NEWS OF TILE WEEK.
THE sentence of death upon Constance Kent has been com- muted, as was expected, into penal servitude for life, which, again, it is semi-officially stated, will be exchanged for transporta- tion to Western Australia. Once arrived there, the criminal, after a short period of imprisonment, will of course obtain a ticket-of - leave, and probably marry and live a much happier life than the majority of poor girls who have not murdered their brothers. The case is not likely to deepen the general confidence in the equality of Englishmen before the law, but the public has deprived itself of any right to protest. If it chose in the teeth of evidence to go into a fit of maudlin sentimentality about a plain young woman, who had hacked a sleeping child to death with a razor, kept silence for five years, during which her father was driven from society by his constancy in protecting her, and then had repented, it has no right to blame Sir George Grey for being nearly as weak as itself. He is usually weaker, but in this instance he has not been, though to judge from the shoals of letters in penny journals that is not a great deal to say.
