The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-12-13 00:00:00

eificial state of society

g in the district, as

course of the inquiry, forms a

guide to the state of public

s, than can be found in the mere necessity for ft
Viev

lin this light, the calendar

which has just been cleared presents a painful aspect

than three

foul die has stained its p;

Not fewer

)esides a numerous

catalogue of injuries by stabbin
swell the list of its atrocities. Pre-eminent among these
in the repulsiveness of its features, was the case in which
a man was accused of having deliberately, and on the
promptings of sordid avarice, murdered two bts, his
step-sons, the immediately inciting motive being to
secure the burial fees due by two societies, in which the
lives of the children were insured for sums which, in the
aggregate, amounted to somewhere about £2O. The crime in
this case was not proved, although the evidence displayed
re. bearing heavily

have contributed to

circumstances of a very suspicious n

on the

Llleged criminality of the prisoner

mount

of evidence falling short of entire conviction, the man

was, of course, and properly, acquitted. That the crime
of murder, prompted by the foul stimulus alleged in the
instance referred to, is one which pollutes our criminal

annals to an alarming extent, is too true to admit of cavil

or denial ; and, staining

as its guilt unquestionably does

it was fitting that the venerable

Judge presiding at the assizes should direct special atten-
tion to its dangerous prevalence, with a view, if possible,

if that object can be achieved by legisla-

that of preventing burial clubs-from doing more than
simply defraying the bona fide costs of the funeral, and
forbidding them from supplying, on any consideration,

money to the relations or representatives of the deceased,
is of so simple and practical a character as to strongly
recommend it for adoption. It at once annihilates pros-
pective profit as an incentive to such murders. If befit-

tiny the character and position of the presiding Judge to
advise the adoption of such a change in the principle of
burial clubs, it was not less seemly and becoming on the
part of the Grand Jury to echo in their presentment the
recommendation of the bench, and by all the authority

attached to its character to impress upon the Legislature
the urgency and importance of some such provision. This
they did in a style of terse and expressive simplicity—with

.gunorwardness, and with an earnestness of
purpose which reflects high credit on their philanthropy
and judgment.

manly st

The other two charges of murder, neither of which led

to convictions commensurate with the gravity of the ac-

cusation, were marked by features each in some degree
peculiar to itself. In both instances the homicides were
effected by stabbing with a knife ; and in each case the

death of the victim folic

A in a brief period after the

fiction of the wound. In neither case was there the

slightest room for dubiety as to the perpetrator of the
crime. Here, however, the parallel ceases, and the circum-
stances to some extent differ. In one case the deadly
weapon was carried by the criminal as an ordinary appen-
dage of personal furniture ; in the other, the instrument
was sought for and selected. In the case in which Cope-
land stabbed and almost instantaneously killed Sunder-
land, the police constable, the prisoner was at the time

in the act of perpetrating an offence against the law,
while the victim, in the execution of his duty, was
endeavouring to make a prisoner of the offender.
Copeland, resisting for the moment, made his escape,
E. I pursued by the officer, and during this temporary freedom

inflict fatal injury upon his pursuers—being seized, he
carried his threat into full execution, by stabbing Sunder.
land in the thigh with such unerring fatality of aim as
caused his death within a few minutes. Such is a brief
but truthful narrative of the transaction ; and such a
transaction, so terminating, amounts, in our simple judg-

ment, to murder, or it is no crime. The jury viewed the
case in a light widely different from that in which it pre-

sents i

self to us, and

they determined that, while it was a
grave crime, it was not murder. It is true that much
stress was laid, and for aught that we know to the con-

Crary properly lam, upon tne tact that violence, to an un-
necessary and even cruel extent, was used by the police
against the prisoner ; and something was also said as to
the capture of Copeland, under the circumstances, being
an illegal act. If this be true, and if it was proved that

the arrest was in itself illegal

and was effected, as well as

accompanied, by unnecessary and cruel violence, the jury

might have found, and in all probability the judge would
have directd an acquittal of the prisoner ; but, in refer-

ence to such a homicide, acquitting of murder and con-
victing of manslaughter appears to us an extraordinary

confusion of terms, and a confounding of two very distinct
crimes. The allegations of ill-treatment, if well founded,
as we suspect there is too much reason for believing, would
indeed have made good and telling pleas, if advanced in
mitigation of the penalty incurred by Copeland through
his too ready recourse to the knife, though we cannot look
on them as substantial reasons for viewing his crime in
any other light than that of murder. In making these
remarks, we have purposely abstained from any allusion

to the punishment which must have been awarded to the
culprit, had he been convicted of the more serious crime,
as we do not think it is legitimately within the province
of a jury to speculate upon the amount of punishment
their verdicts may infer, their duty being simply to declare
whether the evidence laid before them is or is not suffi-
cient to establish the guilt of the accused. Having dwelt
at such length upon the case of Copeland, little remains
to be said on that of Montero, the Spaniard, who stabbed
first one man and then another, in an affray on the street,

the chief feature in his case being that he was hardly impli-
cated in the quarrel which he so suddenly took part in, and
terminated by killing one man and severely and dangerously
wounding another. A verdict of manslaughter, in his
case as well as in that of Copeland, was considered by the
jury a sufficient vindication of the law, and a proper
estimate of those crimes by which, in such circumstances,
two individuals were suddenly and wantonly deprived of

ght under notice

hey atrord of the it

beyond the

with which the lower ci

Ler the exciting

.n instrument

ing out of the

me presenting themselves at I

---
were those aris-

and minis,

ime slit

'dings which unhappily prevail

remedy

vu, tney recom.

rr, as IN

urinated, the relations between the employing and thi

employed classes will become better understood ; and the
more that understanding of relationship is appreciate 4
the more readily will the interests of the two classes be.
_ _ _

seen to be identical

MUSIC AND THE DRAMA

CLASSICAL CH

,ER CONCB