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the whole of which, however, was absorbed by the expenses. An exhibition of sculpture was held in the arcades in 1863, as designed by the Prince Consort, and would doubtless have been continued annually, had he lived, it being intended to devote 500l. each year for the purchase of the best specimen exhibited, so as gradually to form a valuable sculpture gallery. But the Prince's death stopped that like so many other schemes, and the early prosperity of the gardens soon ceased. When ten years from their opening had expired, instead of 24,000l. having been paid to the Commissioners to recoup them for their outlay on them, the society had only been able to pay them one-ninth of that sum, nearly the whole of which was derived from the exceptional Exhibition year. The Commissioners had in the meantime conferred great advantages on the society not contemplated in the original agreements. In addition to large pecuniary outlays on the gardens, they lent the society for many years the free use of several acres of land on each side of the estate (known as the Eastern and Western Annexes), and also an entrance to the gardens from the park, where the Albert Hall now stands. The society's debenture debt of 50,000l. had only been reduced by 300l.

At this time (1871) the commencement of the series of annual international exhibitions seemed to give a fresh chance of vitality and prosperity to the gardens; and, profiting by the successful experiment of 1862, the Commissioners and the council of the society agreed upon an arrangement whereby the gardens were thrown open to all visitors to the exhibition, the Commissioners paying the society a royalty of one penny out of each shilling taken for admission. By this arrangement the society received 5,000l. in the first year of these exhibitions, and was enabled to pay the Commissioners, for the first time for nine years, the full stipulated sum of 2,400l., thus averting for the moment any forfeiture of the lease. The exhibition of 1872 was less successful, and the society was only able to pay half that amount. But, by this time, a strong feeling had arisen amongst the Fellows of the society residing in the neighbourhood against the grant to the exhibition visitors of this privilege of using the gardens, which they wished to reserve for the benefit of themselves and their families, forgetting that the Commissioners held the whole estate as trustees for the general public, and that nothing could be more suicidal than placing the personal privileges of the few in opposition to the interests of the many, and to the expressed wishes of the owners of the property which the society, in its impecunious state, held under them by so frail a tenure. This personal question, however, prevailed, and at the annual meeting of the society in 1873 the neighbourhood mustered in strong force, and uproariously outvoted the council and their friends (proxies not being available), thereby compelling the whole body, from Royalty downwards, to resign, and upsetting the amicable

arrangements with their landlords, the Commissioners. The new and hostile council refused the previous facilities accorded to the visitors to the exhibition, and made the Commissioners pay heavily for a mere passage for them across the gardens from the east to the west exhibition galleries. This policy prevailed during the two remaining years that the annual exhibitions lasted, and had a good deal to do with their comparative failure. Many Fellows resigned, seeing the schism in the society, and being apprehensive of being drawn into costly law proceedings, and the society's means soon became inadequate to the maintenance of the gardens. Owing to successive legal difficulties which presented themselves, the Commissioners were powerless to interfere, and the Expenses Committee was unable to discharge its functions, or even to meet at all.

In this unpleasant state of matters, a brilliant idea struck the new council. Without any communication with their landlords, and in disregard of the conditions under which the society held the land from them, they made a special agreement with the proprietors of Prince's grounds, and announced to the Fellows the forthcoming opening in the gardens of a grand new skating rink, with a separate entrance, and a special charge for admission. This was more than the long-suffering Commissioners could stand; so the rink was vetoed, under the power reserved to them by the lease, and the scheme abandoned, after considerable expense had been incurred upon the preparation of the ground for the purpose. The council afterwards submitted several proposals for a modification of the terms of the lease, but none of them were acceptable to the Commissioners; and, after a two years' tenure of office, during which matters went incessantly from bad to worse, those members of the council who had taken up a position of hostility to the Commissioners resigned, and peace once more was restored between the contending parties, but apparently too late to save the society from an entire collapse.

