" KILLING NO MURDER."
[To THE EDITOR OF TIER " SPECTATOR:1 SIE,—Half-a-century ago my father sometimes took me to attend trials in a provincial town. One of those trials was for infanticide. I was present when the jury gave their verdict ; the foreman stated that there had been sonic difference of opinion among them, and that they had given the accused the benefit of the doubt. The Judge, of course, discharged the prisoner; but he intimated that he could not understand how the saving doubt had arisen. After a like verdict in the same town, my father, who had been foreman of the Grand Jury, was told by the Judge that the jury had acquitted the prisoner against the clearest evidence, and that if such indulgence continued to be shown to infanticide the horrid crime would never cease. Had the verdicts been different in these cases, the Judges (or Judge) would probably have wished the penalty of death to be inflicted, the penalty from which, about the same time, in " Adam Bede" Hetty was represented as having escaped by a hair's-breadth. The Home Secretary and others have lately expressed a very different sentiment. But I am not now concerned to criticise that sentiment; I refer to it only as significant Of the trend of public opinion. Suffice it to remark that, if an extreme punishment for infantioide were often inflicted, each severity would be followed by frequent acquittals, and therefore by no punishment at all.—I am,
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