Glasgow Courier. — 1864-11-03 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

THE TRIAL OF MULLER.  THE murder of Mr Briggs is one of the most remarkable ever perpetrated. It was remarkable on account of the quickness with which it was committed. Mr Briggs was certainly alive andwell, and apparently in perfect safety, within two minutes of being murdered. It would have taken less time to shoot him through the head than to fracture his skull with a heavy stick or lifepreserver. But Mr Briggs having a stick heavy enough, there was less chance of that instrument being made an important part of the evidence, than if Muller had bought, or borrowed, or stolen a pistol for the purpose. If the death had happened from a pistol-shot, there would have been no room for the murderer deceiving himself by the supposition, which may have been in his mind before the deed was done, that if the body were thrown out on the railway, and bruised by the fall or by the passing over it of a train, it would be impossible to tell that death arose from the blows with a stick. The murder was remarkable also from having been committed in a railway train, where the carriages are generally crowded, and in a densely populated district of London. It was committed, in fact, in one of the most public and exposed places in the kingdom. It was remarkable also for the enormous difficulty of discovering the murderer. On his being discovered, there never was anything simpler or more direct than the evidence against him. The evidence led to one of two conclusions—either Muller was the man; or the murderer had escaped without leaving behind him a single mark, or trace, or vestige of where he had gone to. If the murderer escaped, Muller was the only man who could give the least hint by which the track might have been followed. Muller did not give the hint, but, on the contrary, he went away himself. He had very likely, before thinking of the murder, resolved to go to America; and the murder committed, he did not change his mind on that point. Unless his defence amounted to a clear alibi, or to the casting of a very strong suspicion upon another person,it was sure to be unsuccessful. Suspicion, it is plain, was stronger against Muller than against any one else. That course was hopeless. There was no resource but the alibz. In fact when the accused betakes himself to an alibi, it is most frequently abandoning every other defence; and if the alibi fail, a conviction must follow.  A verdict of not guilty would have been attended with enormous difficulty. Mr Briggs was robbed and murdered. But suppose he had been robbed only and not murdered, and the question had been who stole the watch and chain? There could have been only one answer. Muller was, in that case, the man; on the clear ground that the robbery, being committed at ten o'clock on Saturday night, by ten o'clock on Monday morning Muller had the chain and sold it, and that he carried the watch with him next Friday when he sailed for New York. The mere -unsupported assertion that he bought the watch an'd chain from a man at the docks would not avail to clear the accused of the robbery, especiallyf if besides telling 414 story, he told twenty lies about the way in wll.lO. 1,4 e came into his hand—that he had had them for years or months, and so on. Muller on this ground was clearly the lohber. The next question then is, was Muller the robber ;fld another man the murderer? To answer this in the affirmative would be supremely difficult, even were there no goods in the case but the watch and chain, Put wlieri besicles these articles,