The Sun. — 1863-12-30 (London, England)

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 30, 1863  The a„._. . Home setti:tion arrived at by the right hon. the in regard to the wretched criminal TOWNLEI,„I7' appears to us to be one likely to prove in the highest alarming in its conseauences. As constituting of announet:tselt, now that it has been definitively precedent,it holds out a frightful Prospect 13f immunity to any future criminals (like TowNt.. 'f) of the blackest dye well imaginable. Amore .11 utarl, a more dastardly murder--a murder more deliberately done in cold blood—than that perpetratedlal of. this miserable man l, by the hands found mentioned among all nowhere to be Newgate the cruel deeds recorded in the murderer, GEORGE VICTOR Towm:ldar• The mangy of ,„.t,thehdate education, a man even of ability, and, a; to w of his crime, enjoying among those who reputation for refinement, though the deed,,,i bilm a blood itself proved the refinement to be 0111 Y a merit of cruelty—has, by what appears to us h„,4%; weak concession on the part of the authorities, ;4 answer to a maudlin local clamour for a respite,' been allowed to escape from the penalties of the law, to the weight of which he had been most justly declared to have rendered himself amenable. It is not that we would be understood  to be here arguing in any way out of a sanguinar; yearning to see vengeance done upon this wretched man, according to the old pitiless dispensation of the Mosaic code—wherein an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life, each in its turn, was, as a rule, regarded as indispensable. All we are here desirous of insisting upon, in the instance of this educated assassin, this gentle 'orderer, is that while other condemned convicts are brought to the gallows and inexorably hung outy,tshooe neck. there until they are dead, for w,_ ean:lvldti,iu no way worse of their kind, in no should aa. outraged atrocious deliberation, jubtice of alicwitagb tliitraged by the flagrant inconsistency perpetrator of a crime of double blackness and t "'Pie infamy to esc3pe from a punish. mint to which leaser criminals are, as already insisted upon, pitilessly d„ The particular..q TowNtuatela, to the death. s crime need here no sort of recapitulation. It was a murder as eool4' thought out and , planned as any murder that wag ever perpetrated. Previously perpetration, not a to the date of its sanity had been entertained in regard to the of the man now declared to be 72 Of compos mentia, auac criminal lunatic, a homicidal Inonon. 'l' conduct upon the occasion of the murder never gob any one who saw him, or spoke with ilia], an impression that he was deranged. Throughout his lone and  patient trial by a jury of his fellow-countrymen— 3 honest, intelligent, and impartial Englishmen (we at least may be allowed to speak of them thu 5, seeing that the trial is long since over, and f nat we never had any brief in this case con fided to us)—honest, intelligent, impartial EngliF ,hmen, who were sworn to do this miserable man j' astice— throughout the whole of the long and pat lent trial of TowNLEY for the murder of Miss GoC ,DWIN, we say, the jury were in no way brought to believe, nor yet was the judge upon the beF3 ch who directAl the verdict, and who pronou ,t iced the sera:enee, led to believe, that the pris iner at the bar was an irresponsible agent—that h a was mad, or at any rate so far touched with madr ,esa as to be irresponsible. Atter the trial has 'lnen complete,l, after the verdict has been delive red in by the jury, after the sentence of death ha a been pronounced upon the condemned criminal by the lips of the Judge, then, but not until al, J,, a morbid agitation is set on foot in the coun' ,-:,T tainted by his presence, an agitation most morbid of its kind, as it ap, pears to us, the promoters of which agitation are i bent upon persuading the. authorities to do for this man of education, this revited gentleman of refinement, what it would be utterly pre_ osterous to have attempted doing for an illiterate mechanic or a hornyhanded agricultural labourer. The endeavour has been just now successfu.ly carried out. Miss GOODWIN' s murderer has received a respite. Commissioners of lunacy have examined into the state of the mind 'of