Martha, I tell ye. It's I, my lord, that 's guilty, | tissue of falsehood, he coolly pronounced sentence not the woman. God bless ye, my lord; not the of death upon the prisoners. They were to be wife! Doant hurt the wife, and I 'se tell ye all hanged on Monday. This was Friday. about it. I alone am guilty; not, the Lord be praised, of murder, but of robbery!"

"John!-John!" sobbed the wife, clinging passionately to her husband, "let us die together!"

course being influenced somewhat by a recollec|tion of that unhappy affair of Harvey, noticed in my previous paper. I half resolved to give up the bar, and rather go and sweep the streets for a livelihood, than run the risk of getting poor people hanged who did not deserve it.

"A bad job!" whispered the counsel for the defence, as he passed me. "That witness of yours, the woman Strugnell, is the real culprit." I tasted no dinner that day; I was sick at heart; for I felt as if the blood of two fellow"Quiet, Martha, I tell ye! Yes, my lord, creatures was on my hands. In the evening I I'se tell ye all about it. I was gone away, sallied forth to the judge's lodgings. He listened wife and I, for more nor a week, to receive to all I had to say; but was quite imperturbable. money for Mr Wilson, on account of smuggled The obstinate old man was satisfied that the sengoods-that money, my lord, as was found in the tence was as it should be. I returned to my inn chest. When we came home on that dreadful in a fever of despair. Without the approval of Sunday night, my lord, we went in back way; the judge, I knew that an application to the secreand hearing a noise, I went up stairs, and found tary of state was futile. There was not even poor Wilson stone-dead on the floor. I were time to send to London, unless the judge had dreadful skeared, and let drop the candle. I granted a respite. called to wife, and told her of it. She screamed All Saturday and Sunday I was in misery. I out, and amaist fainted away. And then, my denounced capital punishment as a gross iniquity lord, all at once the devil shot it into my head to a national sin and disgrace; my feelings of keep the money I had brought; and knowing as the keys of the desk where the mortgage writing was kept was in the bedroom, I crept back, as that false-hearted woman said, got the keys, and took the deed; and then I persuaded wife, who had been trembling in the kitchen all the while, that we had better go out quiet again, as there was no- On Monday morning I was pacing up and down body in the house but us; I had tried that woman's my breakfast-room in the next assize town, in a door and we might perhaps be taken for the state of great excitement, when a chaise-and-four murderers. And so we did; and that's the drove rapidly up to the hotel, and out tumbled downright, honest truth, my lord. I'm rightly Johnson, the constable. His tale was soon told. served; but God bless you, doant hurt the wo- On the previous evening, the landlady of the man-my wife, my lord, these thirty years. Black Swan, a road-side public-house about four Five-and-twenty years ago come May, which I miles distant from the scene of the murder, readshall never see, we buried our two children. [ing the name of Pearce in the report of the trial Had they lived, I might have been a better man; in the Sunday county paper, sent for Johnson to but the place they left empty was soon filled up by state that that person had on the fatal evening love of cursed lucre, and that has brought me called and left a portmanteau in her charge, promhere. I deserve it; but oh, mercy, my lord! ising to call for it in an hour, but had never been mercy, good gentlemen!"-turning from the there since. On opening the portmanteau, Wilstony features of the judge to the jury, as if they son's watch, chains, and seals, and other property, could help him-" not for me, but the wife. She were discovered in it; and Johnson had, as soon be as innocent of this as a new-born babe. It's as it was possible, set off in search of me. InI! I scoundrel that I be, that has brought thee, stantly, for there was not a moment to spare, I, Martha, to this shameful pass!" The rugged in company with Armstrong's counsel, sought the man snatched his life-companion to his breast judge, and with some difficulty obtained from him with passionate emotion, and tears of remorse a formal order to the sheriff to suspend the exeand agony streamed down his rough cheeks. cution till further orders. Off I and the constable started, and happily arrived in time to stay the execution, and deprive the already-assembled mob of the brutal exhibition they so anxiously awaited. On inquiring for Mary Strugnell, we found that she had absconded on the evening of the trial. All search for her proved vain.

