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disinterred the lost Addison-much strained and disjointed about his back and spine, with all muscular spring gone from his binding, from being kept too long open; and found there also the precious dicta of ViceChancellor Owlet. Nothing could be nicer or more symmetrical than the fashion in which she ranged these auxiliaries; Vesey, Junior, went home to his shelves, and the more necessary books were ranged to the right and left on the table, in the order of their use; while on his desk was set the recovered Addison, with the dislocations in his back skilfully "reduced," and the precious note of Vice-Chancellor Owlet. Mr. Max

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well's ink was usually a sort of stagnant pool, and his pens utterly disorganized. The process of writing was a sad discomfort and torture. But all this "service was now reorganized, and our Jenny, with much good-feeling, brought down pens from her room-things that would write-and set them there beside the desk. There was nothing prodigious in all this; but, someway, it is the fate of these helpless men ever to want this species of little helps ; and it must be said again, that it was delicate, tender, and considerate for a mere simple governess to put herself out of the way in this manner.

AN EPISODE IN ENGLISH HISTORY-ASSASSINATION OF MR. PERCEVAL, IN 1812.

THE murder of Mr. Perceval, when Prime Minister of England, in broad day, and in the crowded lobby of the House of Commons, is one of the most remarkable instances of cool, deliberate crime recorded in the annals of history. In some features it bears a close resemblance to that of the Duke of Buckingham, by Felton. In both cases the outrage was committed publicly, the alleged motive was somewhat similar, and the assassin could have escaped had he been so disposed. Light and a crowd have sometimes favoured the evasion of a criminal as effectually as solitude and darkness. About fifty years since, Begbie, a bank runner, was murdered and rifled in the day time, in one of the streets of Edinburgh, and the murderer has never yet been discovered.

Felton and Bellingham, as matters of course, were hung. If their startling atrocities were to be repeated now, the perpetrators would, in all probability, escape experimental acquaintance with the manipulating process of Mr. Calcraft, the finisher of the law, on the ground of insanity. We should regret sincerely to see the result tested on Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, Mr. Gladstone, or any other high official of the State, down to Mr. Milner Gibson, inclusive; but we have a strong impression that the result would be as we here surmise.

Such is the maudlin, mistaken philanthropy of modern times. It suffices for a murder to have more than the ordinary elements of crime-to be compound rather than simple; to include a series rather than an isolated case a whole family, or an entire ship's crew, and for the felon to exhibit marked calmness and self-possession, and it is immediately concluded that he must be mad, or, at least, a monomaniac, which qualification suffices to ensure a commutation of the extreme penalty. In several cases within the last quarter of a century, especially in the memorable ones of the murder of Mr. Drummond, Sir Robert Peel's secretary, in London, by M'Naughten, and of Mr. Sneyd, in Dublin, by Mason, this legal decision has saved atrocious criminals who were not a jot more insane than Bellingham; who had quite as much claim to the privileges of rationality which they were suffered to exercise, and ought to have been held equally liable to the sibilities thereunto attached.

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It has been said that when Oxford, in his confinement in Bethlehem Hospital, heard of the subsequent attempts on her Majesty's life by Francis and Bean, he observed with great composure, "If they had hung me, there would have been no more madmen firing at the Queen." We are much inclined to agree with this in

genuous convict. Hang a so-called madman, and murders by lunatics will speedily disappear from the criminal records. The class are cowardly, with a special dislike of corporal punishment-whipping at the cart's tail, and suspension by the rope.

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M. Guizot, commenting on this incident of Oxford, his trial, and sentence, which happened while he was King Louis Philippe's ambassador at the English Court, in 1840, considers that such startling episodes are more frequently instigated by a morbid thirst after celebrity on the part of the individual offenders, than the result of organized conspiracy or con stitutional wickedness. "Here," he says, "is precisely what these perverted fanatics yearn for a theatre, a public; themselves insignificant and obscure, an opportunity to exhibit and shine in the mid-day sun. Under what system, and in what country, will there ever be enough moral and political judgment to leave them to their level, and not to give them the notoriety they seek ?" And then, on the verdict of insanity and confinement during the sovereign's pleasure, he adds: " Such was the legal issue of the trial; and Edward Oxford, punished and placed beyond the power of doing further mischief, without being made of too much consequence, was speedily forgotten."

