The Sun. — 1855-04-06 (London, England)

SHILLING".RAZOR. Sold evetywhere. Warranted good by the makers, JOSEPII MAPPIS and BKOTIIERS, Queen's Cutlery Works, Sheffield ; and 37, 3loorgate-street, City, London.  cused can be saved, not by establishing their innocence but by bringing a charge of quite a different nature against the accuser. We have not understood that, according to the law of England, a thief is to be allowed to escape if he can prove that the prosecutor is a cheat-. The law, we take it, would say that both, if convicted, ought to be punished, not that either ought to go free. Again, within these few days we have seen a laboured article in one j3urnal deprecating. the exaction of excessive bail in such cases, as if it were not the duty of the magistrate to proportion the bail to the means of the accused ; and an equally laboured article in another, gravely arguing that there is no moral obligation to prosecute a party suspected of theft who has occupied a respectable position in society. The writers of the anonymous letters, the counsel who showed an inclination to adOpt such a desperate line of defence; and the writers in the newspapers referred to, may have no knowledge of each other. Their co-operation may be entirely accidental and fortuitous. It is evident, however, that they are all labouring to a common end—to quash inquiry ; and that the quashing of inquiry would be tantamount to a defeat of justice. If the accused is innocent, justice requires that she shall be exculpated in the face of day, by means that leave no uneasy suspicions as to what were the real facts of the case ' • if guilty, she' ought not to escape merely because _the temptation to which she yielded must have been less in her case than in that of a needy person. We have no fears as to the result of the trial. We have perfect confidence in the shrewdness and integrity of twelve English jurymen. They will know how to banish from their minds any allegations or dis.cussions they may have heard before they entered the jury-box' and to decide upon the evidence there brought before them exclusively. But in the name of common sense and common morality, we must record our protest against the mischievous fallacies that have been ventilated on thapt•esent occasion. Some have argued that it is impossible for a rich person to commit a theft, because they can have no motive. Are men to disbelieve their eyes, because it is difficult to conjecture what can have influenced an offender to act as he has done ? The guilty fact having been proved, the guilt of the perpetrator is established : it is for metaphysicians, not for judges or juries, to puzzle their heads with curious in. quiries about motives. If a man kills another, is he to escape scot-free unless the prosecutor can show what object he proposed to attain by committing the murder ? Again, we are told that thefts committed \by wealthy persons can only be attributed to insanity, and that insane persons are not responsible for their actions. There is in this argument a fallacious play upon words. Psychologists call every person insane who labours under mental disease of any kind or degree. But it is not every kind or degree of insanity that can or ought to exempt culprits from punishment. The object of punish. ment is to afford a motive to abstain from crime to those in whom the natural motives for such abstinence are wanting or too weak. A man who may be unable to control an irregular desire may be induced to desist from its indulgence if he knows that he will be punished for it. All that is required in any man to render him amenable to punishment is that he shall be able to comprehend that punishment will be the consequence of his committing a prohibited act. There are mental diseases which render men incapable of comprehending this, and they who are visited by them are justly exempted from punishment. But mere violence of desire and deficiency of self-control, though they indicate a diseased state of mind, do not necessarily constitute insanity in the eye of equity or the law. This plea of. insanity has of late been grossly abused in criminal eases, and in the interest of public morals and public law the abuse must be checked.  riAPPIN'S SUPERIOR TABLE KNIVES, as made for the Crystal Palace, Sydenham ; handles cannot possibly become loose : the blades are all of the very first quality, being their ovn Sheffield manufacture. Buyers supplied at their London Warehouse, 37, Moorzate-stre: t, City; and Queen's Cutlery Works, Sheffield.