I was deeply affected, and felt that the man had uttered the whole truth. It was evidently one of those cases in which a person liable to suspicion damages his own cause by resorting to a trick. No doubt, by his act of theft, Armstrong had been driven to an expedient which would not have been adopted by a person perfectly innocent. And thus, from one thing to another, the charge of murder had been fixed upon him and his hapless wife. When his confession had been uttered, I felt a species of self-accusation in having contributed to his destruction, and gladly would I have undone the whole day's proceedings. The judge, on the contrary, was quite undisturbed. Viewing the harangue of Armstrong as a mere

Five months had passed away; the fate of Armstrong and his wife was still undecided, when a message was brought to my chambers in the temple from a woman said to be dying in St. Bartholomew's hospital. It was Mary Strugnell; who, when in a state of intoxication, had fallen down in front of a carriage, as she was crossing near Holborn Hill, and had both her legs broken. She was dying miserably, and had sent for me to

make a full confession relative to Wilson's mur-best of his way to London. He was now in der. Armstrong's account was perfectly correct. Newgate under sentence of death for a burglary, The deed was committed by Pearce, and they accompanied by personal violence to the inmates were packing up their plunder when they were startled by the unexpected return of the Armstrongs. Pearce, snatching up a bundle and a portmanteau, escaped by the window; she had not nerve enough to attempt it, and crawled back to her bedroom, where she, watching the doings of the farmer through the chinks of the partition which separated her room from the passage, concocted the story which convicted the prisoners. Pearce, thinking himself pursued, too heavily encumbered for rapid flight, left the portmanteau as described, intending to call for it in the morning, if his fears proved groundless. He, however, had not courage to risk calling again, and made the

66

of the dwelling he and his gang had entered and robbed. I took care to have the deposition of the dying wretch put into proper form; and the result was, after a great deal of petitioning and worrying of authorities, a full pardon for both Armstrong and his wife. They sold Craig Farm, and removed to some other part of the country, where, I never troubled myself to inquire. Deeply grateful was I to be able at last to wash my hands of an affair which had cost me so much anxiety and vexation; albeit the lesson it afforded me of not coming hastily to conclusions, even when the truth seems, as it were, upon the surface of the matter, has not been, I trust, without its uses.

the duty. The price of sperm oil may be described as having fallen the whole amount of £12, 10s. per tun, in consequence of the fiscal change, and as having then recovered nearly its former level, in consequence of the real dearth. Had the dearth and the duty coëxisted, the price would have been £12, 10s. higher than it is; so that the benefit reaped by the public from the abatement of duty, though veiled by the contrary influence of an incidental scarcity, is not the less a real and positive saving to the full amount of £12, 10s. per tun."

SPERM OIL-A FISCAL PARADOX.-The duty of £12, 10s. per tun, until lately levied on sperm oil, has ceased and determined. On this event the "Atlas" newspaper has the following observations: For the future, sperm oil will be obtainable for £12, 10s. per tun less than it has hitherto cost; and from this circumstance it would seem to follow, as a natural inference, that the market price of the article should show a reduction to the amount. This, however, is not the fact. The price of sperm oil, on the remission of the duty, fell only from £84 to £82 per tun; the decline being £2 instead of Similar observations might be made in reference £12, 10s., or less than one sixth of the presumable to the termination of the duty on leather a few abatement. This is one of those paradoxes which years ago. No one gets shoes any cheaper in conare frequently presented to the observer of commer- sequence of taking off this duty, say many persons. cial phenomena. By what recondite law of prices, True; but this is in consequence of the demand for or occult mercantile art, is the sudden disappearance shoes having increased by the increase of populaof twelve and a half from one scale balanced by the tion, and this demand keeps up the price of most withdrawal of only two from the other? This is a kinds of shoes to the former level. Had the duty fine case for the antagonists of free trade. There not been taken off, shoes would now have been so will not be wanting ignorant or unscrupulous cham- much dearer, because leather is an article which pions of monopoly ready to argue that the difference does not admit of a rapid and illimitable increase, between £2 and £12, 10s. will be pocketed by | like any kind of cloth, and the demand is continually the merchants, instead of benefiting the consumer, pressing on the supply. Have the public, then, and that the only effect of the vaunted commercial not received a benefit by the withdrawal of the duty emancipation will be to swell the gains of a para- on this article? Assuredly they have.-Chambers' sitic class at the expense of the public revenue. Journal. is worth while to anticipate and refute an argument so plausible and so delusive. For this purpose it MAKING GOLD.-We nave read that Boyle once is only necessary to remind the reader of the influ- very nearly succeeded in making gold; that he ence of the past and the future on the present, in showed the experiment to Sir Isaac Newton, when all human affairs including commercial operations. both became frightened, and threw away the ingreFor three years past the abolition of this duty has dients. A gentleman communicates to the editor been looked forward to by the parties concerned, of the Mining Journal, that having experimented who have doubtless taken the prospect of reduction some ten years ago on the stratification of the earth into account, as one element amongst others in the and the formation of mineral deposits, he believes estimation of value, and the settlement of price; so with truthful results, he turned up one of his old exthat, when Monday last brought the anticipated periments accidentally a few days ago, and found change, a considerable proportion of its effect had running in a kind of spiral string through one part already been incurred by anticipation. This is the a small quantity of gold. No gold was used in the effect of the past on the present. The influence of experiment, and the conclusion arrived at is that it the future has an analogous tendency to abate the has been formed from some of the other substances. immediate decline of price. The holders naturally This, however, is nothing to what is asserted by an inquire what supplies are expected from the fisher-iron-founder of this town; he declares that he has ies, and compare the probable imports with the probable demand. It so happens that at present the stock of sperm on hand is relatively low, and the fresh supplies of the year are not expected to be large. This acts as a further counterpoise to the diminution of value resulting from the abolition of

