The admirers of that content and pliancy which ignorance is
supposed to foster in the poor should consider the case of the labourer, William Parris, who was convicted at Maidstone on Wednesday, before Baron Huddleston, of the brutal murder of a child, William Crouch, on the 11th June last. The boy's mother was, it appears, previously unknown to Parris ; but he had solicited her on the night in question to accompany him, which she had not done, and the man confessed that, by way of revenge, he crushed the child's head with a bar of iron, and then went and gave himself up to the police, declaring that a worse murder never was committed, and that " hanging was too good for him." A feeble attempt was made to set up the plea of insanity, but the evidence was worth- less, and the man was found guilty and condemned to death,—a sentence which did not seem in the least to affect him. A striking peculiarity of the case is that at Mailing, the village where the crime was committed, six dreadful murders have been committed within the last twenty years ; while till after 1870 there was no school in the neighbourhood, the result being that in this trial none of the various witnesses examined could write their names, except the policeman and the publican. That does not look very much as if ignorance kept men docile. In fact, probably, it insulates the energy of rude natures, till the force, when it does escape, breaks forth in jets of animal fury like that of Parris.
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