With all due respect to the judgment of this experienced statesman and philosopher, we demur to this dictum, and cannot think it makes a criminal of" too much consequence" to give him the full award of the law he has provoked. The leading object of all punishment is less directed against the insulated offender than intended as an example to deter others, and to purify society by the diminution of crime- an end the more likely to be reached, in capital cases, by the application of capital penalties, than by the exercise of fantastical theories based on very doubtful foundations.

Let us not be misunderstood. We do not mean by this to advocate a revival or perpetuation of the Draconic features which so long disfigured, and in some points still continue to deform and disgrace our penal code; but we enter a protest against the too easy admission of "an unsound

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mind" as an extenuating plea for a deliberate murder. Lord Ferrers was as much and more entitled to this saving clause as M'Naughten or Oxford. But had it been applied in his case, there would have been a general howl from all the democrats and demagogues in the nation, that this was a glaring illustration of "a law for the rich and a law for the poor." Besides which, the gaping multitude would have lost the edifying and rare spectacle of a nobleman escorted from Newgate, via Holborn, Tyburn, by the ordinary, the sheriff, and the hangman. In those “good old days," as they are generally and regretfully designated, there was little thought of nice distinctions, metaphysical subtleties, or casuistical reasonings. Men were hung alike for murder, forgery, or burglary—for stealing a sheep or a two-penny loaf; and transported for robbing a henroost. The extremes ran all in an opposite course from the popular modern channel, and what ought to have been the parallel lines of justice were so unmathematically warped, that Euclid or La Place would have been puzzled to recognise them.

The case of Lord Ferrers is nearly forgotten, except by students of the Annual Register and the Newgate Calendar. His violence of temper and habitual eccentricities occasioned him to be set down as a madman by his contemporaries, and he is so held in the few historical records which name him. He hated his wife (we do not cite this as a corroborative evidence of lunacy), and one of his modes of annoying her was to put squibs and crackers into her bed, which were contrived to explode just as she was dropping asleep. But she extricated herself through a separation by Act of Parliament, and obtained further atonement in a more congenial second union, many years after, with Lord Frederic Campbell, brother to the Duke of Argyll. One day, Lord Ferrers summoned his steward, Mr. Johnson, to his presence, and on his coming, locked the door, and told him to sit down in an armchair as he had something particular to communicate. He then drew a pistol from the drawer of his writing table, took out his watch, and said to his unsuspecting victim: "Say your prayers, for in five minutes you

are a dead man." He kept his word, and shot him when the time had expired. For this horrible crime he was tried by his Peers at Westminster Hall, on the 16th of April, 1760, found guilty of wilful murder, and hanged at Tyburn, on the 5th of May following. On the day of execution he dressed himself in his wedding suit of white, embroidered with silver. When he reached the gallows, the immense waving sea of heads excited his admiration. "How many persons do you suppose may be in that crowd?" he inquired of the ordinary. "At least thirty thousand," was the answer. "What a compliment!" rejoined the Earl; "but then they never saw a lord hanged before." In 1822 a Frenchman was executed on the sands at Portobello, near Edinburgh, for piracy on the high seas. As he passed from the Calton Hill Gaol, down the wide thoroughfare of Leith Walk, the windows, balconies, and street pavements were thronged with gazers. He either imagined or was told that this was in token of public sympathy for a foreigner in misfortune, and, standing up in the cart, bowed his acknowledgments gracefully to the right and left, saying, "Mesdames et Messieurs, je reconnois vos politesses, et je m'en trouve vivement penetré."

We have read somewhere that Lord Ferrers was hung with a silken rope, such being an exclusive " privilege of the Peerage." We are not aware of any statute to this effect, and we believe, on the contrary, that those respectable commoners, Mr. Jonathan Wild, Mr. Jerry Abershaw, and Mr. Jack Shepherd, might have indulged in the same luxury, if they had been inclined to pay for it, and if the executioner had pronounced the more costly substitute sufficient for the ends of justice.