It

found out a process by which he can change any quantity of iron into gold. Before three months are over, he says, we shall hear more of this marvel. He promises to produce gold in tons; in short, in any quantity.-Liverpool Albion.

MOOLTAN, (INDIA.)

PLUNDER OF THE FORT AND RANSOM OF THE TOWN. [WE commend the following to our countrymen who were deceived into believing the British outcry about Gen. Scott's taking Mexican cities.]

sentries have been placed as a precaution against accidents. The stables, godowns, and arsenals are built in long ranges behind the citadel wall; they are mostly protected by domed roofs of considerable thickness, but our shells have penetrated them, and set fire to the contents. Many. dead and wounded men, on charpoys, were found in them. In a large timber-yard wheels for guns of all sizes, and zumbooruk saddles, newly made, are lying about in great profusion. Further on, near the ramparts, are two large brick furnaces for casting cannon; an earthen mould of a very large one intended to be made lies close to them. The quantisurprising. The largest collections are those in the vicinity of the heaps of arms thrown away by the garrison before making their exit. Camp followers and others appear utterly regardless of danger, for blazing fires of logs are met with at every turn. Some small explosions have occurred, but no one has been killed, though many have been seriously burnt. The soil appears made of lead. Bullets strew the ground like pebbles; the supply would have lasted for years had the garrison held out; cannon balls are equally common from those stone ones of Brobdignagian proportions to the Liliputian for one-pounders; thirty-nine cannon have been counted, and four mortars (the largest of these had been knocked off his rude carriage by our shot.) There is abundance of wall-pieces of all sizes and lengths; zumbooruks and muskets innumerable, with piles of matchlocks of every weight and size. Tulwars by thousands, and heaps of wooden and leathern accoutrements for all the above weapons. I think Mooltan is the beau ideal of a Buneea's fort, or, rather, fortified shop; never, indeed, in India have such depots existed of merchandise and arms, amalgamated as they are with avarice. Here opium, indigo, salt, sulphur, and every known drug are heaped in endless profusion; there, apparently, ancient granaries in the bowels of the earth disclose their huge hordes of wheat and rice; here stacks of leathern ghee vessels, brimming with the grease, fill the pucha receptacles below ground; there silks and shawls revel in darkness, bales rise on bales; here some mammoth chest discovering glittering scabbards of gold and gems; there reveals tiers of copper canisters crammed with gold mohurs; my poor pen cannot describe the variety of wealth displayed to the inquisitive eye.

