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go on in this way, and that he must kill the Russian Finn, or they would never get to London. On no occasion had any personal quarrel arisen, or ill-feeling been manifested between the prisoner and the deceased. Matters continued to go on in the same manner, the delusion of the prisoner being well known to, and regarded in a good-humored spirit by, his shipmates. No one anticipated the terrible result. During the night of the 24th of November the prisoner had to watch on deck, and when free to act and unobserved, he seems to have gone to the bunk where the unfortunate deceased man was sleeping, and attacked him with a carpenter's axe, inflicting five desperate wounds upon his neck and shoulders, the effect of the former injuries being nearly to sever the head from the body. The prisoner was immediately suspected as the murderer. He was seen to be washing blood from his hands, and to throw an axe overboard. He was at once seized and asked how he had come to murder his comrade. The reply he made was, that "if he had not done so, the ship would have gone on the rocks, and they would all have been lost." There had been a heavy gale of wind blowing at the time, and there appeared to be no doubt that he had committed the act under the impression that if he did not kill the deceased, both his own safety and that of the crew would be endangered. Under these facts, notwithstanding the charge of the learned judge, the Baron Channell, the jury found the accused guilty of wilful murder, ignoring the suggestion of any unsoundness of mind, and therefore withholding from the verdict any recommendation to mercy.

The learned judge accompanied the sentence of death with such observations as leave little doubt relative to the impression on his own mind, even though he condemned the prisoner according to law. He observed, "that the jury had found themselves compelled to convict the prisoner of wilful murder; and as to the act itself, there was no doubt he had committed it. The defence set up was, that all the time he was laboring under a delusion which compelled him to commit

the crime, and that, therefore, he was not responsible. It was not contended that he did not on ordinary occasions fully appreciate the difference between right and wrong, but it was said that he was laboring under a delusion, and that the effect of this delusion was to compel him to commit the act. The jury have carefully considered the matter, and they have arrived at the conclusion that they are not justified, under the circumstances, in acquitting him on the ground of insanity, and it therefore became his duty to pass upon him the sentence of the law for the crime of murder." The prisoner bowed to the judge, and was then removed.

The sentence of Anderson was subsequently, on the recommendation of several medical gentlemen, commuted to imprisonment for life.

In regard to the propriety of Anderson's punishment there can be no reasonable doubt. Delusions such as his do not justify homicide, and were a few like him severely punished, there would be less superstition and fewer delusions. While death is the penalty for murder, such lunatics as Anderson should be made to suffer it. His crime was deliberate and premeditated, and the fact that it originated in ignorance and false intellectual processes, though it may lessen his criminality, does not make it any safer for society to remit the punishment.

Again, some of the insane are such monsters of depravity that they should be slain, upon the same principle that we slay wild and ferocious beasts. Such a one was the Alton murderer. On a fine afternoon a clerk in a lawyer's office took a walk out of town. He saw some little girls playing in a field near the road. One of them, a bright and lively child, he persuaded to go with him into an adjoining hop-garden, and sent the others home by giving them some half-pence. Shortly afterward he was seen alone, and he returned to his office and made an entry in his diary. The little girl was missed; her parents became alarmed. Upon inquiry, it was ascertained that she was last seen going toward the hop-gar

den, and on searching there, her body was found cut up into small pieces. What she underwent before the butchery could not be ascertained, because parts of her body could not be found at all. Suspicion fell on the lawyer's clerk, and he was arrested. His desk was searched, and a diary found, in which was this newlymade entry: "Killed a little girl; it was fine and hot."

The evidence at the trial showed that a near relative of his father was in confinement, suffering from homicidal mania, and that his father had also been insane. It was likewise proved by many witnesses that the prisoner was unlike other people; that he was subject to attacks of melancholy, during which he would weep without evident cause; that his conduct had been capricious, and that it had been necessary to watch him, for fear that he would commit suicide. Taking these circumstances into consideration, there is more than a reasonable probability that this wretch was insane. But the jury disregarded them; a verdict of guilty was rendered, and he was executed.

All psychologists recognize the force of example. A man commits suicide in some unusual manner, and straightway this becomes the prevailing mode of ac

complishing self-destruction. All are likewise familiar with the principle called the "force of suggestion." An individual becomes melancholic from an exaggeration of his selfish instincts. His emotion might carry him no farther, till suddenly he hears that a terrible murder has been committed. He eagerly reads the details; he broods over all the minutiæ, till they are assimilated to his own morbid thoughts. He perhaps learns that the perpetrator is insane, and will, thus, probably escape punishment. Nothing is therefore more in consonance with his ideas than to go and do likewise, and the suggestion soon ripens into a frightful reality. Let it be understood that such murderers will be punished, and they will the better control their morbid impulses.

That many of the insane possess great powers of self-control is well known to all those who have studied the various

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phases of mental aberration. fluence of rewards and punishments is by no means nugatory, and a discipline very healthful to their disordered intellects or emotions can be thus brought to bear upon them. Every superintendent of a lunatic asylum knows that many of his worst patients can be improved in their conduct, mind, and character, by being rewarded when they deserve commendation, and punished when they have incurred censure. These rewards and punishments not only influence the patients directly concerned, but are understood and commented upon by many of the others.

