who is poisoned. Thus, the New Drop usurps
the place of the Cross; and Saint John
Ketch is preached to the multitude as the
Iatest and holiest of the Prophets!

Our title is so associated with the remembrance
of this exhibition, that we have been
led into the present comments on it. But,
the purpose with which we adopted the title
was rather to illustrate the general prevalence
of the practice of putting the murdered
person out of the question, and the extensive
following which the custom of criminals has
found outside the gaols.

Two noble lords at loggerheads, each of
whom significantly suggests that he thinks
mighty little of the capabilities of the other,
are blamed for certain disasters which did
undoubtedly befall, under their distinguished
administration of military affairs. They
demand enquiry. A Board of their particular
friends and admirers is appointed "to enquire"
—much as its members might leave their
cards for the noble lords with that inscription.
The enquiry is in the first instance
directed by one of the noble lords to the
question—not quite the main question at
issue—whether the Board can muzzle the
Editor of the Times? The Board have the
best will in the world to do it, but, finding
that the Editor declines to be muzzled,
perforce confess their inability to muzzle him.
The enquiry then proceeds into anything else
that the noble lords like, and into nothing
else that the noble lords don't like. It ends
in eulogiums on the soldierly qualities and
conduct of both lords, and clearly shows
their fitness for command to have been so
completely exemplified, in failing, that the
inference is, if they had succeeded they would
have failed. The compliments ended, the
Board breaks up (the best thing it could
possibly do, and the only function it is fit for), the
noble lords are decorated, and there is an end
of the matter.

How like the case of the late Mr. Dove!
The murdered person—by name the wasted
forces and resources of England—is not to be
thought of; or, if thought of, is only to be
regarded as having been expressly called into
being for the noble lords to make away with,
and mount up to the seventh Heaven of
merit upon. The President of the Board
(answering to the Prison Philanthropist)
sings pæans in the dark to any amount, and
the only thing wanting in the parallel, is, the
finishing hand of Mr. Calcraft.

Let us pass to another instance. The Law
of Divorce is in such condition that from the
tie of marriage there is no escape to be had,
no absolution to be got, except under certain
proved circumstances not necessary to enter
upon here, and then only on payment of an
enormous sum of money. Ferocity, drunkenness,
flight, felony, madness, none of these
will break the chain, without the enormous
sum of money. The husband who, after
years of outrage, has abandoned his wife,
may at any time claim her for his property
and seize the earnings on which she subsists.
The most profligate of women, an intolerable
torment, torture, and shame to her husband,
may nevertheless, unless he be a very rich
man, insist on remaining handcuffed to him,
and dragging him away from any happier
alliance, from youth to old age and death.
Out of this condition of things among the
common people, out of the galling knowledge
of the impossibility of relief—aggravated, in
cottages and single rooms, to a degree not
easily imaginable by ill-assorted couples
who live in houses of many chambers, and
who, both at home and abroad, can keep
clear of each other and go their respective
ways—vices and crimes arise which no
one with open eyes and any fair experience
of the people can fail often to trace, from the
Calendars of Assizes, back to this source. It
is proposed a little to relax the severity of
a thraldom prolonged beyond the bounds of
morality, justice, and sense, and to modify
the law. Instantly the singing of pæans
begins, and the murdered person disappears!
Authorities, lay and clerical, rise in their
parliamentary places to deliver panegyrics
on Marriage as an Institution (which nobody
disputes to be just); they have much to
relate concerning what the Fathers thought
of it, and what was written, said, and done
about it hundreds of years before these
evils were; they set up their fancy whipping-tops,
and whip away; they utter homilies
without end upon the good side of the question,
which is in no want of them; but, from their
exalted state of vision the murdered person
utterly vanishes. The tortures and wrongs of
the sufferer have no place in their speeches.
They felicitate themselves, like the murderers,
on their own glowing state of mind, and they
mount upon the mangled creature to deliver
their orations, much as the Duke's man in
the sham siege took his post on the fallen
governor of Barataria.

So in the case of overstrained Sunday
observance, and denial of innocent popular
reliefs from labour. The murdered person—
the consumptive, scrofulous, ricketty worker
in unwholesome places, the wide prevalence
of whose reduced physical condition has
rendered it necessary to lower the standard of
health and strength for recruiting into the
army, and caused its ranks to be reinforced
in the late war by numbers of poor creatures
notoriously in an unserviceable bodily state
—the murdered person, in this phase of
his ubiquity, is put out of sight, as a
matter of course. We have flaming and
avenging speeches made, as if a bold
peasantry, their country's pride, models of cheerful
health and muscular development, were
in every hamlet, town, and city, once a week
ardently bent upon the practice of asceticism
and the renunciation of the world; but, the
murdered person, Legion, who cannot at
present by any means be got at once a