"Fort of Mooltan, 25th Jan., 1849. "THERE is so much duty for those left in the fort, that I have not been able to spare a moment for writing the promised details of the lions, &c., of the place. The day before yesterday Major Wheeler commenced his researches for the reputed wealth contained within these walls; he was accom-ty of loose gunpowder in every hole and corner is panied on the occasion by an old bedridden mistress of Sawun Mull's time; thus was a clue obtained to the whereabouts of those vast subterranean storehouses of which we had heard. The principal of these were pointed out in the open ground within the citadel, as also among the ruins of the explosion; some of these contain a large amount of silks, others ghee, and grain stored up in the lifetime of the late Dewan's father. There is also a great collection of opium, indigo, &c., worth a large sum of money. Two or three lacs of rupees were blown up with the vast chaos of valuables. When the rubbish shall have been cleared away from the entrances of the Tykannahs, then we shall no doubt be able to extricate many of the bales of shawls and silks. In the mint a pretty good amount of silver and gold coin was found. Moolraj's house, and the neighboring Toshukhanah, contained a great quantity, as also many valuable swords, and rich property of every description. The fort is reduced to such a heap of ruins that it will require many months to excavate and remove the fallen houses; the site of the explosions is marked by a long deep pit, around which buildings are piled on buildings; scarcely one brick remains on another; corpses, carcases of animals, and every description of property strew the ground; the stench within the citadel is dreadful-there must be hundreds of men buried in the rubbish. The piles of huge stones shot have been hurled to a great distance, and the contents of large bombproofs showered far and wide upon the occupants of the place. The Bahawul Huk shrine is reduced to a mere wreck, but that of Shah Rookhu Alum has been more fortunate; it has escaped with only a few scars. It is a most massive structure, and from its great height commands a beautiful view of the surrounding country. On ascending two winding staircases the parapet is reached; thence may be seen the snowy range, the winding course of the Chenab, the numerous canals, gardens, and fields which do the far-spreading jungle; even Jhung, on a very clear day, is said to be visible.

"Tumbrils under strong guards have been moving to and fro with gold coin all the day; it is said that three or four krores are concealed in the fort; the place is alone known to Moolraj, who may eventually make such disclosures as would eventually benefit his cause. The sappers are busily employed in filling up our trenches and approaches. I think we have taught the Mooltanees how to take a fortress, and they will probably profit by the tuition should affairs ever allow it."

"Within the courtyard of this shrine there is a newly-built range of bombproof barracks; in these some valuable property has been stowed away. Moolraj's house appears to have been once a good The Mahajuns and other inhabitants of Mooltan substantial one; it is now unroofed, and the walls in the first instance offered fifteen lacs for the ranare knocked to pieces with our shells. He appears som of the town, but this amount was refused, and to have vacated it long ago. There is a large gar- the matter was referred to the governor-general, by den with raised walks which appears to have been whose order a committee was appointed, which fixed nicely laid out. Between this and the before- on twenty lacs as the proper amount to be paid. mentioned tomb there is an enormous domed mag- The inhabitants, however, now began to talk of azine surrounded by a dry ditch several feet deep; "oppression," and refused to pay the sum demanda trench has been cut to communicate with it un- ed. The governor-general has decided that the derground, and, the surface being closely packed property taken at Mooltan is to go to the captors of with logs of timber, a mine is suspected. Double the place as prize.

From the Spectator, 24 March.

land, with his father, on the foundation of the Batavian republic, he was placed under the charge of Dr. Howley, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, and received his education from that prelate. At the age of nineteen, he was appointed, as Prince of Orange, a lieutenant-colonel of the British army; and he served as extra aide-de-camp with the Duke

He was present at the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, and the battles of Salamanca, Vittoria, Pyrenees, and Nivelle. He commanded the Dutch troops in the campaign of 1815, and the first corps d'armée at the battle of Waterloo; in which he was severely wounded.

By his surviving queen, a sister of the Emperor of Russia, whom he married in 1816, he has left three sons and a daughter. The eldest, William Alexander Paul Frederick Lewis, born in 1817, was in England at the moment of his father's death; he has already been proclaimed King of the Netherlands, by the title of William the Third. The present king was married in 1839 to the Princess Sophia Frederica Mathilda, daughter of the King of Wurtemburg.

