The horrible epidemic of murder continues to rage fiercely, and
a wretch named Harvey, of Fen Ditton, a place near Cambridge, has contrived to surpass his numerous rivals in crime. He claimed some property which his mother was willing to yield, but which she thought and said belonged to his brothers. In revenge for this opinion he deli- berately crushed in her skull, and then remarking that he had "done justice," went out and "did justice" with a truer sense of its mean- ing by putting himself to death. In this case, as in that of the Ilkeston parricide, hanged this week, the murderers seem to have been. simply purposeless brutes, without an idea, save to gratify a momentary animal spite. Natures of that kind are below every in- fluence save physical terror, and it is greatly to be regretted that death sentences are so managed in England as to create an impres- sion of chance. Nothing is so terrible as a law which works like a fate. These murderers are people with cold imaginations, and a risk has therefore no terror for them. They want a punishment is. certain as the pain which follows a burn.
