The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-16 00:00:00

sPilitioi THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The common belief that murder is on the increase is
not confirmed by statistics, but there are times when it is
favoured by an inexplicable concurrence of atrocious crimes.
The Spring Assizes of the present year have disclosed a
blacker calendar than the Times remembers for some years
past, and our own circuit reports for the 12th and 13th March
alone contain the account of no less than four trials for
murder. One of these cases belongs to what must, we fear,
he called the ordinary type of murder, committed by a lover
in a violent paroxysm of jealousy. Each of the other three,
however, exhibits some remarkable features which appear
to call for special attention. Two resulted in conviction,
one in acquittal ; but the undisputed facts of this last case
(which had been known as " the Bromley murder ")
were shocking enough without the inferences drawn
by the prosecution. The other two are the notorious
" Todmorden murder," the author of which was taken
red-handed, and confessed his guilt, and the " Romney
murder," which was committed by Mrs. Kidder on the
child, and which contrasts strangely with the former in all
its external incidents. However widely these cases may
differ in their superficial features, there is a certain deeper
resemblance between them which it may be instructive to
notice. They are all characterised, not excluding the
Bromley case, by a disparity between the motive and the
crime which is nothing less than portentous. The man
who could resolve to immolate a whole household because
he was not allowed to keep company there with his sweet-
heart, the woman who could drown a harmless child
because it was not her own, and the two men who at
least thrust out a, poor homeless creature to perish of cold
on a rough winter's night because she could not pay
for a lodging, must have been equally destitute, we
might be tempted to say, of any human feeling.
And yet the evidence does not altogether justify such a
conclusion. The first, in particular, though he carried out
his execrable design with relentless ferocity, and silenced
every prayer for mercy with the words, " Where's my
Sarah ?" appears to have been capable of sincere affection,
and might possibly have lived to make a kind husband, if
these fiendish passions had not been kindled within him.
The one reflection which is forced upon us by such revela-
tions as these is that murder is never likely to be extin-
guished by any future progress, whether of law or educa-
tion. Christianity and civilisation have done much to
banish or check some other crimes, but the spirit of murder
remains unsubdued. Murders, indeed, are seldom com-
mitted by professional criminals, and seem to spring from
a moral source which no preventive agency has yet suc-
ceeded in reaching.

The Post comments on the " strange " bill introduced
into the French Chamber for the regulation of public meet-
ings. Having dealt with the Press, the Corps L6glislatif
proceeds to make a law limiting the right of public meet-
ings. The Press Bill is extraordinary enough, and has,
taken from many papers the most interesting part of
their contents ; but the meetings bill is.stranger still. There
are only two ways of expressing one's opinion—by writing
and speaking. The latter may be carried on by a candi-
date for the Corps Legislatif, but under the surveillance
of the police. The police commissary will, in fact, take
the chair, and when he calls the speaker to order, the
latter, if not in his own interest, at least in that of his
seven sponsors, is found to comply, and turn the attention
of his hearers to a less exciting topic. The police are prover.
bially zealous, and French commissaries of police are espe-
cially so, and it is therefore not unfair to assume that into
whatever errors those who are called upon to temper
the warmth of parliamentary candidates may fall, they
will not be attributable to want of zeal. At any moment
the prefect of the department or the mayor can dissolve the
meeting. Such is the unsolicited boon which the French
Government are about to confer on the French people.
That it was unsolicited we can really believe ; that it
should be unappreciated is equally possible. The notiot
of addressing future cunstituents under such conditions
must seem to us indescribably funny ; but the existing
political system in France, under which the sovereign is the
Government, renders the proposed course of procedure at
least intelligible.

The Daily News points out that during the last twenty
years continental Governments have borrowed money to
amounts out of all proportion to their resources, and for
purposes and objects which it is notorious have not contri-
buted to the good of the nation, and which have since been
renounced. We have been so foolish as to lend money to
help Governments- to keep up large armies and hostile
tariffs, depriving their people at once of the power and the
means of purchasing of us. This, however, is not so
much a consideration for individual lenders as for
Governments. What is now to be remarked is that the
Governments who have been so recklessly borrowing are
at lenzth compelled to face their difficulties. A country
that borrows money in some, though undue, propor-
tion to its means, has it in its power to correct its
mistakes at its own expense. What other Governments
can do we are likely. soon to see. It would be satisfactory
to know that they were in all cases about to meet the
exigency by economy and a conscientious rigour of taxa-
tion. It is said that Russia, for instance, always pays its
dividends regularly; s) did the Brighton Railway until its
rosources came to an end. And it is exactly to this point
that the lender must look, even at the cost of same trouble,
if he would have the satisfaction of having acted prudently.
The good intentions of weak Governments an worthless :
every spendthrift means to pay some day in full with
interest. The punctuality of reckless Governments is of
no value as a pledge of the future ; their collapsQ is only a
question of years. Resources—not undeveloped resources,
which are practically non-existent—but proximate and
effective resources, sufficient for the burden they have to
bear, should stand first in the consideration of the foreign
lender. They may not form an absolute guarantee, but
they are the sine qua nose of the lender who has not the
motive of patriotism.