We have need of an army numerous as that of Xerxes and resolute as that of Leonidas, if we are to bear the brunt of all the hostility which our ministers destine for us. While Lord Grey, with steady caprice, is sowing the seeds of rebellion throughout our colonial empire, Lord Palmerston is not inactive in his peculiar vocation among of Wellington in the Peninsula from 1811 to 1814. foreign states. Lord Aberdeen's speech of Thursday was a serious exposure; it showed that Lord Palmerston, mediating" between Austria and Sardinia, had stood upon one ground with Austria-the treaties of 1815, and another with Sardinia-the expediency of the case; that he had threatened Austria, while he simply warned Sardinia of her "danger," with a mildness of reprobation amounting to permission; that he had put forth despatches and kept back others, so as to create a false impression of Austria, her conduct, her avowed purposes, and her reasons; that he had repelled offers when Austria was in a mood to grant them, and sought concessions for Italy when they could not be enforced, that he has embittered Austria, stimulated the rashness of Charles Albert, and so helped Italy as to frustrate her opportu- It was proposed in 1813 that the late king nities. Lord Lansdowne had no answer. He should marry our own Princess Charlotte; but the could not be made to understand what despatch project met with decided opposition from the prinhad been suppressed; he stands by his own lib-cess herself. Many years afterwards it was noeral opinions he sees that Europe, once threat- ticed of Prince Leopold, as a remarkable coïnciened by absolutism, is now threatened by the dence, that he had been successful in obtaining march of democracy over fallen thrones; he sees both a wife and a kingdom at the expense of the that events alter, and that Lord Palmerston same rival. changes his tone-a coïncidence which reässures him; and he hopes it will all come right in time. Meanwhile, Italy is threatened with a second war, which Lord Palmerston professed to prevent and has expedited; a war which weakens one of the powers that hold the barriers of Europe against Russia, and may induce that power to invite aid from the north to reconquer the south. A nice Complication!

William the First, the father of the late monarch, was proclaimed King of the Netherlands in 1813; and he reigned for twenty-seven years. He had formed an attachment for a lady whose rank prevented her from becoming his queen; and, preferring happiness to the highest station, he renounced his crown, on the 7th of October, 1840, and was married to the Countess d'Outremont in February, 1841.

AFTER MIDNIGHT, DAWN.

HOLLAND. His majesty William the Second, reigning King of the Netherlands, died, almost suddenly, at Tilburg, on the 17th March. The first announcement of his illness was made on the 15th, in the form of a bulletin stating that during the night of the 13th he had a severe attack of inflammation of the lungs, which obliged 'the physicians to bleed him copiously; and that during the night of the 15th he had a second attack, had again been bled, and was rather better. On the evening of the 16th, it was announced that "the early part of the morning was very fatiguing to the august patient; the fever and oppression on the chest were much more severe than before especially towards the middle of the day;" and on the 17th the Dutch newspapers appeared in deep mourning, with the announcement that the king expired, in the arms of the queen and one of his younger sons, at half past two o'clock of that morning. The late king was educated in England, and had been in every relation intimately not define "Italy," its purpose or its desire; but connected with this country. Driven from Hol- you may ascribe to that "geographical expres

THE state of the Continent defies the most farseeing politician to guess at the upshot. Scarcely a single state shows anything like a determined or defined purpose; but, from Schleswig to Naples, the whole is movement without plan. You can almost as little define the boundaries or political essence of each state itself as its intent; you cannot say what is to bear the title of "Germany," almost as little what is "Austria," what "Naples," or even Italy." Armies, there are, here and there, fighting for victory-and little else that is fixed or certain. The want of a clue to solve the gigantic European riddle appears to lie in the universal want of any great interest of a national or even of a factious kind. Classification is unsettled. Nations have so slight a nationality, that there is no single will, no desire, no purpose, which can be predicated of the whole. You can

66

sion" every variety of sentiment and political | select nothing more eminent than Barbès and combination. "Germany" has no unity, even of Caussidière. The coming man, however, is not design. Nor can national feeling be aroused with always the first found; and is not to be despaired any success. The Italians falter in the war of of, though people grope a long time for him. independence; the advocates of German unity are The English revolution, after it lost Hampden, divided; France has a new fashion of policy every was some years before it recognized its avenger month. and supporter in Cromwell. Who is there that might not have despaired of France under the Directory? The adventures, the disasters, the perils, the sudden and unexpected righting of causes and of countries almost foundering, are quite as startling in history as the turns of fortune in the life of an individual. Contemporaneous history is. indeed a novel, which we may read with the selfsame confidence as in the last product of the circulating library, that tyrants will be decapitated or nonplussed, and liberty and virtue rewarded-in the last chapter.

