lip's attack upon Swanzey was a premature
explosion; and that Canonchet then watched the course of events for a
while before making up his mind whether to abandon Philip or support
him?

[34] A wretched little werewolf who some few years ago, being then a lad
of fourteen or fifteen years, most cruelly murdered two or three
young children, just to amuse himself with their dying agonies. The
misdirected "humanitarianism," which in our country makes every murderer
an object of popular sympathy, prevailed to save this creature from
the gallows. Massachusetts has lately witnessed a similar instance of
misplaced clemency in the case of a vile woman who had poisoned eight or
ten persons, including some of her own children, in order to profit
by their life insurance. Such instances help to explain the prolonged
vitality of "Judge Lynch," and sometimes almost make one regret the days
in old England when William Probert, after escaping in 1824 as "king's
evidence," from the Thurtell affair, got caught and hanged within a
twelvemonth for horse-stealing. Any one who wishes to study the results
of allowing criminality to survive and propagate itself should read
Dugdale's The Jukes; Hereditary Crime, New York, 1877.

[35] Weeden, _Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization_,
Johns Hopkins University Studies, II. viii., ix. p. 30.

[36] Doyle, ii. 253.

[37] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, ii. 254.

[38] The quotation is from an unpublished letter of Rev. Robert
Ratcliffe to the Bishop of London, cited in an able article in the
_Boston Herald_, January 4, 1888. I have not seen the letter.

[39] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, ii. 379, 380.

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