The papers still reek with details of crime. Murders, stabbings,
and outrages on women are reported in such numbers that even cau- tious observers begin to believe that their frequency shows a dis- ordered state of the public mind. With respect to murders, nothing can be done, as the law is fairly carried out, but we greatly fear that the magistracy have to answer for the increase in stabbing and in assaults on women. Men are every day let off, for acts equivalent to murders in all but results, with a few days' imprisonment; and assaults on women short of rape almost escape punishment altogether. The consequence is, in the former case, a spirit of brutality which ends on the gallows, and, in the latter, a contempt for law such as that ex- hibited in the Cheltenham case. When a dozen ruffians dare com- bine to execute a rape, it is time that the capital sentence, still passed, should be carried into execution.
