The Statesman. — 1821-11-09 (London, England)

LEGAL SACRIFICES. _ _  . The uproar your English moralist has made about— " CHARACTER," has been at last the destruction of ALL character ; all confidence ; and with all confidence, all society is over in this once confiding and once generous country. So when rages the plague, every creature shuns the other ; and the hale and the sick are exactly in the same predicament, equally destitute. A taste for prosecution seems to be quite an English propensity, for almost every creature in London seems as it were a voluntary spy. If a stranger but look at the window of a jeweller, a dozes officious neighbours are watching him in ambush. iJ one person waits it the corner of a street for another, passing strangers will as if by sympathy, point him out to each other, and " wonder what he's doing." if a man saunter or muse in a field, he's plotting a robbery, or he's afraid to be seen in the streeb. If he walks on the banks of a canal, or within view of a pond or a basin, he's meditating suicide. la fact, every passer-by becomes sentinel on him, and the first surrealists of their ungenerous minds is to seek for an " engem" who is ALWATiI " by accident passing by", so very apropos. To those humane and honourable gentlemen, whose propensity is PROSEctrnow, whose morality is always ready to volunteer against, and never for, the life and happiness of their fellow creators; who translate every thing they cannot comprehend, according to their own filthy imaginations, and who give THEIR opinions as proofs, I dediCate the following story. The misled son of a worthy and respectable widow was indicted fur a forgery, with very little hopes of his escaping conviction. A day or two before the time appointed for the trial of this unfortunate young' man, be died suddenly. A coroner's inquest was held, and the verdict pronounced was, that tie had Died by . .the Visitation of God ! The crowd ab.out the prison door, which was: accordiagto law, thrown open daring the •attracted.the attestiup of as escilleacmivrin. *bps by acchlopteseae passiocky. He imprirodiwbavisisdinit' penk Is 4 wp.s fucreeds sites .which inOstvhd.. entered at the very moment the friends of the deceased were about to remove the body of the youth to the  With amazement, the surgeon hurried on his night gown, asked a few stammering questions, rummaged for a lancet, and snatching the candle from the hands of his pupil, crept tip-toe to the lecture room, as the lad hoped to perfect the recovery of the wretched patient, who now breathed aloud. But instead of assisting, he beheld his master—with horror beheld him, plunge his lancet into a particular/vein, and let out the struggling life for ever. After this midnight—this monstrous tragedy, the murderer retired to his bed with as much tranquillity as if be bad saved a life, not taken one—the poor apprentine to his apartment overwhelmed with horror and affliction. As immediate change took place in the spirits of the apprentice; be was dark and surly to his master ; previously disobedient—at last insolent; his health too was gone, lie came or staid away as be pleased. The master grew suspicious, conscious guilt had whispered the caul At length the young man absented altogether, an omen too fatal to be disregarded; but before the villain could provide for his escape he was arrested ; on a charge of murder preferred by the lad. He was tried, HANGED sal