Now the same is true of the insane outside of asylums-and there are many such who pass through life scarcely suspected of being the subjects of mental aberration, but who simply wait for the exciting cause which is to bring their latent susceptibilities into action. Let them understand that insanity does not license an individual to do what he pleases without punishment, and a power is brought to the aid of their wavering intellects which may turn the scale definitely in their favor. It is not only for the safety of society, therefore, that insane criminals should be punished.

Of course, the punishments should be adapted to the nature of the crime and the character of the insanity. Without pretending at this time to go into details, it may be stated as the opinion of the writer that an insane person who commits murder should never again be allowed to go at large. He should be incarcerated for the term of his natural life in a penitentiary asylum, both as a means of protecting society and as providing opportunities for his cure.

One word in regard to the duties of medical experts.

They have nothing to do with the law. It is their business to expound the science of the subject regardless of the consequences either to the prisoner or society. They do this by answering questions that are put to them on the witnessstand, and after they have studied the facts or alleged facts of the case. So far, therefore, as regards their opinions

in the matter at issue, they are based upon testimony, or what they are told by counsel is testimony. It thus frequently happens that experts called on the two sides of a case give answers that apparently are diametrically opposite, and this not because there is any essential difference in their views, but because the same hypothetical questions are not put to each. The way to avoid this great difficulty is for the hypothetical questions which are supposed to embrace the facts to be put by the court, and not by the lawyers; or for the judge rigidly to exclude statements that are not in evidence.

Again, an expert gives his opinions after having devoted time and labor to the study of the science and circumstances on which they are based. His appearance on the witness-stand is therefore but a small part of his labor.

Courts in England, in California, and in Illinois, have distinctly recognized the right of experts to compensation far greater than ordinary witness-fees, and have ordered the payment of satisfactory sums. Medical experts regard it as their duty to testify to all facts within their knowledge when called on so to do. But their opinions are their capital, just as opinions are a lawyer's or judge's capital, and neither society nor individuals have a right to take them by force. A great deal of unwarrantable criticism on this point has recently been indulged in by a portion of the newspaper press. However, when a prominent case comes into court-one which involves much popular feeling, it will generally be found that the losing side spares neither judge, jury, counsel, nor experts in their unjust attempts to manufacture public opinion.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

THE VAMPYRE OF EUROPE.

Of course, there is but one question for comment this month, and that is the infamous war which the French Mephistopheles has managed to stir up between the two leading Christian nations of Europe. A more needless, causeless, heartless, unprincipled war was never precipitated by human ambition and wickedness upon innocent nations. It is absolutely without a decent pretext; the nominal justification of it put forth by the principal instigator, the choice of a Hohenzollern for the Spanish throne,-has no more substance in it than the complaint of the wolf against the lamb for muddling the water below him. Even if Prussia had directly countenanced and promoted that solution of the Spanish difficulty, with the consent of the Spanish people, it was no business of France, whose ruler has so loudly proclaimed the autonomy of each people. But Prussia disclaimed all pretension of mixing in Spanish affairs as soon as it was signalled that her act would give offence. Yet the war was none the less proclaimed

and prosecuted. Napoleon was bent on war, and he made war for no other reason than his own will. Knowing that the French people were jealous of the growth and consolidation of Prussia, and knowing that a successful war would facilitate the establishment of his dynasty, he took advantage of that popular jealousy in order to compass his own ends. He has called hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the field; he has excited the bad passions of Europe; he has imperilled the prosperity and peace of the world, that he might snatch, from success, the imperial crown for his son. No considerations of the awful interests involved, no regards for the lives of men, no Christian principles, no humanities, withhold him for a moment from the desperate game which he has determined to play. A gambler from the outset, a perjurer and a murderer, he carries the motives and the methods of his original coup d'état into the politics of the world. Let us hope, as a recompense, that the world will at length discover the magnitude of his meanness and malignity. The disclosures made as

to the secret treaties ought to open the eyes of all mankind to the real character of this imperial Jack Sheppard. England, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, -all ought to see that in him they have their worst enemy,— -an enemy ready for any foul scheme to be accomplished by any execrable means. That gallant and noble nation, upon whose liberties he has sat like an incubus for twenty years, ought to shake herself free of the gigantic oppression. The United States, which he would have throttled to death if he had been able, in the great struggle for union and liberty, should regard him only with loathing and hate. The most stupendous of public criminals-the shabbiest of private intriguers the most monstrous of egotists,-the whole race of man should vomit him forth as its greatest opprobrium and pest. What is to come of the war, no man as yet knows; but if it shall have the effect of destroying the prestige of the treacherous and blood-thirsty Bonapartes, it will perhaps be worth the temporary miseries it will cost.

A PLAGUE OF FROGS.

