
that ultimately we can in any event suffer nothing
from the establishment of our neighbours upon the
African coast. These consid rations seemed to us suf-
Selena in the absence of all evidence or pretence of
evidence countervailing them, to demonstrate that Eng-
/land has had no share in exciting the hostility of the
:Moors against France. We le sted chiefly upon conside-
ratiens er:' interest, and we are not ashamed to have done
so, not only because practically among reasonable men
and reasonably governed nations, interest chiefly pre-
vails, but also because there is really nothing
tb be a bawd of in the motive. We have learned
from all our best philosophers and soundest divines—
Locke and Butler among others—that an enlightened
self-interest is the great bond of society, and that the
individual that succeeds best in brining duty and pro-
fit into harmony, goes farthest in fulfilling the deigns
of the Author of all Good. Its showing that peace, uni-
versal peace, is the interest of England, we show that Eng-
land has made an important step in this hoeourable direc-
tion, and we put forward the tact (which the Courrier
Fraecai,e ecknoeledges as indisputable) as a just occa-
*ion of pride, and a strong claim to the confidence of the
w0..1d. We give, as it were, hostages to mankind that
rso insane ambition of conquest on our part—no irra-
tional pursuit of glory—no vile feeling of envy or revenge
will prompt us to disturb their peace, and cause their
blood to be squandered. In proving what the Courrier
Francois now udmits, but what it before directly denied,
that the peace of Mica is fur the interest of England,
we proved all we intended to prove, and it was with
Yeferenee to this point that we introduced the apologue
of "the wolf and the lamb," not thinking to personify
the Trench people by the savage animal, but the Courrier
-Francais itself, which pleinly employed the wolf's
argument—that as England must have wished for a war
between Merocco and Fraece, England kindled that war.
We should be sorry, indeed, to suppose that France,
or any consul, ruble portion of the French people,
is so ab-urdly ignorant of the interest, the policy, and
the feeling of this country, as to suppose that we ought
not to wish or do not wish to our next door neighbours
all the prosperity and happiness they can desire for
themselves. In speaking of the settlement of Algiers,
our allusion to . which is seized upon as a ground
of.offenee, we gave exprescon to a conviction which
• is, we believe, universal in this country, and
in meet other countries of Europe, and which
is certainly held by a very great number of
inteligent men in France itself—the conviction that
the settlement cennot be permanently maintained upon
any very extensive scale, if at all. All the circumstances
of the case eorsidered, this conviction is not in the
least shaken by any votes which the Chamber
of IN put:es may be compelled by " the pressure
front without" to pass, or the overnment may,
by force of the same pressure, be compelled to pro-
pose. The history of the world, ancient and modern,
presents no example of a territory as extensive—half as
extensive—one-tenth as extensive as Algeria, per-
rnanen'ly retsined under such circumstances as those
under which France has acquired and now holds that
country. England, with her vast naval superiority,
and the resources for military service which her one
hundred millions of Indian population could sup-
ply, would deem it madness to attempt such
an acquisition of territory. But the prevailing opinion
k pp, of England in the matter is most plainly written in our
An equality, if not predominance, in the
e/ e
Mediterranean is of coarse as desirable to as as
't can be to France ; but how have we sought to
fe re this object ? By large territorial conquests ;
:pen a in their acquisition ; more expensive,-and
/- ways hazardous in their preservation ? No ; though
eYe
se.

Mr. MUNTZ begged to observe that his amendment
did not du away with all interference with the guardians
—it only rendered it necessary that application should
be made by a majority of the ratepayers before such in-
terference could take place.
Strangeis were then ordered to withdraw, and the
Committee divided, when there appeared—
For Mr. Muntz's amendment 23
Against it

-Majority against the amendment... —55
Colonel WOOD moved the following addition to the
clause:—" Provided always, that the said Commissioners
shall, by order under their hands and seal, upon applica-
tion, in writing of two-thirds of the guardians elected for
any parish in which the relief of the poor is now admi-
nistered by a board of guardians, or a board of trustees,
under a local Act, and which is united with any other
parish or parishes for the administration of the relief of
the poor, if such parish, according to the enumeration of
the population published by authority of Parliament,
contain more than twenty thousand persons, to declare
such parish to be separated from such union; and the re-
lief of the poor shall thereafter be administered in such
parish by a board of guardians, elected according to the
provisions of the Poor-law Amendment Act, or by a
board of guardians or trustees, elected under a local
Act, as the said Commissioners may direct." He had
presented a petition from Kensington on the subject, and
he thought parishes with such a pyptilation ought to
have the power of sepaiating from a union without