This dispersion of interests arises in great part from the progress of civilization. With more peaceful laws and manners, the great bond of union, instant and common danger, has lost its force, and men are more individualized. Such a state, however, cannot be a final one, because it is not a safe one. We see how the nations are distracted and paralyzed for want of a common purpose, insomuch that their relations are getting from bad to worse, and the ultimate solution of the trouble may perhaps be suggested by some common calamity. A Russian invasion, for instance, would unite Germany. Until civilization, much further developed, has found out some higher and better form of common interest to concentrate the energies of peoples upon a common purpose, it must be sought in a common danger, a common calamity. The worst then will but harbinger better times.

Were they indeed able and earnest enough, the leading statesmen of Europe might anticipate this inevitable calamity, and thus supersede the necessity of it. The talk of a congress of states has again revived; and undoubtedly a congress might afford the legitimate opportunity. But disappointment has too often physicked expectation, to leave much hope that such an assemblage will really gather itself until it is forced by the actual presence of calamity. A war there must be, or a congress; and it would manifestly be best to bring the maturer councils of Europe together, in order that they may compare notes, eliminate the possible from the impossible, and set Europe once more going, by a general sanction, under the new order. But the same defect of real care or zeal, which enervates the nations, also freezes their statesmen; and we fear that there will be no congress, until the one to settle the future peace-not one to prevent war. But calm follows the storm, as surely as there shall be sun after this dark March. The career of the world in its stayless orbit awaits not the will and fancy of statesmen.-Spectator, 31 March.

From the Examiner, 31 March.
FALL OF CHARLES ALBERT.

Decidedly, however, Charles Albert is not to be the successful hero of Italian independence. He made a bold effort for it, and he would not have been true to the traditions of his house if he had not made the trial. But Charles Albert is no more to be liberator of Italy than the King of Prussia is to be emperor of regenerated and united Germany. Crowned heads, it is to be feared, do not succeed in these attempts. The days of Gustavus, and Henry the Fourth. and Frederic the Second, are gone. Great things are to be expected only from popular heroes; and these do not rise in a twinkling, like the goddess from the scum of the troubled sea.

The re

We will not, for all this, despair of Italy. Its sole monarchic army has been beaten. publican leaders, undisciplined and disorganized, have merely indulged in vociferation and disorder. But between these two extremes, of the old armies and the new mob, there exists a large, intelligent, and well-provided class, whose opinions even restored monarchs cannot treat in the old fashion. If the King of Prussia must put up with democratic chambers, and the Emperor of Austria grant a representative government, the princes of Tuscany and Naples cannot go back to pure absolutism. Neither can the pope, nor even the viceroy of Lombardy. There must be a change, there must be concessions, there must be room and air for a certain degree of municipal and political freedom to develop themselves. And Italy wants half a century of such preparation for either independence or representative government.

To such ends as these, English and French influence will now be strenuously exerted. Such WHENEVER nations have been stirred by great influence has been powerless hitherto, owing to aims, they generally have found a man in whom the arrogant belief of the Italians that they could such aims were fitly concentrated, and who be- provide for their own security and government, incame their great instrument, prompter, and accom-dependently either of their native princes or of forplisher. Germany found Prince Maurice and eign intervention. The defeat of Charles Albert, Gustavus Adolphus. England had its Cromwell, however, dissipates that vision; and even demoFrance its Napoleon. At the present time coun-crats must listen to counsel, or must abide by the tries have been most unfortunate. With great inevitable result of summary expulsion. wants, great aims, aspirations, energies, and excitement, neither Germans nor Italians have found a leader. Even the ultra-democratic French could

Now, therefore, most truly, is the time for beneficent interference on behalf of Italy; an interference not menacing or armed, or in aid of idle