The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-02-07 00:00:00

Etherpoot tatibettb,

TUESDAY MORNrIVG, FEB. 7, 1854.

~,STREET ASSASSINATION-ITS
PUNISIME'NT - FALSE PHILAN-
THROPY.

Wums philanthropists and legislators appear
-to vie with each other in lightening the punish-
--3nent of crime, or in moderating the more repulsive
features of its character, unfortunately the objects
of such well-meant solicitude seem equally bent
cn pursuing the dictates of their lawless desires,
Till within a recent period, the over-severity of
ieur criminal code afforded a never-failing topic on
-which real or simulated humanity might expend
its eloquence. The legislature, yielding to the im-
portunity of that tenderness of heart, which, uncom-
promising in its efforts, was instant in season and
tout of season, removed nearly all the death-
punishments from our statute books ; retaining,
iiowever, death as the punishment of murder—the
lighest crime known to our moral sense—the
most severely condemned by Divine and human
institutions. Such a relaxation in our penal awards,
::it might have been thought, would amply con-
-lent even the most fastidious advocate of gentleness
and moral suasion. Those whose sense of moral
-ianty, whose tenderness of heart were so excitable,
'would naturally, it might have been thought, bow
to that highest of all injunctions, " Whoso
ihedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
sled." Whoever so reasoned would have reasoned
-vastly wide of the truth, as that is practically
Zeveloped by every day's experience. By a per-
:warted form of reasoning, and exercising a senti-
mentalism which usurps the functions of judgment
juries refuse to give validity to even the Divine corn-'=and ; and, by them, men, whose hands are
stained with murder, are declared perpetrators of
less heinous crimes, that they may escape the
jinnishment of death. By the exercise of such
jugglery the common-sense perceptions of 'men
are bewildered, the majesty of the law discounte-
nanced, the sacred obligations of justice perverted,
mud the command of Heaven itself set at nought.
For what purpose, let us ask, are all those sacri-
Eees of duty and violations of justice called into
operation ? To avert the doom of condign punish-
cunt upon some wretch, whose savage nature and
brutalized delights induce him to draw the assassin's
lrnife against a brawling brother whose misfortune
'or mistake it has been to excite his insensate and
dangerous wrath. To see "mercy sweeten justice"
is, indeed, an elevating, an ennobling spectacle ;
not so to see a sentimental mawkishness pervert
its streams or poison its pure waters at the fountain
-bead. Is all the sympathy of well-meaning enthu-
siasm to be denied to the victim and lavished on
the murderer ? That a felon may escape his
_richly merited fate, is society to be disorganised,
and every man's safety to be imperilled ?
as heartily as even the wildest of those
-sentimentalists can do, or wish to do, every desire
to familiarise the people with sanguinary exhibi-
tions, we cannot tamely acquiesce in a decision
-which, confounding deliberate assassination with
znanslaughter, seeks to soften, even in murder, the
most revolting features of its guilt.
We have been led to these remarks by the alarm-
ing and increasing frequency with which the com-
monest of street brawls, or the most ordinary ebul-
litions of drunken frenzy, find their termination in
recourse to the knife. Scarcely a week now elapses
in which such deplorable terminations of common-
place quarrel do not require to be dealt with by
our magistrates. Within the brief period of four
months our streets have witnessed the foul assassi-
nation of three victims, while numerous individuals
have received wounds, the non-fatality of which
seems little less than miraculous. It is but a night
.or two ago that a band of savage men, and disso-
lite women, inflamed by evil passions, and mad-
dened with drink, traversed a portion of our
thoroughfares, avowing their resolution to stab the
-first white man they should meet, and redeeming
-their demoniac pledge by plunging a knife into the
_bosom of a man, unfortunately attracted to his own
door by the noisy orgies of those murderous fiends
a man who had not spoken to them—whom they,
in all probability, had never seen. So lately as the
afternoon of this day sen'night, a young man en-
gaged in a street riot, presenting no uncommon
features to mark its seriousness, beyond the tragedy
in which it terminated, was recklessly butchered in
open day. Such appalling occurrences may well
make us pause, and inquire whether we are inhabi-
tants of a civilised land, boasting of the protection
-afforded in it to property and life, or have been un-
consciously transported to some barbarous shore,
where the benign influences of Christianity and
the blessings of civilisation are alike unknown.
While forcing this inquiry on us, with painful and
_startling urgency, these instances also significantly
point the necessity for adopting some mode effec-
tually to check the evil.
In connexion with this alarming subject, we are
reminded of the remarks made by Mr. POLLOCK,
on a late interesting occasion, relative to the mis-
tlirected and dangerous education acquired by
criminals in the pursuit of their nefarious calling ;
and the conviction is painfully forced upon us that
such baneful lessons are retrospective as well as
initiatory—that the reckless desperadoes of society
are as sensitively alive to the amount of punish-
ment accorded to their misdeeds as they are
studiously cunning in the mode of perpetrating
-them—that they perceive and estimate the leniency
bestowed on their position and circumstances,
'4 with a learned spirit of human dealing." If so,
bow awful the conviction that, in dealing leniently
with a deliberate assassin, we are unintentionally but
surely abetting the dreadful crime of murder. Every
one conversant with the practice of our criminal
vourts is aware of the readiness with which a cul-
prit can and does calculate the amount of punish-
ment the law decrees to certain forms of crime.
Row often must such a one, in even a limited ex-
perience, have heard a criminal say " I can only
get three months," or, " two years," as the case
may be for such or such an offence ; meaning, by
that, the term of imprisonment beyond which the
haw will not allow the judge to punish him. Can
any one be so besotted as believe such dangerous
'knowledge confined to punishments inflicted for
offences against property alone ? Who will believe
that the dastardly assassin has not calculated the
chances of escape with his own worthless life, ere
he plunges the cowardly and murdering steel into
the bosom of his unsuspecting victim ?

TITS BOARD OF TIZADR.—In consequenceeeeurred. of the increas-
ing duties which have hitherto i n theßoard of
Trade,railway
and mercantile marine departments of the
it has been found necessary to separate the several branches,
and to direct their operations to distinct public offices.
The statistical department is to be under the management
of Mr. A. Fonblanque, assisted by Mr. Drummond Oswal
The Board of Trade at present comprehends the general,
statistical, mercantile, marine railway, and the arts and
sciences departments.
=ADMIRALTY SURVEY OF VTR BALTIC.—The Admi-
ralty have appointed Mr. Peter Wellington, master R.N.,
to commission the Hecla, steam-sloop, and with half a
dozen other masters of the royal navy and a competent
complement to proceed to the Baltic, to make careful
surveys and soundings of the approaches.
States that
SUITOR.—The Madras A thenceum
b_t___, tllat a native suitor was committed one day last
AuTt4
novel
the Chief Justice for contempt of court, under
rather circumstances. He had brought an action
against certain
the verdict was pronounced which was unsuccessful, and when
to cut his throat beforeolounced he took out a knife and began
all the public.
instantly seized, and Sir Christopher Of course he was
off to gaol for the attemptr Rawlinson sent him
of authority which will ent(l) perpetrate a felony, "an act
to
confuse still further the
native notions as W what q man may do with Igo own,"