Glasgow Courier. — 1861-08-29 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

THE VALUE OF A WOMAN'S LIFE IN THE COLONIES.  Nearly forty years ago, Sydney Smith reprehended the introduction of trial by jury into these colonies as an institution unsuitable to their social and political circumstances, and recommended that "for the first half century of their existence they should live under the simplicity and convenience of • modified despotism." If he could have lived to witness the vagaries of a colonial jury in the year 1861, he would have been confirmed in his belief that the gift of such "civilised machinery" was premature, seeing how often the ends of justice are defeated, and how the stupidity or the prejudices of a jury tend in many instances to offer impunity to malefactors, and render the administration of the law unequal and 'uncertain. A more glaring case in point could not be adduced than that of the man Currie, who expiates by a week's imprisonment the murder of his wife. The deceased and her husband lived in Moor Street,Collingwood. On the evening of the let of June,Currie,who had been absent from his house for three days, and appears to have been living on bad terms with his wife, returned home, somewhat the worse of liquor, but not intoxicated. He cleaned his gun, loaded it, and twenty minutes afterwards deliberately shot his wife. The poor woman staggered into the room where her son was lying in bed, and fell upon the floor,adjuring the boy to raise an alarm of murder. Currie followed her in, lifted her up, and observed, "Ellen, I knew this would be the way. I meant to do of ; and I have done it." He added that he had attempted to commit suicide by taking poison; and upon being remonstrated with by a neighbour, he answered (referring to the murder), "It's done, and can't be undone." On the previous Wednesday, according to the wife's statement, made in the presence of her husband, he had attempted to shoot her. When apprehended, he was found to be labouring under the effects of narcotic poison. This is a naked statement of the whole affair. The murder seems to have been deliberately undertaken and deliberately executed. There was no immediate provocation on the one side, and no sudden outburst of ungovernable passion on the other. Death was not inflicted by misadventure, and the murderous intention was not conceived upon the instant. The fatal act was the successful repetition of a previously unsuccessful attempt; and the fact of Currie having taken poison to evade suffering the legal penalties of hi own crime,. tells I strongly against any assumption that might be raised of his labouring under temporary insanity, since it implies a calculation of consequences somewhat foreign to the processes of an insane mind. In fact no such plea was attempted to be advanced by the counsel for the defence, who, apparently convinced of the hopelessness of contending against evidence so conclusive, contented himself by suggesting that the gun might have gone' off by accident; and we should imagine that no one in the court was more surprised than himself at finding the jury accepting this untenable hypothesis, and returning a verdict of manslaughter. So far from having shot his wife by accident, Currie declared to the dying woman that he "meant to do it,and had done it;" while her own opinion of the motive and nature of the act may be deduced from the circumstance of her hurrying into the room where her son was, and urging him "to go out and call murder." Murdered the unhappy woman was, beyond all doubt cruelly, and with malice aforethought, but a Melbourne jury, in the face of the clearest evidence, found a verdict which the judge could only receive as one tantamount to not guilty. The accused was either guilty of murder or only of culpable negligence, and if of the latter, the only logical sentence was that which the judge awarded. Mr Justice Molesworth was bound to accept the finding,andto proportion the punishment to the trivial offence imputed to the prisoner by the verdict of the juty. To say that such a nominal punishment for so atrocious a crime has excited universal astonishment, is to characterise the prevalent feeling by a xery mild expression. The indignation which has been excited is only equalled by the sentiment of insecurity to which decisions like these give rise in the public mind. The value of the punishment inflicted upon criminals is not so much due to its retributive as to its preventative character. The terrors of the law are more salutary when they operate to deter men from the commission of crime than when ~hey have a merely vindictive efficacy. It is the certainty that every delinquency will meet with its rigidly adjusted apportionsuent of punishment, and that the administration of justice is impartial, inflexible, and incorrupt, that gives security to society, and constitutes the bulwark of social order. Where this certainty is imperilled by the weakness of the Executive,or the incapacity or corruption of those who are entrusted with juiliaial or magisterial functions, men have recourse to what Bacon calls the "wild justice of revenge." There is no fear of our being driven to this extremity in a community like our own; but there is great risk of that wholenoine reverence for the law, and that implicit belief in the vigour and purity of its administration, which amount to an instinct in the mind of every Englishman,being permanently weakened by such acts as thoae of the Executive which reprieved Shanklin, and of the jury which absolved Currie. Such a verdict as that given in the latter case will go far to ur.dermine public confidence in that much-vaunted institution,triar by jury,and to strengthen the arguments of those who contend that society has outgrown that period of its existence when such an apparatus was a wise provision and a necessary safeguard, and that the administration of justice might peihaps be more evenly and righteously conducted in most MOS without the intervention of such an agency.—Melbourtie Argto.  The journals ot the department of the Indre state that a warrant for the arrest of a priest named Tessier, of St Maur, on the charges of criminal assault and infanticide, have just been issued by the magistrates of Chateauroux. He is in flight. A Mrriton.—An extraordinary meteor was seen, at about nine o'clock in the evening of the 12th, in the Basque country. It was taking a direction from south to north, and at the moment of its passage a sharp whistling noise was at first heard, and then a rumbling sound like that of a carriage. The meteor resembled a large comet, throwing out from its nucleus a magnificent tail, and disappeared without explosion. A streak of red light marked its passage for some minutes after.  Mn