Tur, papers this week are filled with the Maybrick murder. Mrs. Maybrick was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, she had not been allowed to make a state-though she would probably have got off if
ment, and that statement, with its protestations of innocence, convinced the jury, and the judge too, apparently, of her guilt. But for some reason or other a portion of the press and the publ ted on res trying the case. Politics, it appears, were allowe to enter into it. Mr. Justice Stephen is hated by the Separatists because he tried the recent case of O'Brien 1. the Marquis of Salisbury, while Sir Charles Russell, who defended Mrs. Maybrick, is their legal idol. So the Separatist papers fought for Mrs. Maybrick, all those who oppose capital punishment under any citcumstances fought for her, all those who are shocked at the idea of a young and beautiful woman—though Mrs. Maybrick is neither very young nor very beautiful—being hanged fought for her; and the report was carefully spread that the Queen herself hoped that Mrs. Maybrick would not be hanged. Finally many Americans in England fought for her because, even if she did murder her husband, she was an American being tried by a jury of Englishmen, and in one letter from an American we find the grand suggestion that Mr. Robert Lincoln, the Minister to the Queen on behalf of Mrs. Meyrick, england, should' at once go and appeal to
because nothing could be more nol than for the son of the murdered Abraham to interfere to save the life of the niece of Abraham Lincoln's great rival, Jefferson Davis it having been officially denied that Mrs. Maybrick was related to Jefferson Davis at all. We could easily fil to-day's issue with extracts, shrieking and severe, from English papers on the subject of Mrs. May-brick. As usual, the most common-sense deliverance on the question is Mr. Labouchore's, for Mr, Labouchere is a first-rate guide in all regions but those of politics and finance; he says The fact is that a popular plebiscite in eriminal cases is an utter absurdity. Tt means that newspaper editors are to write ex parte articles on one side or the other; that emotional mobs and emotional letter-writers are to air their unreason; and that this is to constitute @ popular verdict. When a jury is empanelled in criminal case it is carefully Separated from the rest ofthe community, in order that public opinion may not interfere between the facts submitted to it and the conclusion that it deduces from those facts. The evidence is summed up by the Judge, and, if it be necessary, he warns the jury to Jock alone to facts, and not to allow itself to be influenced by any appeals made by advocates to sentiment. Kut if this new doctrine of rox populi be correct, either we ought to let the jury go to their homes, discuss the ease with their friends, and read every ez parte article that may appear in a newspaper} or we ought to go a step further, suppress the jury, and, when the evidence for and against a prisoner is over, submit the verdict to some rt of popular assembly, very few of whom may have taken the trouble to instruct themselves as to the facts. Circumstantial evidence is not a chain which depends upon the stron, of each particular link. It is a number of thin wires, not one of which may be strong enough to carry conviction, but several of which may snap, and yet leave sufficient to produce reasonable certainty. A prisoner has two objects in view; to kill a person, and to avoid being hanged for so.doing, "In auch cases the evidence must, almost always, be circumstantial. Guilt in such cases cannot be proved mathematically, and the certainty cannot be a mathematical one. It can to this, that a reasonable human bein doubt of the guilt of the incriminated person, after all that the most skilful advocacy has done to show that there may be a reasonable doubt, and all the efforts of the incriminated person to throw justice off the track.
Whilst the Maybrick trial was progressing; I read this and that part of the evidence, an Lformed the opinion than in all probability Mrs. Maybrick would be acquitted. Since the trial I have carefully read every word of the evidence, and I am bound to say that I have no reasonable doubt that she killed her husband. If I had been a Scotch juryman, with this evidence before me, I should have returned a verdict of "guilty" and not one of "not proven."
