A GOOD CAUSE MAY BE ILL ARGUED.
Tam quantity of nonsense and bad taste uttered "with the best intentions" in this reforming age is inconceivable. 'fake for example a petition to commute the sentence of death under which MARY GALLOP now lies at Chester for poisoning her father, which has been signed by "the Bishop of Chester, Chancellor Raikes, and a great body of the clergy and gentry." In this document, parricide is designated by the gentle epithet of "the crime of causing the death of her father." In alleviation of this crime it is observed, that it "does not appear to have been long premedi- tated " ; that it had been "accidentally suggested to her [the criminal's] mind" by a story she heard related in company ; and that she was not influenced "by any malignant hatred to her father, but as a means that occurred to her mind of enabling her to marry the person to whom she had engaged herself."
This way of talking is not a protest against death-punishment, but an extenuation of the guilt of parricide. If the clergy and gentry of Cheshire read this petition before they signed it, their notions of morality must be singularly loose. The robbing of an orchard could scarcely be palliated in more lenient phraseology. It is most probable that the eminent persons whose names are ap- pended to the petition knew nothing of its contents ; that being asked to lend their aid to save a fellow being from death, they gave their signatures without any suspicion of the doctrines to which they were thus giving their sanction. This is but an indifferent apology for them, but it is the best that can be offered : if the logic and sentiment of the petition are really theirs, it is not for the lower classes alone that improved means of education are required.
The petitioners further undertake to show how useful the cri- minal may be made if spared. She had previously "conducted herself as a teacher in a Wesleyan Methodist school with strict propriety"; and "she might prove of great use in being employed in teaching young persons in one of the schools, in any place to which she may be transported." A nice sense these good people seem to entertain of the best preparatory training for a school- mistress ! According to their account, MARY GALLOP did not sin in ignorance : she was capable of teaching others—she was intrusted with the tuition of others by a body which selects its teachers with a constant view to their religious attainments, and their profession of a deep sense of religion. She was not hurried away by violent pas- sion; but was merely unable to resist the tempting suggestion that she might get herfather, towards whom she entertained "no malig- nant hatred," out of her way, by a death which persons of average humanity shrink from inflicting on a puppy-dog. And this is the person to whom the clergy and gentry of Cheshire would intrust the education of young people ! It shows what ideas they—or those of them who thought at all about the subject—attach to the term " education" ; and no wonder that many are apt to speak slight- ingly of it if that is the understanding. But it also explains very unpleasantly what many mean by "religious education,"—namely, the habit of subserviency to certain formulas in which the tenets of particular sects are symbolized. MARY GALLOP was capable of ob- serving those formulas, and of imparting them ; therefore her conduct had been "correct," and she was competent to be a "teacher." What a commentary is her story on that common assumption !
The abolition of death-punishment is desirable, not only in the case of MARY GALLOP but of every criminal ; for death- punishment has been found at once inefficacious as a preventive of crime and pernicious as tending to stimulate destructive pro- pensities in beholders. But the mischief done even by executions as less than that of lending countenance to such enervating and demoralizing sentiments as those expressed in the Cheshire peti- tion. It is one of the drawbacks upon the attainment of reforms by the pressure of public opinion, that puling sentiments like those expressed in the Cheshire petition receive a share of in- direct patronage. Men anxious to establish a principle are chary of offending a colleague. The most rigid moralist, if member of a committee for the abolition of death-punishment, will hesitate to rebuke the most lax expressions of a brother member, lest he should introduce dissension into the camp, or make a deserter. Out of mutual servility all individual character is sacrificed on every side, and trash like that upon which we have been comment- mg gains currency.
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