1831.3 Affairs in General. 669 



has been that character has never sunk so low among so many millions 

 of men — that they have added nothing to the labours of mankind in 

 any one of the nobler efforts of intellect, genius, or public utility. What 

 are their illustrious names.'' Where is their hei'o — their poet — their 

 painter — their philosopher ? That there are among them individuals of 

 private liberality and personal honour, is not denied ; but taking them on 

 the general scale, what are they but the ragmen of mankind ? We 

 know no higher moral for the history of Mammon. 



After all, the taking of eight and fourpence Dutch, for ten shillings 

 English, and the head of Konig Wilhelm for William the Fourth, does 

 not say much for the march of mind. 



The public have been lately much distressed and startled by the 

 burking discoveries, and the murder of the wretched Italian boy is proba- 

 bly only one among many. But whj' should the public disgust be limited 

 to the miserable culprits, whom poverty and the habits of a disgusting 

 and abominable traffic naturally harden to all human feeling ? Why are 

 the surgeons, who are the tempters to this horrid M'ickedness, to escape ? 

 We cannot conceive how these persons, to whom we naturally have 

 recourse to ascertain the circumstances of disease and dissolution — whom 

 we employ to discover, in both public and private instances, the causes 

 of sudden death, can be ignorant of the state in which suhjects are 

 brought to their dissecting-rooms. Must not Surgeon A, B, or C, when 

 he sees a body still almost palpitating before him, know that that body 

 has not lain in the grave ; when he finds marks of violence upon it, at 

 least conjecture that violence has been used, and with the evidence of 

 murder thus before him, think it his duty, as an honest man, to bring 

 the transaction to light ? To our conception, the surgeon is the true 

 criminal ; and if midnight murders are done, those murders are to be 

 laid exclusively at his door. It may figure in an advertisement for 

 pupils, that such a surgeon gives dissections regularly three times a 

 week, and we know that such advertisements may attract pupilage. 

 But Government will have a serious responsibility to answer for, unless 

 it keeps a watchful eye upon those dashing dissectors, and takes care 

 that their fees shall not owe any thing to impunity. The detection of 

 the murder of the Italian boy occurred from the simple circumstance of 

 the body's being brought to the professor of King's College, who was 

 probably a man of humanity, and who, whether or not, must have been 

 aware of the importance of peculiar care in his situation. We give 

 him, however, full credit for the better motive. He saw that a murder 

 had been done, and he was resolved to wash his hands of any share in 

 the crime. We must hope that his example will be followed, and that 

 we shall have no more stories, when it is too late, of atrocities which 

 shock human nature, and which, in the first place, never would have 

 been committed — except in the idea that the committers would escape 

 without further incjuiry, than whether they asked ten guineas or fifteen 

 for the body of a murdered fellow-creature. We have all possible 

 respect for science, all possible faith in the honour of the English me- 

 dical man, all possible conviction that these horrors are not patronized 

 among the higlier ranks of the profession. Yet the evil exists, and it 

 becomes those higher ranks to keep a vigilant eye upon the lower, to 

 discountenance the (juackerics and cruelties which public investigation 

 discovers in instances of the late kind, and to place in the res])ect and 



