being pulled over his eyes, the sheriff made a signal, at which
the stage fell from under his feet, and he was left suspended. His
body having hung an hour and five minutes, was cut down, placed in the
hearse, and conveyed to the public theatre for dissection; where being
opened, and lying for some days as the subject of a public lecture, at
length it was carried off and privately interred. Without all doubt,
this unhappy nobleman's disposition was so dangerously mischievous, that
it became necessary, for the good of society, either to confine him for
life as au incorrigible lunatic, or give him up at once as a sacrifice
to justice. Perhaps it might be no absurd or unreasonable regulation in
the legislature, to divest all lunatics of the privilege of insanity,
and, in cases of enormity, subject them to the common penalties of the
law; for though, in the eye of casuistry, consciousness must enter into
the constitution of guilt, the consequences of murder committed by a
maniac may be as pernicious to society as those of the most criminal
and deliberate assassination, and the punishment of death can be hardly
deemed unjust or rigorous, when inflicted upon a mischievous being,
divested of all the perceptions of reason and humanity. At any rate,
as the nobility of England are raised by many illustrious distinctions
above the level of plebeians, and as they are eminently distinguished
from them in suffering punishment for high treason, which the law
considers as the most atrocious crime that can be committed, it might
not be unworthy of the notice of the legislature to deliberate whether
some such pre-eminence ought not to be extended to noblemen convicted of
other crimes, in order to alleviate as much as possible the disgrace of
noble families which have deserved well of their country; to avoid
any circumstance that may tend to diminish the lustre of the English
nobility in the eyes of foreign nations; or to bring it into contempt
with the common people of our own, already too licentious, and prone to
abolish those distinctions which serve as the basis of decorum, order,
and subordination.

ASSASSINATION OF MR. MATTHEWS.

Homicide is the reproach of England: one would imagine there is
something in the climate of this country that not only disposes the
natives to this inhuman outrage, but even infects foreigners who reside
among them. Certain it is, high passions will break out into the most
enormous violence in that c