The South Wales Daily Post

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1894. OUR BIRTHDAY. It is now twelve months since we first made our bow to the public, and we feel that we ought not to allow the first anniversary of our birthday to pass without expressing to those kind and constant friends who, through good and evil report, have been firm in their support, our deep and lasting gratitude. A young 2-- y paper has many diiiiculties to overcome, the indifference of lukewarm friends as well as the avowed hostility of its public enemies. Wo are glad to think that in the first year of our life I we have added considerably to the number of our friends, while we have not wilfully or con- sciously increased the number of our enemies. The very largo and enthusiastic support we have received, and the constant and steady growth of our circulation, sufficiently justify the declaration which we made in our first issue, that there existed a numerous class of readers in this district whose interests had not been sufficiently considered or studied by the daily press. We are setting out on a strange voyage," so ran the opening article in our first number, full of unknown dangers and hidden rocks. But our courage is high, and our faith is strong, that by serving the community honestly and fearlessly, we shall not meet with a grudging support." On review- 11 I, ing our history during the last twelve months, we are proud to think that we have never know- ingly deviated from the course of policy which ty we laid down at the start. Sometimes it has been our duty to disagree with some of our best friends on points of public policy, but we have never on that account shrinked from our responsibility as an outspoken and fearless organ of public opinion. It is gratifying to find that in the newspaper world, as in the greater world around us, honesty is the best policy, and that even those who have been most opposed to the policy we have advocated have been the first in their expressions of respect for our straightforwardness. The great and unex- pected success which has attended the first year of our life encourages us to hope that for many long years to come we shall be permitted to serve the public to the best of our ability.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, The thirteenth of February opened on the final scene in that awful trageuy which was acted at Carmarthen a few months ago. Happily, the sickening sensation which the ancient borough must have experienced is by no means of frequent occurrence in it3 history, and let us hope the grave to-day closed on the last murderer who has brought dishonour to Saint Peter's Boys." At the hour of eight, within the precincts of the prison, ail- that remained of George Thomas, the murderer of poor Mary Jane Junes, was a lifeless body dangling on the gallows. The deed was one of unusual atrocity, in its deliberate purpose as much as in its revolting details. The crime bore no redeeming feature; it was murder out and out. We were hardly prepared to believe any Welsh countryman of ours capable of such villainy and unmixed cruelty. With the excep- tion of the plea ok insanity, the culprit's counsel had not a shred of excuse or defence to offer. The deed was impregnated with malice afore- thought, with calculating, cold-blooded revenge, with such utter heartlessness as at once made the criminal hated and abhorred of his kind. Having followed the evidence before and at the trial at the assizes, no one could help arriving at the same conclusion as the Home Secretary on Saturday, that there was no reason why the sentence of death should be commuted in the present state of the law. There was nothing but hanging for the man, and he has met his fato. In spite, however, of the enormity of George ,Thomas's crime, and his total unworthiness of ever again mixing with his fellows, we make foold.to-protest against the law which takes a life for a life. It is a relic of savagery, a rem- nant of a barbarous stage in human develop- mentrand a blot.on English civilization at the close of the nineteenth century. We deny the moral right of the State to deprive the indi- vidual of his life. Our maxim-and we contend it is a maxim tho.t should guide and govern tho conductof the State—is, "Take notniraythe life thou canst not give." Only in self-defence, to take a man's life under any circumstances is murder—murder in the individual and murder in the community. Execution by hanging, we -za told 'sometimes, does contain