The particulars of the death of Mr. Perceval are interesting, and little remembered by the present generation. About a quarter past five, on the 11th of May, 1812, he entered the lobby of the House of Commons alone, where a number of persons were standing, when a man, who had a short time before placed himself in the recess of the doorway, on the inner side, drew out a pistol, and shot the minister as he passed, in the lower part of the left breast. The

ball is supposed to have entered the heart. He moved onward for a few faltering steps, nearly half way up the lobby, and was in the act of sinking on the ground, when some of the by-standers caught him in their arms. He was immediately carried to the nearest room, that of the Speaker's secretary, by Mr. W. Smith, Mr. Bradshaw, and another gentleman. Mr. Lynn, a surgeon, in Parliamentstreet, was sent for without delay, and on examining the wound, at once pronounced it a mortal case, and that death would ensue forthwith. When falling, Mr. Perceval uttered the word "murder," or "murdered," after which he spoke no more, and expired in about ten or twelve minutes. Several members of both Houses of Parliament entered the apartment, while he was dying, and amongst others, his brother, Lord Arden; all, as might be supposed, in the greatest possible state of agitation. There was little effusion of blood from the wound externally. The body was subsequently removed into the Speaker's house.

Lord Francis Osborne, Lord Ossulston, and others, were crossing the lobby at the moment of the assassination, and were very near Mr. Perceval. The deed was perpetrated so suddenly that the man who fired the pistol was not immediately recognised. It was thought he might have escaped notice, had he concealed his weapon. A person who had passed behind Mr. Perceval seized the pistol, which was a very small one, from the murderer's hand, who surrendered it without resistance, and retired coolly towards a bench on the left. Mr. Goodiff, an officer of the house, secured him, and asked if he was the villain who had shot the Minister. He replied, "I am the unhappy man," but appeared quite undisturbed. It was said that he added something about redress of grievances from the government, but if he did it was heard by very few. On searching him, a few pounds in money were found in his pockets, and some printed papers, copies of which he had previously distributed amongst the members. He was taken to the bar of the House of Commons, and identified as the assassin. Another pistol, similar to that he had fired, was taken from his pocket in the House. All the doors were then closed

and locked, and he was conveyed up stairs to one of the apartments called "the prisons," in the upper story, over the committee rooms. Here he underwent a lengthened examination, in presence of Aldermen Coombe and Curtis, Mr. Reade, Mr. Colquhoun, Mr. Fielding, and other magistrates, with several members of the House of Commons, Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Wynne, Mr. Stephens, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Secretary Ryder, &c.

A bundle of papers, brought from the prisoner's lodgings, was consigned to the care of Lord Castlereagh, to be submitted to the Privy Council. The witnesses were then bound over to give their evidence before the Grand Jury, and subsequently at the Old Bailey, in the event of a true bill being found against the prisoner "for the wilful murder of the Right Honourable Spencer Perceval."

The prisoner was asked whether he had anything to urge against the act with which he was charged, and cautioned by Sir John Hippesley not to say anything that might criminate himself. This procedure is an anomaly in English law, the propriety of which is still an open question, and is disputed by many profound jurists. According to the "Code Napoleon," which is founded on the pandects of Justinian, every effort is made to entrap the accused party into a confession of his guilt. Bellingham replied, "I have admitted the fact; I again admit it. When General Gascoigne seized me, he held me with so much violence, that I thought my arm was broken; I said, 'you need not press me so, I submit myself to my fate.' But, with permission, I have something to state in my justification. I have been denied the redress of my grievances by government. I have been ill-treated. They well know who I am, and what I am, through the Secretary of State, and Mr. Becket, with whom I have had frequent communications. They knew of this fact six weeks ago, through the magistrates of Bow-street. I was accused most wrongfully by a Governor-General in Russia, in a letter from Archangel to Riga, and have sought redress in vain. I am a most unfortunate man, and feel here-placing his hand on his breast-sufficient justification for what I have done."

Lord Castlereagh informed him

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that he was not then called upon for his defence, but merely to say what he had to offer in contradiction of the charge. Anything he might feel desirous of stating in extenuation of his crime, he had better reserve for his trial. The prisoner said, Since it seems best to you that I should not now explain the causes of my conduct, I will leave it until the day of my trial, when my country will have an opportunity of judging whether I am right or wrong." Upon being again questioned, he repeated, for the third time, "I admit the fact," which admission was accordingly entered upon the record. The Bow-street officers were called in, and the prisoner having been permitted to dress, was handcuffed by Vickery and Adkins. He applied for his money, which having been left in the possession of Mr. Burgess, who had withdrawn, Mr. Whitbread assured him it should be returned in the morning. He then asked whether he should be allowed an attorney and counsel. Mr. Whitbread signified that Mr. Coombe would take care that every necessary indulgence should be allowed him, consistent with his situation. In no part of the proceedings did he betray extreme agitation, but at the moment when one of the witnesses said, "I supported Mr. Perceval into the Secretary's room, and in a few minutes he died in my arms," the prisoner shed tears and seemed considerably moved. The pistol he had fired was a small pocket one, about six inches long. The barrel rather more than two inches in length, with the cock on the top, and a stop to the trigger; the calibre nearly half an inch in diameter, and the barrel very strong. The pistol taken from his breeches pocket was primed, and loaded with one ball.

