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    the poisons in his possession , but exhibited them with other drugs ; and how some oi those expressions which appeared to indicate indifference , manifestly had relation to his sympathy for relatives—we have the strongest conviction , in common with the jury , that the man is innocent , and has been unjustly accused . But Madame Laffarge was kind to her husband ; and some of the evidence in her case was far weaker than in the present . For example , the amount of poison detected was infinitely less ; there were only arsenical stains on the test , not an actual ponderable amount of disengaged arsenic . Tet Madame Laffarge was condemned , perhaps wrongfully , as Mr . Wooler might have been if the evidence got up against him had been successful . Wooler was not the murderer of his wife , but the partner who shared her calamity in a more painful manner than herself . Here then is a most astounding and alarming case—the lady was poisoned , she died from the poison , and her condition was known to her medical attendants twenty-five days before her death . She died on the 29 th of June , and Dr . Jackson suspected arsenic on the 7 th of that month . The poison was regularly administered to her , and she sank under it . One medical man suspected it at the beginning of the month ; another somewhat later ; but there she lay , poisoned more and more daily . It was only wonderful that she could live so long . At last she died . If anybody should have been safe , it was that lady—watched over by her husband , who knew something about drugs ; attended by a sister , and by more than one medical man , some of them men of standing . Her case was actually sxispected Weeks before the end ; and yet she was sacrificed ! Turn to the case of Tutton at Bath . Here is an auctioneer in good circumstances—very good circumstances ; ho has made no will ; his son boasts that he shall shortly come into the property ; that son thrusts aside the family cook from her vocation , to prepare supper for his father ; the father is poisoned , and there was poison in that supper ; the voting man absconds , conceals himself , surrenders himself , and is brought to trial ; and a jury acquits him : he is " innocent , " therefore , notwithstanding appearances . It was not he that administered the poison- —it was somebody else . His mode of life was irregular , his actions suspicious ; but he must be cast out of the account ; and if the father of the family wishes to find who it is that has put arsenic in his supper , he must look around within his own home—to fail in detecting his nmrderer . He has been poisoned * ,- —the- poisoner can seek him in the very bosom of his family ; and yet he cannot detect the murderer that would be I It is true that we are not subject to the direct and . flagrant crime of the Bougias . But present the case how you will , it docs seem that wo arc doomed to assaults upon life not leas fatal than those which stamp the middle ages with barbarism . Our streets are kept . peaceable by help of the policeman ; but the judges tell us , and the statistics tell us , that wo constantly breed a band of thieves and robbers whom wo try to transport . Sturdy vagrants wei'e a curse in the time- of the Tudors ; but they had not their thousands upon thousands , and they did not then desire the expedient of some place to transport them to . On the contraiy , the earliest poor laws enforced the remaining of tho vagrant in his own district . Statesmen do not now poison ; but private persons appear to have taken up tho trade ; and , apart from tho tradesman , who poisons us in our food and abates our life , a practice is increasing amongst us that indicates tho germ of horrible domestic crimes . " Education" is the cry of the day ; wo enforce order in tho

    L streets , and in houses , by the strictest rules ; f perhaps we have in some degree placed res straints upon natural frankness , perhaps our ; severe regimen-tends to constrain the affections , ; and the true guardian o £ home , ' the natural : instinct . which repels all hatred and envy , sickens and languishes . It is not so everywhere ; but in some places , we believe , school , sect , and the pedantry of the day , have driven forth the garrison of the home .

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    1200 . T HE L , E ADER , [ Key 5 . £ . Zaiwtay ,

