The Blackpool Herald. — 1875-11-19 (Blackpool, Lancashire, England)

THE PUNISHMENT OF MURDER.  No community has a right to dictate to another the manner in which crime should be judged or criminals punished. Each country has its own way of regarding homicide. In France duelling is illegal, yet Frenchmen who slay their adversaries in single combat are rarely visited with a very severe penalty; but in England to kill a man in a duel is held to be wilful murder; and most assuredly should we hang the next principal in a fatal "affair of honour," and send his seconds to penal servitude. The practice in Italy is not N ery common, but the more ferocious and the more cowardly form of that which Dr. Johnson called private warfare still to a very great extent obtains there. Secret or open assassination is yet the great plaguespot of Italian society, and the crime becomes even more appalling to contemplate when we find the deed accompanied by conspiracy and subornation, and when the hired bravo is introduced to stiike the fatal blow which the prime mover in the outrage has had the villainy to conceive, but has lacked the brute courage to inflict. That Italians of high culture and social standing have even within recent times recognised the existence of this national evil is manifest from the fact that not long since a number of Lombard, Piedmontese, and Tuscan gentlemen banded themselves together as a society for the abolition of the use of the knife. The frank admission implied by the establishment of such an association is the only apology which foreigners can advance for remonstrating against the comparative leniency of the sentences passed for the murder of Itaffaelle Sonzogno. All who wish well to civilisation, to progress, and to enlightenment must be solicitous for the future of united ltaly. But those who rejoice at her steady advance in constitutionalism and at the moderation and good sense with which she has, on the whole, used her astonishing good fortune, must find their gratification seriously checked when it becomes apparent by such a judgment as that which has just been pronounced at Rome that deliberate assassination carried out by hired bravos has not yet become so thoroughly repugnant to the people of Italy as to render the condign punishment of murderers a matter of public insistence and State necessity. The deed instigated by Luciani and committed by Frezza was worthy of the worst period of Italian history—of the days, indeed, of the BoreimIt was wholly and foully discreditable to the epoch of Garibaldi and Cavour. - We cry for no man's blood ; but so long as capital punishment is permitted, under any circumstances, to hold its place in the criminal codes of Christian States, it is obvious tkat such mon sters as Luciani ought to expiate their crimes upon the scaffold.—London Telegraph.  The army clothing factory of Sir Peter Tait, Limerick, was closed on Saturday evening, and all hands paid off. The want of continental orders is the cause of the closing. The establishment had been working many years, and contracts for the supply of military and naval uniforms had been carried out for the British Government, for the Confederate States Government (during the American civil war), and more recently for the continental armies. Over 600 hands have been thrown out of employment. With reference to a statement which has appeared to the effect that the office of Agent-General for Canada, held by Mr. E. Jenkins, M.P., is one of profit under the Crown, which disqualifies him from sitting as a Member of Parliament, we are requested to state that on inquiry at the Colonial Office it was intimated that the matter has not been brought officially before the authorities, but that no doubt is entertained that the agent-generalship for a colony is not a disqualification for Parliament. It will be remembered that Mr. Edmund Burke and Mr. Roebuck held simile! uositions.—Leed,s Mercury.