Year: 1864

The public was startled a few
weeks since by the intelligence of a
most atrocious murder at Maiden,
Massachusetts. A bank was robbed,
and to effect that crime with more as
surance of success and greater secu.
rity against detection, a murder was
committed, and a soul sent unshriven
to its Maker. So secretly and with
apparent safety had the deed of blood
been done, that it seemed to all human
foresight that every trace of the mur-
der had been removed from mortal
knowledge, and that the appalling
truth of the fearful crime would not
be known till the day when the secrets
Of all men are made bare. ..... .....


Aud yet within brief month has
the public again been startled by the
announcement that the ministers of
avenging justice are upon the track
Of the felon--that ho is overtaken and
seized, and that to make assurance
Of his guilt doubly sure" he has con-
fessed to the commission of the deed |!


There are those who will marvel at
the celebrity and certainty with which
the guilty man has been pursued
There are others who will wonder
how a man with such fearful doom in
prospect could, with whatever evi.
dence there might be against him, up
on the very instant of his arrest con-
fess bis guilt, and thus in the effect
bid the executioner lead him to the
gallows. All such have read the hu-
man heart and studied human conduct
to little profit. - a


The case in question, like thousands
with which the history of the world is
filled, proves that AL crime, but more
especially because Of its greater mo-
ment and atrocity, @a-


Murder, though it has no tongue, will speak


With most miraculous organ.


aud that guilty men, despite all eau,
tion and cunning, will leave behind
them traces Of their deeds that " all
great Neptune's ocean cannot wash
OUT The philosophy of crime teach
es that while men may employ ever
so much skill and evince ever SO much
cunning in its conception and perpe-
tration, and do up to the moment OF
its consummation act and reason as
DO other men in honest purposes, yet
that from that moment their judgment
forsakes them, their reason is over
thrown by their fears, their cunning
is paralyzed by the very violence OF
its struggles, and they deceive them
selves in the vehemence of their efforts
to deceive others. Guilt has distor-
ted their judgments. They do not rea-
son, as other men do, nor as they did
themselves up to the moment that
their consciences became stained with
the conviction of guilt. Success in
the commission of their crime will
make them bold and lead them to acts
which a clearer reason would warn
them against. Fearing each bush
an officer" their very efforts to shun
it will draw towards them attention
and suspicion. AS in the case of the
tragedy to which we refer, who but
one demented by reason of his guilt
and embolLened by his success beyond
the range of common prudence, would
have thought or dared to pass OIL at
once large quantity OF the very
bank notes stolen from the bank and


stained by the blood of the murdered


clerk | And upon what other hypoth


esis than that of loss Of all cunning


superadded to an appalling horror


that bereft him of all reason, can W.
account for it, that q man daring