1 827.] Notes for the Month. 213 



for a little more than half the charge per head that would give enter- 

 tainment to an equal number of scullery-maids ! And, directly afterwards, 

 comes upon us a list of charges of double the same amount, for fopperies, of 

 which the students never acquire half so much as a parrot gets of languages 

 by living three months in Paris. " Music, six guineas per annum !" 

 " Dancing, six guineas per annum !" u French, six guineas per annum !" 

 " Drawing, six guineas per annum !" Here is more than the price of all 

 the meat and drink, including the honest reading and writing, summed up 

 already ! And we have not got a word in yet about " Italian, six 

 guineas !" " Use of the Globes" (Lord defend us !) six guineas !" or 

 " Fancy works," or " Elocution," or " Singing," or a hundred more 

 enormities, which we absolutely have not paper to enumerate not in- 

 cluding the newest novelty of " Calisthenics !" with a note at the 

 end of the advertisement, that " any young lady, the daughter of a 

 butcher or tallow-chandler, will find an advantage in coming to learn all 

 these fine things, as the parents will be dealt with to supply the esta- 

 blishment!" 



" Good Christian women !" as Duretete,in the play, says, Do forbear 

 these absurdities ! 



The escape of the atrocious culprit, Sheen, upon <4 a point of form," 

 from the indictment for the murder of his infant child, has excited a good 

 deal of discussion in the country, and some dissatisfaction. We think 

 the dissatisfaction is unfounded.* Sheen is acquitted, not on account of 

 any verbal or technical error apparent" in the pleadings in his case, but 

 simply because there has been an omission on the part of his prosecutors 

 to bring forward that evidence which was necessary to convict him. 

 The culprit stands charged before the court with having killed a particular 

 individual A. B. This is the charge that he is brought into court to 

 meet. If the evidence then does not shew that he has killed this indi- 

 vidual A. B., that charge fails ; we cannot convict the prisoner of having 

 killed A. B., because we have evidence that he has killed Y. Z. This is 

 the history of Sheen's first indictment. The second falls to the ground ; 

 because, if it is to be supported, it must be supported by evidence which 

 might have been tendered under the first ; and because if it were compe- 

 tent to go on re-indicting a man, and adding fresh evidence, from time to 

 time, for one and the same offence, that practice would speedily become 

 an engine of the most atrocious oppression and tyranny. 



Still it is a strange, arid a horrible consideration, that a man known to 

 be a murderer, and one of the most savage character, should he walking 

 about at large perfectly secure from molestation or punishment ! 



A curious instance, too, of the difference of feeling which prevails, as 

 to the necessity for this extreme nicety of proof, where the question is 

 not one of life and death, but of property only, appears in a case in 

 the Court of Common Pleas a few days subsequent to the first trial of 

 Sheen. A tobacconist in the Borough, being prosecuted under a par- 

 ticular act of parliament, for sending out a pound of segars without the 

 payment of a stamp, pleaded that the statute spoke of " a pound of 

 tobacco" and therefore he was not guilty ; for that the segars were 

 not a pound of tobacco ; every segar had a straw in it ; so that the 

 Weight of tobacco was not equal to a pound. The judge in this cause, 

 summed up against the dealer, and told the jury that a pound of segars 

 must be taken to be a pound of tobacco ; a dictum which seems a little 



