The New York herald., 1870-01-04
Mrs. Stowe's Now Beck On tho Byron
Scandal.


II is the peculiar province Of woman to
assert conviction without adducing scintilla
OF evidence in support thereof II don't
believe it," exclaims Mrs. Thingembob, and
when asked why she does not, the answer most
frequently is, because don't" AS matter
OF logic this is poor, but at the same time it is
unanswerable. In like manner Mrs. Stowe
recently asserted that Lord Byron was guilty
Of q most horrible crime. The charge was all
but unanimously assailed as false by the
press of America and Great Britain. Its
author was called upon to produce the proof,
and she replies in five hundred pages, repeat
ing at greater length all that she had before
said, without offering any additional evidence
whatever. ''Lord Byron was guilty Of incest
with his sister," she exclaimed some months
ago, and now, when summoned to state all she
knows about 1t, she tells us 'sBecause he was. )"
To this style Of reasoning we have no answer;
the most we can do is to reject it utterly, abso-
lutely, unquaifedly.
Elsewhere we publish full summary of
Mrs. Stoves book defending the assertions
made by her in the A@ansic MoatAly, which
have given rise to the now famous Byron con-
troversy. Unless pecuniary considerations
prompted author and publishers, we can hardly
conceive what other motive Influenced them to
give the work to the public. 1t is but tire
some repetition Of what was said before.
AS an argument it is weak and puerile;
as defence it only convicts Mrs.
Stowe Of having deliberately attempted
to load the memory of Lord Byron with
most unnatural crime, upon the eS p0rte
statement Of his wife. There is not in any one
of the five hundred pages a single new
fact advanced. 1t was very easy for Mrs.
Stowe to repeat that Lord Byron was guilty Of
q theory in support Of her assertion, based
upon his poems and letters, and the action of his
friends. But empty assertion and transparent
sophism were not what the public demanded.
Ii Mrs. Stowe had nothing more to say than
is contained in the new work her imperative
duty was to preserve prudent silence. 1t
was bad enough at first to make the charge
without proof; it is almost Infamous to repeat
without substantiating it. Mrs. Stowe was
not called upon to vindicate the memory of
Lady Byron; the world demanded that she
vindicate her own character for probity, for
| honor and for morality. How she has done
| this let her book answer. She had endeavorcd
to blast the reputation Of the dead and to cast
an indelible stain upon the living with empty
assertion. Men doubted what she had written.
Her own fair fame depended upon her defence.
With cool eGrontery she now comes before the
public and requests us to believe Lord Byron
guilty of incest because Lady Byron assured
her he was. She had told us that before.
in the book is that which we publish else
| where. Whether there was q conspiracy to
injure Lady Byron or not we care but little
| about, nor are we more than incidentally con-,
cerned in the physiological training and moral
| culture Of Lord Byron. That he was capable
| of the crime by no means proves him guilty
of it's commission. We think it quite suscepti-
BILE of proof that many men are capable of muir
dering their mothers-in-law, and that some
| have even meditated the crime; but capability
| and desire are quite different things from the
| act itself.
| If it was not that families of high standing
| in society are affected by this scandal its pub
lication might be source Of humorous con-
| tempt rather than of serious criticism. But
that, knowing how much pain must be inflicted
upon innocent and respectable persons, Mrs.
| Stowe and her publishers should persist in
! keeping before the public a SANDER disproved
| by an overwhelming mass Of evidence is
something which can be neither pailiated nor
excused. IF the object is to make money il
is immeasurably contemptible and we can
discern no higher motive, unless it may be to
| crafty morbid and pruricnu taste for sub
| jects of doubtful morality. If it is this last,
we can rejoice at having learned at last to
what extent the nastiness OF New England
| materialism can be carried.
Our News FROM CUBA BY MAIL.--We pub
lish in another part of the HERALD two letters
from our correspondents in Havana and Nue.
vitas. BY the former we learn that all, or
| nearly all, the Spanish reinforcements have
arrived and by the latter the ad-
x,aroo of Goparal p,,o1fo into tha ;c