Crime in England | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 25, 1864

Crime in England.

THE London Morning Post thus speaks of Baron Martin's charge at the opening of the Liverpool assizes:

"*Never before, says Baron Martin, in the course of his whole judicial experience, has he seen so heavy a calendar. With the single exception of treason, it enjoys the unenviable distinction of embracing every crime under heaven, which can render a man obnoxious to the laws of England. Four murders, fourteen cases of manslaughter, twenty-four of burglary, are among the products of this ominous jail delivery. Rape, robbery, stabbing, and a host of minor offenses have all had their separate representatives. If we need any stimulus to increased exertion in the cause of morality it is amply supplied in the list of prisoners undergoing their trial at the present moment in one country town alone. Little flattering as the conclusion may be to our national vanity, we doubt not whether the Liverpool Calendar be not a very tolerable index of the state of crime all over the country.' Within a few weeks we have been called upon to chronicle a succession of homicides, alike repulsive in their barbarous details, and apparently destitute of any adequate incentives. The wretched child who fell a victim to the knife of the assassin in an obscure Wiltshire village could scarcely have excited the resentment of his murderer, and might even have been safe from his fears. Yet innocence and helplessness in this case are no security against a cruelty the most apparently purposeless and gratuitous we ever remember. Not to dwell on minor atrocities, we have one case in which a few angry words between two fellow servants at a lonely farm on a lonely hillside resulted in the deliberate butchery of a female. Another woman was sent to her last account in consequence of a lover's quarrel, originating in an ineffectual attempt upon the part of her admirer to tender some good advice. Its ill reception by the object of his affections piqued him, and the death of the girl was apparently the only thing which could give relief to his wounded feelings. A still darker tragedy yet awaits investigation at the hands of justice. A single night proved fatal in one of the suburbs of the metropolis itself to no less than four unoffending individuals. Of five inmates of the dwelling, one alone survives. Mother, brothers, and affianced bride, all perished, undoubtedly by the same knife. While such things can still occur at our very doors, it is vain to plume ourselves upon a civilization and refinement which yet abounds with passages worthy of the recent savage episodes of Lebanon or Damascus."