, [ 656 ] [DEC. 



QUACKERY PRACTICE, AND ST. JOHN LONG. 



No sooner has Mr. St. John Long passed through the ordeals of the 

 courts with barely the singeing of his whiskers, than we find him proved 

 to have been, under precisely the same*circumstances to use the gen- 

 tlest terms the death of another lady. Forbearing as we were before 

 the trial, from pure conscience, our scruples vanish on this repetition 

 of offence ; and we shall express our sentiments plainly on his atrocious 

 practices. A severer penalty awaits him than before not, indeed, from 

 the reluctant sentence of the bench, but from the ready and indignant 

 censure of the world. The law cannot or will not crush him ; but he 

 is within reach of public opinion, which will and must brand him with 

 infamy, and cast him off with the scum and refuse that are for ever man- 

 tling upon the surface of society. 



To look for any effectual penalty from the criminal courts is idle. Of 

 murder he cannot be proved guilty, in the legal sense, nor in any equi- 

 table construction. He is a quack, in the coarsest and most contemptu- 

 ous sense of the term ; but murder forms no part of his plan. Though 

 death often ensues, the desire to produce death cannot be made appa- 

 rent. But if killing be not always murder, it is only when committed 

 inevitably or undesignedly, that the laws pronounce it innocent. If you 

 kill by design and unjustifiably, that is murder ; if you kill by accident 

 or in self-defence, that is homicide, and no offence ; if you kill in a 

 state of excitement, upon provocation, that is manslaughter ; if you kill 

 in the performance or prosecution of an illegal act, that, again, is man- 

 slaughter ; and if, even in the pursuit of a lawful one, you kill through 

 want of care and caution, that also is held to be manslaughter sometimes. 

 Fine, imprisonment, or transportation, are the penalties for each of these 

 descriptions. 



Now, it is obviously under the last alone ambiguous at the best 

 that a case like Mr. Long's, in the common course of law, can be 

 brought ; and we see how readily, where the absence of care and cau- 

 tion is clearly proved, the verdict of a jury, when the judges are adverse, 

 may be evaded by a little management in the penalty. Whether man- 

 slaughter be an offence of any importance or not, comes thus to depend, 

 not upon specific facts, but upon the individual prepossessions of the 

 judges; and out of twelve judges or fifteen, we believe, now we can 

 never be sure that two will think alike. One will acquit, and another 

 condemn. The law is thus good for nothing ; it is operative at one 

 moment, and not at another, and, of course, is no longer calculated to 

 deter, which is what a law should do, or do nothing. 



But the case of a medical man indicted for manslaughter in the exer- 

 cise of his profession, has some peculiarities. A question of " license" 

 comes in ; and there is, or was, a special provision in favour of the 

 " qualified" practitioner. Sir Edward Coke the great oracle of the 

 courts states that the law declares it felony when an tf unlicensed per- 

 son undertakes a cure, and lets the patient die" referring to an enact- 

 ment of Edward III., to which Britton apparently appeals. This must 

 imply exemption of criminal charge for the licensed party ; and, indeed, 

 the common language of law-books is that a regular medical man which 

 must mean the licensed practitioner cannot be guilty of manslaughter ; 

 he cannot be the subject of a criminal action, though he may be of a 