It was intended to send him at at once to Newgate; but when a hackney coach was brought for that purpose, to the iron gates in Lower Palace Yard, the crowd, at first composed of decent people, had been gradually swollen by a concourse of pick-pockets and the lower orders, who mounted the vehicle, and were so troublesome, and even dangerous, that it was not deemed advisable to follow the usual course. Repeated shouts of applause were heard from the ignorant or depraved portion of the mob,

as if they were preparing to hail an oppressed but innocent victim. Some of these sympathizers even attempted to open the opposite door of the coach, as if to give the murderer an opportunity of escape. A party of Life Guards, who had been sent for, arrived about this time, and formed a semicircle in the yard, by which the mob were kept more at a distance.

Before the arrival of the dragoons, Bellingham was reconducted to the prison-room, where he sharply reprimanded Vickery, the officer, for having inquired of some female, particulars as to his private affairs. He calmly said, he knew the consequences of the act he had committed, which he did not consider as of a private nature. On Vickery's answering that he had only spoken in general terms to the female; and that she told him she had in her possession a memorandum of £20, due by a Mr. Wilson to him, the prisoner, in the most unconcerned manner,replied that he knew what it was; it was a bill that he expected would be paid the next day at half past nine o'clock. His conversation was perfectly coherent, except on the crime he had committed. For that, he said, he expected to be brought before a tribunal where justice would be done him; that he felt assured of being liberated, and that his claims would ultimately be allowed.

From the House of Commons he was conveyed, through the Speaker's entrance, to the Secretary of State's office for the Home Department, where he was placed in a room in which he walked almost without intermission while he was there. On the breaking up of the council he was sent to Newgate, his committal being signed by Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor, M.P., who accompanied him in the coach to the prison, where he was doubly ironed. During his confinement, he remained perfectly calm and collected. On the day before his trial, he wrote a letter to a friend in Liverpool, consisting of three sheets in quarto, correctly composed, without the slightest indication of unsettled intellect, and with a space purposely left for the wafer, so that the letter might be opened without the writing being defaced. He made particular inquiry of the keeper as to the direc

tion the ball from his pistol had taken. Being asked if there was any person close to him when he fired, or between him and Mr. Perceval at the moment, he replied there was none, or he should have hesitated to fire."

John Bellingham, the murderer, was a native of St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire, and forty-two years of age. He was about five feet nine or ten inches in height, with rather a thin visage, an aquiline nose, and altogether a genteel appearance. His usual demeanour was quiet and unobtrusive; his temper and disposition outwardly mild and kind. He lodged in New Millman-street, near the Foundling Hospital. His landlady. a young widow with a family, stated that he had zealously assisted her in the recovery of a child which had been missing; and that he had taken her only two days before he committed the murder to see the British Museum. On the day preceding the fatal crime, Sunday, the 10th of May, with the purpose matured, as it must have been, in his breast, he was present twice at the public service in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital; and on the very morning of the deed, scarcely two hours before he carried it into effect, he contributed to the amusement of the children of the house where he dwelt, by conducting them to a public spectacle! used to complain, his landlady said, that money was due to him he had been wronged of, and without which he must become a ruined man. father was a land surveyor and miniature painter; his mother the daughter of a respectable country gentleman at St. Neot's; they were married in 1769, in London. John was their second child, born about 1771. His father, after his birth, purchased a house at St. Neot's, and resided in it till about 1775, when he returned to London, and lived in Titchfield-street, Oxford-street. In 1779, he discovered marks of mental derangement, and was placed in St. Luke's Hospital. At the end of a twelvemonth, he returned home as incurable, and died soon after. Those who hold to the theory of hereditary madness, may consider this an argument in extenuation of the son's crime. Such deductions, probably sound enough in pathological science, are sometimes admissible as corroborative, though

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