There is a popular song which, in language morn
emphatic than elegant, invokes Divine displeasure upon
those " who rob a poor man of his beer." Thirsty souls
who cheer this refrain to the very echo, have probably
perused with peculiar satisfaction the report of some recen
proceedings at Bow-street against an offender who conies,
says the Herald, if not within the letta., at least withir.
the spirit, of the malediction. Mr. 0. C. B. Williams, of
Kingslancl, was summoned for selling to a publican a plan.
tity of saccharine matter, to be used as a substitute for
malt. The defendant was a brewer, who appears to have
been too ambitious. Not content with the manufacture
of malt and hops into the liquor which the London public
loves, he has made two decoctions, called "maltheine "
and " hydromel," which appear to be valued chiefly
because they can be passed off for what they are not.
But Mr. Wil;iams has been well punished. The magis-
trate, deeming that maltheine and hydromel were only
fine names for adulterative compounds, inflicted the
penalty of 5.!500 ; thus, we should imagine, completely
spoiling the look of that part of Mr. Williams's balance-
sheet -n which the profit and loss of the maltheine and
hydromel trade are entered. Our contemporary trusts
that the infliction of this heavy penalty will suffice to send
such stuff, for a time at least, out of the market, and will
satisfy brewers that they will do best by keeping to their
legitimate trade.

Coventry has avenged Devonport. Mr. Busfiela
rerrand, wbo was deprive€ of his hardly-won seat for the
latter on the ground of certain technical /aches, has re-
turned the compliment by ousting his successful rival at
the last election for Coventry. The select committee
which was appointed to try the petition against the return
of Mr. Mather Jackson has concluded its labours by
declaring that the sitting member was guilty of bribery
by his agents ; that he was not duly elected, and that tIA
election is therefore void. If the Premier's Corrupt

Practices Pill were in force, justice, observes the
Sian lard, would have been rendered sooner and more
amply- It is true that only three days have been
occupied in the inquiry, but the election took place
so far back as July last. Under the new system
the question might have been tried some seven or
eight months back at the very scene of the scandal. It
would have been competent for the committee to order
that the agents of corruption should be criminally prose.
cuted, and to confer the seat at once upon Mr. Ferrand,
instead of forcing him to go through the labour and
expense of a second election. The story of Coventry reads
tamely beside the grander episodes of Totnea and Lan-
caster, Reigate and Yarmouth. One contemplates with
something like respect the knave who has sold his honour
and his vote dearly for from fifty to ten pounds, as at
Totnes or Lancaster; but your Coventry Liberal, who
knocks himself down to the first bidder at ten shillings
and a breakfast, is an object of disgust and contempt.
The-Telegraph reminds us that by the death of Lady
Tichborne, which took place last week, a new element of
doubt is introduced into the contest now pending for
the title and estates of the Tichborne family. The unex.
p,,cted appearance, some time ago, of a person who claimed
to be the rightful heir attracted an amount of interest very
much greater than that excited by ordinary cases of di3.
'nix(
E Isuccession, not merely because the new competitor's
previous history had been romantic, but because the lady
now deceased received him as her 5011, and thus put a stamp
of validity on his claims. The gentleman who, after an
absence of many yea-:s in Australia, was so recognised, has
now lost the most valuable witness that cold be produced
in his favour, the one whose positive and direct evidence
would naturally outweigh all merely negative .proofs that
could be offered on the other side. To what extent his
position will be affected remains to be seen ; but it is
scarcely surprising that, where so much depended on the
lady's life, her sudden demise should have awakened hih
suspicion, and that a formal inquiry should have been made
into the causes of her death.

TIrE RATEPAYING CLAUSES.—A meeting in the
Town-hall of Hackney has been called, upon a numerously
signed requisition, on the 25th inst.