Middlesbrough & Stockton Gazette and General Advertiser. — 1874-01-15 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

ENGLISH CRIME.  IT is a fact, gentle reader, that the world is no better now than it .used tb be. Sentimental , people may fondly believe that the world is beginning to see the error of its wicked ways, but though we wish as sincerely as they for the advent of the rnillenium, we are at times almost driven to think that the thousand years of blessedness are over, and the direct Satannic reign begun. It is a humiliating fact that the annals of a nation like Ours, a nation which holds a proud and just pre-eminence for civil and religious liberty among civilised kinkdoms, should be stained with the record of bloody and brutal deeds such as those which have been enacted in our own district within the last few months. It is neither wise, politic, nor right, that we should shut our eyes to the fact that the brutal gaglitfbuten are becoming more brutal, and that thetchrost rogues are be coming educated in their nitariolie arts, until, though we loathe the purpose to which they apply it, we are almost compeiled to admire their skill. If we compare the present with a hundred or a hundred and fifty years since we shall find that very few suffer capital punishment now in compariion with the numbers who were pitched into eternity in the "good old days." But we must not draw wrung coucluaions from this fact. England was not so steeped in crime then as she is now, but her laws were more severe. For crimes to which now the utmost sentence awarded is a few years penal servitude, the inevitable punishment then was death, so that we should arrive at a fallacious conclusidn if we took statistics merely as our guide. Lift the veil and take a peep in at the Chamber of Horrors, It is sickening we know. Can it be that a pure and virtuous lady across, whose mind scarce the thought of wrong has passed is of the same Wike,cieg Ls the Dtio7r Mai dreatuxes who glory in their shames 1 Is it possible that a man of letters, refinedo with noble  aspirations, who lives in a fancy-world a beautiful thoughts, generated by his own mind is brother to the Darlington murderer? It is dreadful to think of, it rouses passion almost and hitter contempt within our very virtuous breasts against these creatures whose bodies might be the dwelling places of the fabled gods of mitiquity, they are so utterly bad. But should it not also arouse sorrowful pity that human beings are so far fallen from their high estate? At ons time, from lidulpits and platforms, good, though celunnent men loudly pressed the claims of the poor negro as " a man and a brother," and they did so because some lofty and virtuous individuals who wore wigs, and were so fond of the colour white that they powdered their heads with flour, insisted that the negrci— because he was blaek—came of an inferior race. Axe we to disclaim any cJimection with our brother Englishmen, because of their blackness,. or what are we to do to make them morally white 1 Clearly hanging won't do it, and we doubt whether the method adopted of perform. ing that operation in private has had any beneficial effect. Hanging is made far too respectable a death now a days and though we certainly do not approve of public executions, yet we fail to see that any real advantage except decency, has been ob rained. How are we to get at the root of the evil is sow a very vital question. Murders are committed in the heat of passion, and in the most cold-blooded premeditated mariner. A great deal is certainly attributable to drunkenness, and it is certainly the duty of the legislature to see that at any rate men are not allowed to get drunk in public houses. Further than that it would be hard to go. jut after every national and municipal effort as been put forth that is at all available, we shall still find that English crime is more deadly, more brutal, and at times more refined than it used to be, and how to make it less dreadful must be one of the great questions of the day.  TO