We regret to notice the death of Mr. Matthew James
Higgins, better known as "Jacob Omnium," and perhaps the ablest member of a confrateruity peculiar to the nineteenth century, the guerilla journalists. Mr. Higgins never edited anything and seldom wrote anything longer than a letter, yet he was one of the most effective journalists in the country. He had a profound hatred of any abuses which happened to come before him, and used to describe them in letters which seemed to their readers sharp common-sense statements of fact. So they were ; for their perfection of polish was frequently imperceptible, like that of a fine lens ; but somehow those who read those state- ments never forgot them, or believed anybody else in opposi- tion to them, and the abuses had to go. We believe Mr. Higgins never failed to win any case he took up except the Crawley affair, and even there he secured the trial at home of an officer commanding a regiment in India who had only, in Mr. Hig- gins' opinion, " baked " a serjeant-major. We thought at the time, and think still, that he was prejudiced in this matter ; but though capable of prejudice, he never used his singular power except against what he honestly considered oppression. Ile will be missed in the next campaign against wrong, and better epitaph could no man have.
