POISONING. 



743 



Royal Westminster Volunteers," whence he was 

 raised to the rank of major by the suffrage of its 

 members; and he had not long been resident at 

 Maidenhead before he was joined in the commis- 

 sion of the peace for Berkshire ; and in July, 1831, 

 appointed one of his Majesty's deputy lieutenants 

 for that county. He was active and energetic in 

 the performance of the duties which devolved upon 

 him as a magistrate or otherwise ; and in all the 

 relations of private life his conduct was exemplary. 

 He died after a few hours' illness on the 23d Aug. 

 1835. 



His first dramatic essay vvas the musical farce 

 of Yes or No ? produced at the Haymarket in 1808 ; 

 this was followed in 1810 by two lively, bustling 

 pieces, viz., Hit or Miss, and Seventy Years Ago; 

 the former rendered famous by the inimitable act- 

 ing of the late Charles Mathews in the character 

 of Cypher, and both first acted at the Lyceum. 

 Added to these, his most successful productions 

 were, Any Thing New, a musical farce, 1811; 

 The Green Dragon, another ; and Harry Le Roy, 

 a burletta, (altered from the Miller of Mansfield,) 

 all in 1811 ; The Miller and his Men, a melodrama, 

 1813, which, by aid of the sweet music of Bishop, 

 still retains a place on the stage ; For England Ho ! 

 an opera, 1813; John of Paris, an opera, 1814; 

 Zembuca, a melodrama, 1814; The Magpie or the 

 Maid? a melodrama, 1815; Robinson Crusoe, a 

 pantomimic Easter-piece, 1817; Rob Roy, an opera 

 (dramatised from Scott's novel,) 1818; Montrose, 

 a musical drama, 1822 ; Woodstock, a drama, in 

 five acts (from Scott's novel,) 1826; The Robber's 

 Wife, a melodrama, 1830; The Corporal's Wed- 

 ding, a farce, 1830-1 ; The Omnibus, an interlude, 

 1831, Country Quarters, a farce, 1832; The Clut- 

 terbucks, a farce, 1832 ; Scan-Mag, a farce, 1833 ; 

 The Ferry and the Mill, a melodrama, 1833; and 

 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, 

 a Christmas equestrian spectacle, 1834-5. We 

 may mention, as less successful, The Farce Writer, 

 which christens itself; The Heir of Veronia, a 

 opera, 1817; The Libertine, ditto, 1817; The 

 Antiquary, a play (from Scott's novel, afterwards 

 redramatised with better success by Mr Terry,) 

 before 1820; Husbands and Wives, a farce, 1817; 

 Alfred the Great, or the Enchanted Standard, a 

 musical drama (partly founded on an early produc- 

 tion of O'Keeffe's,) 1827 ; Tucki Tomba, an Eas- 

 ter-piece, 1828; Peveril of the Peak, an opera, 

 1826; The Blue Anchor, a nautical drama, 1830; 

 The Doom Kiss, a musical drama, 1832 ; Anster 

 Fair, an Easter folly, 1834; and two pieces pro- 

 duced since his death, one a farce, called, The 

 Night Patrol, and the other an adaptation of Sir 

 Walter Scott's novel of Old Mortality, under the 

 title of Cavaliers and Roundheads. 



POISONING. Perhaps there is nothing, in 

 which the progress of civilization is more distinctly 

 marked, than in the increased tenderness which is 

 felt for human life. This may, at first, seem a para- 

 doxical remark in the generation immediately suc- 

 ceeding what may be called the age of the 

 guillotine in France. But after that dreadful and 

 convulsive crisis was passed, the amelioration over 

 the preceding century was visible. Napoleon him- 

 self had not the power to re-enact the tragedy of 

 Patkul; and the execution of the duke d'Enghien 

 vvas as fatal to him, in public opinion, as the inva- 

 sion of Spain was in political influence. His reign, 

 all things considered, was by no means bloody. 

 The recent changes in France, nearly as they have 



verged toward the character of a bloody revolution, 

 have yet escaped it. In the works of English il- 

 lustrative history, the portraits of half the eminent 

 noblemen and statesmen, two centuries ago, contain 

 the fatal axe, among the ornamental work of the 

 engraving; expressive symbol of the fate of the 

 original. But the great of the present day die in 

 their beds, with no worse enemy to fear than gout 

 and old age. 



Nor is the frequency of assassination less di- 

 minished, than that of judicial destruction of life. 

 The tales one reads of Neapolitan bravos, whose 

 poignard can, at any time, be hired for a ducat, if 

 ever true, are, we suspect, true no longer. Men 

 are neither for themselves, nor for hire, so easily 

 moved " to break into the bloody house of life." 

 Life is more precious than it was. Every man has 

 a higher consciousness of his ovvn value, in propor- 

 tion to the advance of civilization ; and he mea- 

 sures the value of another's life by his own stan- 

 dard. Society better protects its members. The 

 laws reign. As the State does not set an example 

 of being profuse of human blood, private hatred 

 feels the restraint of public opinion. The great 

 feudal powers are broken down, under whom a sort 

 of private war, fatal to security of life and pro- 

 perty, was carried on, and both were sacrificed, 

 without the absolute odium of robbery and murder. 

 The abolition of religious asylums has driven out 

 the desperado from his shelter in the church. The 

 great facilities of communication have lent wings 

 to that instinct with which retributive' justice 

 rushes out upon the traces of the murderer, and 

 dogs him to the deepest retreats in the remotest 

 countries. But these all, as it seems to us, re- 

 solve themselves into the greater tenderness with 

 which life is regarded, and the higher value at- 

 tached to its preservation. 



There have been periods of the world, when 

 every great man, king, prince, minister, or favour- 

 ite, was deemed in danger of poison ; when not a 

 morsel of food was swallowed by the unhappy po- 

 tentate, till it was tasted. Poisoning is now an 

 insulated crime. No one fears it, more than he 

 fears assassination in any other way, or highway 

 robbery. As it requires neither strength nor nerve 

 for its perpetration, nothing but deadly malice, 

 it must, of course, retain its place among the 

 crimes which fix their stain on humanity. In the 

 present day, solitary cases occasionally occur,* but 

 in almost every age of the world, down to the 

 middle of the last century, the poisoner's calling 

 was in some countries, to a certain degree a pro- 

 fession, not to say a department of the government. 



We do not here allude to the open use of the 

 hemlock, as a means of inflicting capital punish- 

 ment, but to the employment of poison, as a secret 

 method of destroying persons obnoxious to public 

 or private hate. It is a beautiful anecdote, vvhicli 



* In 1838, a married woman was executed at Glasgow, for 

 poisoning. She let lodgings to wayfarers and working peo- 

 ple at Carluke, a small town in the upper ward of Lanark- 

 shire; and having been intrusted with a sum of money (five or 

 six pounds) by a highland out-door labourer, till the fall of the 

 year, when he should return to his home in the far-off He- 

 brides, she was convicted of administering arsenic to him in 

 liis porridge, in order to silence his claim upon her for his hard 

 earned savings. She was also convicted of having previously 

 administered arsenic to a poor old bed-riddon woman, who 

 occupied an apartment in her house, for no other good reason 

 that could be assigned, than in order to make room for a 

 daughter who was on the eve of getting married. The evi- 

 dence against her, it may be remarked, was very strong, but 

 not in all its points completely satisfactory, and it \yas rendered 

 more doubtful by the fact of her persisting in her innocence to 

 the last. 



