The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-19 00:00:00

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SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

PROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

GLOBE.—Sir :fames 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
more 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, are 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 au-enormous. crime, which none but the
most desperate of men will commit. Admit that putting
the convicted offe•ider 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 why 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, arid therefore not responsble to
the law for the death of the poor 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,which 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 medical examination, and to stay exe-
cution of' the sentence to afford time for the medical
practitioners to obtain the necessary information. Per-
sons acquainted with the history of the criminal, as
well as those whose business 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 he was committed during the considerable interval
which elapsed between his being committed for trial,
and his subsequent remand to their custody after sen-
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 not himself
the subject of mental aberration, would direct a lunatic
to be transported ? Bedlam, and not Van Diemen's
Land, 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 whose lives are as precious in the law's
eye as that of any other person? What, if in the
colony he, with the crafty 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 he had been improperly doomed, but all
the civil consequences of a conviction be averted. To
transport an innocent man for life—i. e. a man who, it is
admitted, ought never to have been convicted—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 lunatic 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 not, 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 to 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 case of Dalmas naturally induces a comparison
of it with the circumstances attendant on the case of
Crouch, recently exetiuted 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.
He 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 Datums; whose exemption from the -extreme penalty
of the law is regarded as extraordinary, if not un-
justifiable. The public opinion upon a comparison of
both cases is, that as Dalmas was saved from the death
to which be 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
remarks 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
have 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 in the preservation, of peace—we will add, the pro-
motion of prosperity and happiness everywhere, more
especially in our own neighbourhood ; secondly, the full
confidence 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 considerations seemed to us suf-
ficient, 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 rested chiefly upon conside-
rations of 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
to be a .hawed of in the- motive. We have learned
from all our best philosopher's 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 bringing duty and pro-
fit into harmony, goes farthest in fulfilling the designs
of the Author of all Good. In showing that peace, uni-
versal peace, is the interestof England, we show that Eng-
land has made an important-step in this honourable direc-
tion, and we put forward the fact (which the Courrier
Francais acknowledges as indisputable) as -a just occa-
sion of pride, and a strong claim to the confidence of the
world. We give, as it were, hostages to mankind that
no insane ambition of conquest on our part—no irra-
tional glorkstu—nro vile feeling of envy or revenge
willb their peace, and cause their
r9m pursuitpt
us of
to
blood to be squandered. In proving what the
,Courrier
Francais now admits; but what it before directly denied,
that the peace of Africa is for the interest of England,
we proved all we intended to prove, and it was with •
reference to this point that we introduced the apologue
the wolf and the lamb," not thinking to personify
the French people by the savage animal, but the Courrier
Francais itself, which plainly employed the wolf's
argument—that as England' must have wished for a war
, between Morocco and France, England kindled that war.
We should be sorry, indeed, to suppose that France,
or any considerable portion of the French people,
is so absurdly ignorant of the interest, the policy, and
the feeling of this country, as to suppose that we ought