Miss Cobbe, in her "Ethical and Social Studies," complains of the freedom with which the biographers of eminent persons often detail the most secret actions of life. She argues that while the cause of truth may be subserved by this minuteness of inquiry, another far more important cause,-that of reverence for the privacy of the human soul,-is outraged. "The man's most secret life," she says, "his most private memoranda, his letters written in the haste of passion or remorse to his closest intimates, are violated and thrown open to the world. The public have got the truth; but they have lost something almost equally precious, -the sense of the sanctity of the heart's and soul's secrets. Or, rather, we may say that a special and individual truth has been insured by the sacrifice of the universal principle of truthfulness and confidence between man and man, whereby we trust each other with things sacred." But if there is ground for a complaint

of this kind, how shall we measure the injury inflicted upon a community by the habit, now becoming more and more prevalent, of turning every thing of private life into food for the newspapers? It would seem as if no privacy were possible any more, either to individuals or families. Let any event occur to bring a person in any degree before the public, and instantly he is converted into a sort of public property or show. Whatever concerns him, his past life, his domestic relations, his interior thoughts, are made the subjects of curiosity and of exposition. The reporters swarm about him as the flies in summer about a piece of carrion. They are more numerous, persecuting, and pestiferous than the tax-gatherers of the later days of the Roman Empire. They insist not only upon entering his house, questioning his servants, looking into his closets, rifling his drawers, and feeling his pockets, but they put him through a series of cross-examinations, as if he were a criminal upon the stand, or a victim of the inquisition. If he refuses to respond, he has the pleasure of seeing himself caricatured or vilified in the next day's edition of a morning print; and if he is placable and communicative, he finds his confessions tricked out with all manner of exaggeration and embellishment. The frogs in the kneading-troughs of the Egyptians could scarcely have been a greater nuisance than these Bohemians are getting to be; but sometimes they are more than a mere annoyance,-they become defamers and assassins of character. They do not scruple to insinuate or to proclaim openly charges that unjustly blast the reputations of innocent men and women, or which, when they are not wholly unfounded, inflict a vast amount of needless anguish. Surely, the editors of our journals ought to have self-respect enough to prevent this abuse from going any further.

THE OLDEN TIMES.

No doubt our Right-Reverend correspondent, who writes so interesting an account of the ancient ways of New

York society, believes those times to have been superior to the present. But the actual generation will scarcely share in his opinion. The patriarchal forms of social life had their advantages and their charms, but they had also their evils and miseries. For the patriarchs themselves, or the leading families, who possessed wealth, culture, refinement, easy and courteous manners, and all the means and appliances of agreeable intercourse, it was doubtless very pleasant; but for the common sort, for the working-people, the servants, the slaves, we hardly think it so pleasant. Then, as now, they had to toil, but to toil without the conveniences and the comforts and the hopes of rising which relieve the strain in our modern societies. Besides, in all cases, we look at the past, as we do at the remote, with some degree of illusion. We see its salient and prominent features only, its general characteristics, and not its details, which are often ugly and harsh and repulsive. Sir Walter Scott, by the vigor of his poetic imagination, contrived to invest even feudalism with a most attractive garb; he got us in love with knights and barons and tournaments and minstrels; but the readers of history know that the feudal times, in spite of their pomp and color and blazon, were the most awfully wretched times for the debased and ignorant masses that the world ever saw. They were times of universal rapine, bloodshed, cruelty, superstition, famine, and want. So our colonial societies may be made to take on a charming simplicity and heartiness and decorum; but when we come to look closer into them, as we are able to do now and then by private letters, &c. &c., we see them every whit as full of suffering and wrong as the present times, with infinitely more coarseness. As society grows in wealth and numbers, the lower sort, that is, the rude and uncultivated sort, come more and more to the top; they give a tone to the prevailing manners; vulgarity of speech and bearing is more conspicuous; but all the while civilization is diffusing itself and spreading. If there are

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fewer thoroughly educated men, there are more who have some education ; and if there are fewer real gentlemen, there are more who have some knowledge of what good manners are. In the older and earlier times, one man in a thousand may have been a model for the Christian and the scholar; but now it is the thousand who are undergoing a transition, not into models, but into a better state. The light which touches the pinnacles of the Alps may be a purer and brighter light than that which is mingled with the vapors of the vales; but the latter is still light, which will gradually purify itself from miasmas and mists, and yet shine with a beautiful radiance. The civilization of a community is to be measured not alone by the degrees of altitude, but by the degrees of latitude; not by the scattered elevations to which it has climbed, but by the broadness of the fields over which it has been diffused.

PUBLIC PARKS AND THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS.

One of the most interesting and sensible papers read at a recent meeting of the Social Science Association, was that by Mr. Fred. Law Olmstead on Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns, and we are glad to see that it has been published in a pamphlet. It is full of suggestion and sound thought, the result of many years of experience operating upon a vigorous brain and a noble heart. Mr. Olmstead begins by referring to the almost irresistible tendency of population in all countries to gather into towns. The time was when the best sort of people liked living in the country, and the rural gentry were not only the most cultivated, but the ruling class. Even in England, which has so long been celebrated for its snug country homes, and beautiful estates, on which the owners resided all the year round, maintaining a hospitable cheer, and keeping up the amusements of field and hall, people are rushing to the cities. Our farmers' sons and daughters are not happy unless they have the prospect before them of ultimately settling in town.

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