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

THE LIVERPOOL ELECTION

PETITION.

THE ' Albion states that the petitition against the re-
turn of Messrs. JIURSPALL and LIDDELL has been
withdrawn. If the report be true, it is a prudent resolve
on the part of the petitioners, who never had a chance,
except to pay costs. We can, therefore, readily excuse the
ingenuity with which an attempt is made to salve their
mortification by attributing their failure to the skill and
prudence of the. Conservative agents. It reminds us of
the story of the party of inebriates, after a jollification,
some of whom attributed their condition to the cucumber
they had eaten, and others to the pickled salmon.

THE: RECENT

ASSIZE.

TEAT necessity which calls for a winter assize, mitt
sively devoted to the trial of criminal

ses, seems, at

the first glance, to.indicate an alarming degeneracy in the
general morality. of our population. Such an inference,
how plausible soever- it may at first sight appear, is not
necessarily a correct, or even nearly a correct, one. If a
district or community advance rapidly in population and
commerce, the• ordinary relations of its institutions to its
requirements are disturbed. The aggravated dispropor-
tion between wealth and poverty, engendered as an indis-
pensable, though unhappy condition of such advancement,
leads to the development of evil passions, and affords
means for gratifying them unknown to localities less for-
tunately circumstanced in other respects. The state of
society here glanced. at is precisely that prevailing in the
district of which Liverpool forms at once the life and
centre ; it is rapidly increasing in numbers and in com-
mercial importance-;: and, while the development of evil
tendencies here is not greater than in other districts
placed in similar circumstances, the mere holding of an
additional criminal assize must not be looked on as indi-
cating degeneracy in. the moral health, but must be treated
as, more obviously, a concomitant of the numbers con-
gregated in our vicinity, than as an evidence of absolutely,
or even relatively,, advancing crime. By this considera-
tion, the fact itself' is at once divested of its most alarm-
ing peculiarity, and we become, however reluctantly,
reconciled to it as. one of the features, repulsive though
it be, pertaining to a highly artificial state of society.
The character- of crime prevailing in the district, as
that is unfolded in the course of the inquiry, forms a
guide to the state of public

safer and, more certain

morals, than can be found in the mere necessity for fre-
quent gaol deliveries. Viewed in this light, the calendar
which has just been cleared presents a painful aspect ;
crime of a very foul die has stained its pages. Not fewer

than three arraignments for murder, besides a numerous
catalogue of injuries by stabbing, have contributed to
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 boys, 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, amountedto somewhereabout £2O. The crime in
this case was not proved, although the evidence displayed
circumstances of a very suspicious nature, bearing heavily
on the alleged criminality of the prisoner. The amount
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
our national character, 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,
to its prevention, if that object can be achieved by legisla-
tive provision. The remedy suggested by his Lordship,
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-
ting 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
manly straightforwardness, and with an earnestness of
purpose which reflects high credit on their philanthropy
and judgment.

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 followed in a brief period after the
infliction 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,
pursued by the officer, and during this temporary freedom
armed himself with a knife, with which he threatened to
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 termivating, 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 itself 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-
trary properly laid, upon the fact 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 all 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
life. The other cases of stabbing brought under notice
at these assizes offer little subject for remark beyond the
painful evidence they afford of the increasing recklessness
with which the lower classes, chiefly under the exciting
influence of drink, resort to the knife as an instrument
for avenging even the most trifling injuries or affronts.

The only other forms of crime presenting themselves at
- - •

the assiz

of the common range, were those aris

ing out of the

strikes" in the manufacturing and mining

istricts, which his lordship evidently, " more in sorrow
attributed to excitement produced upon
by "long-tongued and empty-

than in ange
the ignorant