Mrs. Maybrick's sentence has been commuted from death to imprisonment
for life. And the commutation appears to have been decided upon not because there is any reasonable doubt of the intent to kill, or of the actual administration of arsenic to Mr. Maybrick by his wife with that intent, but because there is a certain residuum of reasonable doubt as to • whether it was the arsenic so administered which really caused Mr. Maybrick's death. On a general review of the scientific evidence given, the death may be attributable to natural causes, whether aggravated by the arsenic administered or not. We fear that the effect of the commutation will be to arm the agitators for the abolition of capital punishment with a new argument. They will say, with some justice, that if the public will not endure such a sentence in such a case as this, in- tending murderers will always have reason to hope for, if not even to expect, such an escape as Mrs. Maybrick's.
