THE MURDERED PERSON.

In an early number of this journal,* we
made some reference to the fact that in the
highly improving accounts which are given
to the public of the last moments of murderers,
the murdered person may be usually
observed to be entirely dismissed from the
moral discourses with which the murderer
favors his admiring audience, except as an
incidental and tributary portion of his own
egotistical story.
* Pet Prisoners, volume i. page 99.

To what lengths this dismissal of the very
objectionable personage who persisted in
tempting the Saint in the condemned cell to
murder him, may be carried, we have had a
recent opportunity of considering, in the case
of the late lamented MR. DOVE. That
amiable man, previous to taking the special
express-train to Paradise which is vulgarly
called the Gallows, indited a document wherein
he made it manifest to all good people that
the mighty and beneficent Creator of the
vast Universe had specially wrought to bring
it about that he should cruelly and stealthily
torture, torment, and by inches slay, a weak
sick woman, and that woman his wife, in
order that he, Dove, as with the wings of a
Dove (a little blood-stained or so, but that's
not much) should be put in the way of
ascending to Heaven.

Frightful as this statement is, and sickening
as one would suppose it must be, to any
mind capable of humbly and reverentially
approaching at an inconceivable distance the
idea of the Divine Majesty, there it stands in
the printed records of the day: a part of the
Gaol Court-Newsman's account of the visitors
whom the chosen vessel received in his cell,
of his proposing to sing hymns in chorus in
the night season, and of the "Prison Philanthropist"
declaring him to be a pattern penitent.

Now, to the Prison Philanthropist we
concede all good intentions. We take it for
granted that the venerable gentleman did not
confer his alliterative title on himself, and
that he is no more responsible for it, than a
public-house is for its sign, or a ship for her
figure-head. Yet, holding this horrible
confusion of mind on the part of the inhuman
wretch to whom he devoted so much humanity,
to be shocking in itself and widely perilous
in its influences, we plainly avow that we
for our part cannot accept good intentions as
any set-off against the production of such a
mental state, and that we think the
condemned cells everywhere (left to their
appointed ministers of religion who are very
rarely deficient in kindness and zeal) would
be better without such philanthropy. What
would the Home Secretary say to Professor
Holloway, if that learned man applied for
free admission to the condemned cells throughout
England, in order that he might with his
ointment anoint the throats of the convicts
about to be hanged, so that under the
influences of the application their final sensations
should be of a mild tickling? What would
the Home Secretary reply to the august
members of the Hygeian Council of the
British College of Health, if they made a similar
request, with a view to the internal exhibition
for a similar purpose of that great discovery,
Morrison's pills? Even if some regular
medical hand of eminence were to seek
the same privilege, with a view to a drugging
within the limits of the pharmacopœia—say
for the philanthropic purpose of making the
patient maudlin drunk with opium and peppermint,
and sending him out of this world with
a leer—how would the Home Secretary
receive that edifying proposal? And is there
nothing of greater moment involved in this
revolting conceit, setting its heel on the
murdered body, and daring eternity on the edge
of the murderer's grave?

Pursue this advance made by the late Mr.
Dove on the usual calm dismissal of the murdered
person, and see where it ends. There are
sent into this world two human creatures: one,
a highly interesting individual in whom Providence
is much concerned—Mr. Dove: one, a
perfectly uninteresting individual of no
account whatever, here or hereafter—Mrs.
Dove. Mr. Dove being expressly wanted in
the regions of the blessed, Mrs. Dove is
delivered over to him, soul and body, to
ensure his presence there, and provide against
disappointment. There is no escape from
this appalling, this impious conclusion. The
special Gaol-Call which was wanting to, and
was found by, Mr. Dove who is hanged, was
wanting to, and was not found by, Mrs. Dove