As regards the commutation of the sentence on the murderess, which was expected but not yet announced when the mail left, the Pall Mall is unusually logical. It There is a very large and a powerful bod) of opinion which says that Mrs. Maybricl must not be hanged, but says so on grounds which really cover the whole principle of Capital Punishment. For what, when examined closely, does the movement in Mrs, Maybrick's favour come to? It can only, if it is well reasoned, take two forms. The first position is a conviction that the poor woman is innocent. Those who hold this view do her cruel injury in petitioning merely for a reprieve—by which we suppose is meant Teprieve sine die, amounting, therefore, to commutation of the sentence into one of imprisonment for life. But if she be innocent, if the case be not legally proved against her, what right have we to imprison her? To execute an innocent prisoner is judicial murder; but to immure an innocent prisoner for life is a crime hardly if at all less terrible. No; itis the bounden duty of those who be lieve Mrs, Maybriek to be what the law con siders innocent, to petition for a free pardon—for that, and nothing short of that, Between instantaneous death and the living death of perpetual imprisonment, who shal aay whish is worse? one held the er to be innocent, then it were one's bounden duty, hot merely to save her from the former only, to conden her to the latter, but to see that the prison doors are opened to let her out free woman, For our own. part we cannot conscientiously take thie view of the case. Assuming that the Judge concurred in the verdict, we cannot honestly find any cause for disputing its justice. But, of course, there is still an element of doubt in the ease. Phere never is a case in which there is not, And it is on this that a second ground of objection to carrying out the sentence of the law may be basel, "The prisoner is conceivably innocent. The death penalty is irrevocable, he risk volved is too terrible to incur. Such is the line of thought which seems to be running through many minds, and God forbid that we should ay one word to check its course. But what wwe do say is that here too men and women should have the courage of their convic ther Mrs. Maybriek is legally Innocent or "eengni their logical conclusions, legally guilty. "If she be innocent, it is cruel cowardice to stop short of petitioning. the Growa for an abeciutely free pardon, {f, on the other hand, she is not actually believed to be innocent, but the existence of u doubt is hal to make the exoution of any trevooahe Prthen let us recognise frankly that, what we nasty a responsibility too great to be borne
fare asking for is the abolition of "Capital Punishment altogether.
The next most important incident of the week is undoubtedly the condemnation of and sentence on General Boulanger, but the Hnglish ike, he Prench papers are very much divided as to the elect. which the sentence would have on the elections. The Senate, or that part of which wat in judgment on the General, for the Con dervatives declined to assist in the trial, could hardly be called an impartial bod; the accused having long ago announced his intention, when he came to power, to abolish that venerable assembly, 90. that, as the St. James's says, "if the Upper Chamber did not consider the threat of its ow abolition an attentat, it would be the meekest of corporate bodies." There was, too, no defence, and many people must look askance at's judgment Biven entirely on the one-sided rajuiitoire St the prosecution, and pronounced by the Political enemies of the accused. The Zimes trims; it does not want to be on the wrong side it Boulanger should ater al carey the country. The Daily News is much more outspoken Tt is hard to see how General Boulanger is to recover from the effects of this judgment, if only because it excludes him from Prance. His fight was the turning point in his fortunes, and for the very simple reason that a butinée of sedition cannot poaibly prompt in the absence of the manager. One further consequence to be apprehended is that the subscriptions of all parties hostile to the Re-Public on which Boulangism has flourished tua fall a the prospect of austen becomes remote. The cost of the affair must have been enormous. The General has spent money at the rate of 2,000,000 francs a your. Most of it has come from the pockets of wealthy enemies of the Republic, and this is not Sacrifice which can be indefinitely prolonged. Boulangism lived only on the hopes of arum: mediate result, and Ropes of that kind ins country like France are not to be deferred.
The St. James's counts the situation in France as a Hobson's choice; it regards the present government as no better than the alternative offered by General Boulanger. This is how it speculates, If the mass of the French voters is likely to be shaken by proof that. their favourite is an intriguing adventurer who has not been particularly scrupulous in the choice of "his friends, the reguisitoire will doubtless produce some effect. It is filled with what we should Consider in this country as very loose assertion
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.