an elaruant of self-defence. It la the only method by which the instinct of self-preservation can be gratified. The State thus rids itself of male- factors who are highly dangerous to the life of its members, and its highest interests. To hang a culprit is a species of safe-guarding the public, and a guarantee against a recurrence of murder. It, moreover, emphasises the sacredness of human life, and, whilst casting the deepest stigma on the offender's memory, exhibits the atrocious character of murder, and acts as a preventive to its committal. Such are the arguments employed in favour of hanging. Fiimsy arguments these, and have no founda- tion m fact or in common sense. In days gone by a man's life was thought little of, and he had to expiate with it minor offences, such as petty larceny and theft. But hanging proved useless in ridding the country of thieves and robbers. We grew sick of the gallows and the gibbet, and limited the former to the extreme offence against the law. At a still earlier date people were compelled to forfeit their lives for holding what were counted heretical views. At tho very town in which George Thomas was thrust out of existence to- day, Bishop Ferrar was clubbed nigh senseless, and his lacerated body burnt at the stake. But piles of faggots could not cure the country of heresy." Burning was a useless remedy, and the country revolted against the barbarity. Hanging, we maintain, is an equally futile ex- pedient in our days. It is neither a prevention nor a cure. Murder is now as rife as ever, and will be while a motive, real or imaginary, will exist for it. It is the outcome of those evil inclinations which are interwoven with the texture of human nature, the work of "that evil genius which makes the human heart its abode, but which, fortunately, is checked by reason, and the restrictions of an enlightened civilization. Every man by nature is more or less a murderer, only in the actual offender the controlling hand of reason is temporarily par- alysed, and passion asserts itself in the horrible deed. "Anger is a short madness," said the Latin proverb. This at once reduces all murder to the level of insanity, and it is time the State recognised it as such, and divested itself of the silly notion that hanging is the only public safeguard against offences of this kind, as well as a public expedient. Other methods are available, equally efficacious, and in all res- pects superior from a humane and utilitarian point of view. It is in the nature of things that a murderer, like every other evil-doer, should suffer for his sin against society. We have our prisons—why not confine murderers therein, and mete out just punishment inside those gloomy walls ? Let their existence bo a life- long separation from an insulted and an injured public. Feed them with the bread of affliction, and let the iron sink into their soul, until the enormity of their crime presses them to remorse and repentance. Hanging, at best, is a mere brutal act, a sort of cowardly revenge on the part of the law, inasmuch as the victim is incapable of defence. Revenge is no law, for it is devoid of reason and subversive of the true ends of punishment, one of which, at least, should be the moral reclamation of the offender. It is only by confinement, close and life- long, we are convinced, this can be accom- plished. Asa prevention to murder, no method can be devised superior to ponal servitude, with all the exquisite torture which is there reduced to a syatem or an art. Returned convicts have a wholesome dread of it, and will tell you they would ten times sooner face the gallows than enter within the walls of Dartmoor again. Confine the murderer, but there is no reason why his existence should be useless and profit- less to the State. Let him" work" out his salvation in fear and trembling in- his confine- ment. Ho has now become the State's property. Deprived of liberty by his own for- feiture of it, he is none other than a serf or a human chattel, and tho community has a right to his labour. And, by rendering what service ho can, his sense of punishment will be none tho less keen, or his expiation none the less real. Finally, if, as has not been infrequently the case, a mis- carriage of justice may have occurred, and the wrong man been sentenced, administrators of the law will be spared the remorse which fol- lows the execution of an innocent man, gone beyond recall and any possibility of reparation made him. The thought is too awful to dwell upon!