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    TURKEY FOUNDERING . It has long been the conviction of clearsighted persons in the west of Europe that , whatever Power gained by the war , the Turks must lose . Not only have they been utterly eclipsed , their generals siibordinated to those of their allies , their capital garrisoned and furnished with a French police , their navy lost , a large portion of their territory in Austrian possession , their Greek enemies only kept at bay by the interference of France and England , their finances exhausted , their authority contemned by their own subjects ; but it has become a question how long their " Empire" is to remain in the occupation' of the allies , after the establishment of peace . To desert them prematurely , it is said , would be criminal ; by which is meant that to release them hastily from the Western yoke would be foolish . A sense of generosity may induce the English people to compassionate their helpless allies , the Turks , whose cause was the original object of the war . But the result was foreseen two years ago . Turkey , as a purely Mohammedan state , has no longer a political existence . The Turks have lost their pride , their selfreliance , their privilege of oppression . They : are protected by France , and England , and , i like all protected races , they are conquered , j We recently observed that in the British j camps in the Eastit is a joke that the successor ; of AiiDUL Medjid will be a Frenchman . This is a light illustration of a serious truth . Turkey ! is in the possession of Great Britain and France , j and they are already consulting what to do with it . The event at Kars comes to justify the opinions we have stated of the vitality that ¦ remains in the governmental system of the O ttoman empire . A single city , easy to approach , connected by a high road with the sea , with Avell-constructed defences , an able British officer in command , and a body of . as gallant soldiers as ever fought to garrison it , lias been starved into surrender . It is easy j to impute tins disaster as a crime to the Allies , j who rilled one vast arena of operations in the North , and one in the East . Possibly , Omak Pasha was fettered in . his movements , not from any desire to spare Russia—for every secondrate Russian success only protracts the war , and injures Russia ; but from obstinacy , or from indifference , or from blindness . Possibly , however , his presence was necessary in the Crimea . That is a point on which it is not easy , for us , in London , to decide ; but the fact remains , and is not covered by mystery , that tho Imperial Ottoman Government , with the free range of tho Black Sea coast , and uninterrupted communications , could not , or , would not , rescue Kara . Tho reason being that it is a decrcpid and spiritless Government . In the presence of great armies , traversing his territory , occupying his capital , putting his Christian subjects on a practical equality with him , where is the sxiperiority of tho Mussulman ? When ho was supreme , it was 1 through the power of the sword , which main- ; tained tho severity of intolerance . He dares , no longer assert the insolent ascendancy of his nation . His police cower before tho police of J

    his . French protectors . Moreover , the head of his religion , the Sultan , scolded and tutored for years by the reigning diplomatist at Constantinople , will have a treaty forced upon him , in due time , to which his consent will be a mere formality . The principalities of "Wallachia and Bulgaria , integral parts of his em - pire , may be erected into a separate state—will 6 e , if the limes has its way . As it is , they are under Austrian martial law , and may continue in the occupation of Austria until the Mahommedan dominion is extinct . This is not a deplorable , because it is a natural catastrophe . A nation that pretends to rule by the right of conquest , must live by its own law , and yield to power . But the power that has unnerved the administration of the Turks , is not that of France , Austria , or England . It is that of the Christian race which has expanded , while the Turkish race has shrunk , which has taken possession of the industry of the empire , of its trade , of its commerce , of its navigation , of its schools , of its system of foreign intercourse , while the Turks have remained , immoveable , lords of the sword and the soil . The sword has now dropped from their hands ; every military position in their territory is possessed by the Allies ; the Bosphorus is no longer a Turkish , but a French and British station ; every Ottoman port is under the presidence of Europeans . To the Christian powers they owe , perhaps , that their own power has not been violently extinguished . What , then , remains of their strength or their prestige ? Their navy is destroyed ; their army is reduced ; their exchequer is wholly exhausted . An alloyed currency , and a ruined credit , promise few resources for the future . At the same time , the Christian populations are becoming more powerful , intelligent , and ambitious , daily . Marvellous numbers of new merchant ships are being built by them—a hundred and forty for the Grecian ports alone ; they are rapidly learning to supply almost every want of the great armies quartered in their territory ; and , which is still more significant , they express , without reserve , in Constantinople and the other maritime cities , their scorn of the Turks , and their hope of succeeding them as a ruling race , in the east of Europe . The incidents of the war have by no means mitigated the mutual rancour of the Turkish and Christian nations in that empire . The Christians—even those who sympathise with the Allies—have almost invariably satirised the victories of tho Turks , and exulted in their defeats . We must take the truth as we find it , without lecturing the people of the Levant on the moral wickedness of not rejoicing when Britain and Gaul drive back the barbarians , &c . &c . &c . ! All men , when they have their own interests and passions strongly at work , look coldly at external affairs . The Christians of Turkey hate the Turk more'Jhan they hate the Russian , because they have suffered more from him . When they estimate their own strength' , it is not to measure it against that of the Russians , for the most part their co-religionists ; but against that of tho Turks , who , during four hundred years , have kept them in a state of abject social inferiority . Tho Christian , when he can do it with impunity , now taunts his o \ o . oppressor with tho reflection , that he is indebted fur his empire to the assistance ot " infidels . " The Christians have felt their power ; the Turks have felt their weakness . There will be a new contest in the East when the Allied armies have been withdrawn . It may bo gradual and bloodless ; but if the frontiers of the Ottoman territory be really defined , and guarded by the great powers of Europe , «

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 15, 1855, page 1200, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2119/page/12/