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

NDON, WEDNESDAY, DEC. 30, 1863.  ThE, a,e. 7 Home s,tr.tsi on arrived at by the right hon. the tary, in regard to the wretched criminal TowNLEI, Dears to us to be one likely to prove in the highe,,taP ree alarming in its consequences. As constitutitulttif 2 ontioitself, now that it has been definitively :t: fearful precedent,it holds out a frightful prospect (,)1 immunity to any future criminals (Like Tow,,iElc) of the blackest dye well imaginable. A more a more dastardly murder--a murder more l by the hands iberately done in cold blood—than that perpetrated of this Miserable rn,, i nowhere found mentioned among all the to be 0 lecruel deeds recorded in the Newg,te e murderer, GEORGE VICTOR To.vi_m,t ndar. The education, a man even of ability, tk,„401; a mans of the date of his crime, enjoying among those -wi,tik: reputation for refinement, thoogh the a,,,,1 whim of a bloodt. a itself proved the refinement to be only 4 Inmeat cf cruelty—has, by what appears to us „,taoe t weak concession on the part of the authoritie,,itl 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 sanguinary 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 murderer, is that while other condemned conflicts are brought to th© gallows and inexorably hung by the neck there until they are dead, for deeds of blood in no way worse of their kind, in no v~,my done With more atrocious deliberation, justice should not be outraged by the flagrant inconsistency of allowing this perpetrator of a crime of double blackness and triple infamy to escape from a punishtneht to N‘hicla les,i tr criminals are, as already insisted upon, pitilessly doomed to lie the death. rie parziculars Of s ,r,sm "W LEY S crime need here rt of recapitulation. no So It was a marder as thought out and coolly planned as any murver der that was ever perperpetrated Previously p rpe tration to the date of its , not a suspicion had been entertained in regard to the sanity of the man now declared to be non compos mantis, a criminal lanatic, a homicidal monomaniac. Ilia conduct upon the occasion of the murder never g"ean y one - with him, en i "filo saw him, or sPo" impression Throng hilt km that he was deranged. and  patient trial by a jury of his fellow-countrymen— honest, intelligent, and impartial Englishmen (we at least may be allowed to speak of them thus, seeing that the trial is long since over, and that we never had any brief in this case confided to us)—honest, intelligent, impartial Englishmen, who were sworn to do this miserable man justice— throughout the whole of the long and patient trial of TOWNLEY for the murder of TAliss GOODWIN, we say, the jury were in no way brought to believe, nor yet was the judge upon the bench who directed the verdict, and who pronounced the sentence, led to believe, that the prisoner at the bar was an irresponsible agent—that he was mad, or at any rate so far touched with madness as to be irresponsible. After the trial has ben conapleteu, atter the verdict has been delivered in by the jury, after the sentence of death has been pronounced upon the condemned criminal by the lips of the Judge, then, but not until then, a morbid agitation is set on foot in the county tainted by his pre• Bence, an agitation most morbid of its kind, as it ap, pears to us, the promoters of which agitation are bent upon persuading the authorities to do for this man of education, this reputed gentleman of refinement, what it would be utterly preposterous to have attempted doing for an illiterate mechanic or a hornyhanded agricultural labourer. The endeavour has been just now successfuly carried out. Miss GOODwiN's murderer has received a respite. Commissioners of lunacy have examined into the state of the mina of