'"NOTES "OOEWS. We are glad to find that DISESTABLISHMENT. Mr. D. A. Thomas was so del ermined and out- spoken in his declaration about Disestab- lishment at Portsmouth last night. The day of trial is fast approaching, when the firmness and independence of the Welsh member-i will be put to a severe test. We have still sufficient confidence in them to believe that nothing will make them untrue to their country aud their nation; and that in spite of, or rather beause of their Liberalism, they w:li insist on the due recogni- tion of Welsh rights. -x- Of old, good men gave of TRUE their substance to the poor. GEISEKOSITT. The tithes were in part devoted to this purpose, aud the Church didits utmost to cultivate and encourage the eleemosynary virtues of its members. In the Middle Ages, however, we find the char ty of the rich taking another form. The poor were well p-ovided for, according to tho standard of the time, by the Church, and rich men took to estab- lishing and endowing educational institutions for the saka of the poor scholars." It is to this noble spirit that we owe the great I universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the g, evt public schools of Eton and Winchester. After the Reformation, however, when the duty of providing for the poor fell upon the State, and not upon the Church, we iind a sensible d-C: e.ise in the number of new schools. Vicar Pritchard in vain called upon the rich landlords of his time to establish Ysgol rydd yng Nghymru," and the work that would have been done in tho Middle Ages by private effort and private munificence has been dona in this generation by tho State. We are glad, however, to find sure indications that a different spirit is beginning to anima.te rich and poor in their relations to educa- tion. We are beginning to realise that to give money for eductional purposes is the best form of charity. Ordinary charity too often degrades a.nd demoralises the recipient, and puffs up the giver with his own conceit. An educational charity, on the other ha.d, is twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. We congratulate Sir John Llewelyn on his wise selec ion of an object of his generosity. He has, as we stated yesterday, given £5,OGO to St. David's College, Lampeter. We tineercly trust that this timely and valuable gift will stir other rich Welsh lard ords to emula- tion, and that the Swansea University College and the Welsh University will be the better for it. A new employment for women is suggested by the following advertisement :—"Will any lady, near Oxford square, Hyde park, ta'!ie a Lttle dog for daily wali-is during the owner's absence from i to ivu ? State teres

r THE POST BAG. Lewis Morris, the poet, was born sixty-oat years ago. Biilington, the hangman, is a native,of Bolto^ and the son of a barber. The death is reported of the Rev. John Morgan, vicar of Nantyglo. On0 of his predecessors in the living was the Venerable Archdeacon of Llandafl, Sir Harry Veruey, whose death was reported ¡ yesterday, was born in the first year of the cen. tury. A Liberal in politics, buthe waa not a Home Ruler, Someone aptly called the X)isestablishmeoJ meeting held in connoction with the National Liberal Federation at Portsmouth last niftht th. Welsn Leaders' Choir. Jack, said a young girl to her beau, "hereVl a piece in the paper headed Kismet.' What doea 'kismet' mean?" "The word must be pro- nounced with the 't' silent." Why, that would be 'Kiss me!' said Nettie. "With the gceattsli of pleasure," said Jack; and he did. The latest to make its appearance in the journ«.$ alistic world in Swansea is a baby-periodical with the long name — St. James' Baptist Chape* Monthly Magazine. It must have been born oiitf of due time, at least it reached this office twelver days after its registered date—January. Tho contents are readable and bright. The Rev. D. Rhagfyr Jones, one of the rising young Congregationalists of the Principality, has received an unanimous call to the pastorate of the Independent church at Barmouth. He is not called Rhagfyr Jones because he was born in December. He looks upon the na.me.a.sapromis(r,( and a prophecy that the millennium will commence in the last month of the year. Twenty years ago, when Mr. F. C. Selouf asked Lobengula's permission to hunt game within the limits of his dominion, tha-tswarthy monarch looked him up and down, and said, with smile, You are only a boy: you can t do any harm. Go where you please." Later, when the King had testimony of Mr. Selous's prowess as a hunter, he said, with another of his slyly humorous glances, "I see you are a man; I must keep an eye -upon you." Liverpool possesses a wonderful football team. Out of the eleven players who beat the Preston North End on Saturday in the competition for the English Cup we find the following names MeOwen, McLean, M. McQueen. McQue, MeBride, McVean, and H. McQueen. Never was such » numbar of Macs got together 111 ft single eleven. It shows that the importation of the Scotch footballer is still a flourishing trade. Fetter-lane Chapel, well-known to London Welshmen and Welshwomen, the oldest Congre.. gational chapel in the City, is to be sold on the last day of this month, and with the proceeds ft new building is to be erected on the Essex border, as well as a small building in Fetter-lane. The chape!, which is a rather narrow, ugly building, replaced an earlier erection by Dr. Goodwin, one of Cromwell's chaplains, but the church founded by Goodwin now meets at the City Temple. A male spider will approach a female and amuse her for some time with his antics. It is said that he twirls around and around, crosses his legs, erects his body, and executes a sort of maze dance- to excite her admiration. She is a very vicious lady, and not always pleased with his love-making, i-oirjetlmes he feels obliged to ward her off, for she has a painful mode of showing her displeasure, and if she entirely disapproves of his intention* will fall upon him and rend him to pieces. Little Lady Alexandra Duff has overcome the dislike to the bagpipes which she eo strongly mani- fested as a sma)1 baby. On previous oecMioM when she has been in Scotland she has screamed lustily whenever the skirl" of the national instruments has fallen upon her ears. Thil year, in the role of an elder sister, the evidently feels that she must display dignity, and she has been present on several public occasions with her pareuts when thU bagpipes have been unsparingly used, and :1B8 borne the ordeal, unflinchingly. The littls lady has succeeded in doing what Dafydd ab Gwilym never could. Dafydd used to call the bagpige the Sonfa.wr wyddeles ynfyd to his dying day. Mrs. Lynn Linton, discoverer of "The Revolt of our Daughters, has just completed a novel called The One Too Many," which deals with the career of four girl graduates, interesting rather than sweet, who are located at Girton, The story, now on the point of publica- tion, has been appearing in serial form in one of the illustrated weeklies, and has had a splendid advertisement in a letter attacking Mrs. Lvnn Linton for misrepresenting the ladief colleges at Cambridge. No such girls as these, says the Late Student of Girton," who dnnSt, swear, and smoke (to say nothing of using slang), were ever known at Girton; and, indeed, the whole book is a libel, &be declares, on the college. The authoress, of course, 8 prepared'with a suit- able reply. t-. Lord Kimberley and one of the bí.hops-Johø'" of Salisbury to wit—had a. pretty tiff when the Lords sat last. The London correspondents devoted some attention to it. The bishop chose to I impute dishoiiourable conduct to a Government Department, and his demeanour while doing sa was, to say the least of it, verging upon the insolent. Lord Kimberley hotly retorted that such language was extraordinary, offensive, and unjustifiable; whereupon the prelate arose in his wrath, and—walked out of the building. Some of the contributors to Tory journals look upon this as an extremely dignified and effective; reply to the Liberal peer. But Tories have a hereditary admiration for the policy of running away. They have been accustomed to it for generation*. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the sensa*" tion caused in Now York by the fact of a young doctor who claimed before an assembly of savants to have discovered an infallible antidote for opium, morphine, and similar poisons. Despite the protest of those present, wh<r declared that they would not sanction certain suicide, he mixed three grains of morphia in two wine glasses of water nnd drank them. Im- mediately afterwards he took four grains of per- manganate of potash similarly dissolved in water. The doctors, who watched him for five hours expecting to see him die-—seeing that one grain is a fatal dose—could detect no injury whatever to his constitution, nor any effect from the poison and he is now alive and well. There is one thing about Cornishinen; thej seem to be very modest. At the dinner of tht Midland Cornish Association in Birmingham os Saturday night tlie principal speaker was Mr, Passmore Edwards, who said—pointing to the businesslike qualities of his race—"Put a Birminjj ham man in Cornwall, and probal: ly he would bt it trved; put a Cornisbman in Birmingham, and he would probably make a fortune." This if quite believrdi-e to every SwauLOA man. Mr, Edwards, however, had the humility to admit hit there was one place where you never found a Cornishman, and that was in Scotland, Is it that the Scotch people are too canny for them, or that tho railway fare from the Land s End to John o' Groat's is too heavy? We can quite understand, however, why the wily Cornis-' man does not venture across the Tweed. Only one Jew has been seen in Aberdeen, and he is in the hired fuz" tiiifcure 'io*.