Tropmann, the butcher of the Muck family, has been tried
and found guilty, strange to say without extenuating circumstances, and condemned to death. When we express surprise that " ex- tenuating circumstances" were not found, we do not mean that there were any to find, but that the French people appear to be so bent en abolishing capital punishment, that we expected a French jury to find extenuating circumstances precisely where there are absolutely none, in order to mark that the mere liability to capital punishment is held to be itself an extenuating circumstance. We confess it is a relief to our imagination that Tropmann is to be expunged from this life. He is not a man, and the form of man which he bears is an insult to the race. Nothing occurred on the trial to diminish even in the least degree the enormity of his cold- blooded cruelty. It said that he boasts of the power to commit suicide at any moment, even in the presence of his gaolers, and so to escape the guillotine.
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