Still, the case was not quite desperate; the original teterrima causa belli had ceased with the discontinuance at the end of 1874 of the annual exhibitions, and a fresh agreement was entered into between the Commissioners and the society early in 1876, whereby in effect the forfeiture of the lease, which had become inevitable in that year, was in any case postponed till the end of 1878, nearly three years being thus given to the society to retrieve its fortunes. This was done on condition of the society raising its annual income from Fellows by that time from 6,000l. to 10,000l. If this were done, the right of forfeiture was to be foregone. On the other hand, a failure to comply with this condition was to give back to the Commission that right, subject to the payment by them of a sum not exceeding 7,000l., which the society was authorised to borrow in order to pay off its debts and put its buildings in repair.

At first, however, despite the re-established harmony in the society,

the Fellows who had left showed no symptoms of rejoining it, and no fresh ones appeared to take their place. The prospects were so bad that, at a general meeting in August 1876, it was unanimously agreed, on the suggestion of the council, to abandon the gardens, and to offer to surrender the lease to the Commissioners.

The only difficulty in the way-an insurmountable one, as it proved-was presented by the debenture-holders of the society, whose interests it was bound to protect. Nearly 50,000l. was owing to them, lent on the security of the lease, and their only hope of payment, either of principal or interest, lay in the continuance of the gardens, which, with the conservatory, had been mainly constructed with their money. They must therefore be arranged with in some way. Their legal rights were, by the terms of the debentures, but small, and their only claim against the Commissioners as ground landlords could not arise till 1892, at which date, by the terms of the lease, in the event of the Commissioners declining to renew it (no forfeiture having previously occurred), a sum not exceeding one half of the then outstanding debenture debt was to be paid by them to the society for the benefit of the debenture-holders. But a previous surrender or forfeiture would leave the latter without even this crumb of comfort.

The Commissioners took a liberal view of the case, waived its mere legal aspect, and offered, in return for an immediate surrender of the gardens, a sum equal to the present value (taking money at the advantageous rate to the society of 3 per cent. only) of what might have become payable by them in 1892. In other words, for each nominal 100l. debenture, about 287. or 291. was offered by them in cash. This offer was, however, declined unanimously (whether wisely or not I will not discuss) by a general meeting of the debentureholders, on the advice of a committee whom they had appointed to represent them, as they hoped to obtain more favourable terms, which, however, the Commissioners were not prepared to grant.

The result has been that the society has for the present abandoned its intention of leaving the gardens, and is doing its best to fulfil the conditions, laid down by the Commissioners last year, in the eighteen months which still remain for the purpose. A favourable turn in its affairs is apparently setting in; fresh Fellows and Members are fast joining it; and the recent visit of the Queen to its great May show testifies to the continued interest which Her Majesty takes in the welfare of the society which her beloved husband was the main instrument in bringing to the Kensington Gore Estate, and which she herself, in a touching letter written to the society by her command a few days after his death, desired to be considered as under her peculiar and personal patronage and protection.'

(To be concluded.)

EDGAR A. BowRING.

THE PUNISHMENT OF INFANTICIDE.

ON the 13th of December last, Mary Peterson Mahoney, a girl of eighteen, was brought to trial at Swansea for the murder of her newly born child; found guilty by the jury, and sentenced to death. The prisoner was the daughter of Irish labouring people settled at Cardiff; her father and mother had died during her childhood, and the homeless girl was adopted by a poor neighbouring family, who brought her up until she was old enough to go into service. She could neither read nor write; but in her service she bore the character of an honest industrious girl; and it was the crime and treachery of another that brought her to ruin. Her seducer forsook her, enlisted in the army, and left the country. Taken unexpectedly with the pains of child-birth, desolate, terrified, and unhelped, she destroyed her child. The precautions which mark the concealment of premeditated crime were conspicuously absent, and as soon as the police visited the house the poor girl confessed everything. It was mainly upon these confessions that her conviction rested; and they were such as to render any other verdict than guilty' impossible. Throughout the trial Mahoney's anguish was terrible to witness, and after the sentence her reason became impaired. During the next few days, although calm at times, at other times she danced and sang in her cell; and when a respite arrived on the 19th of December, it was impossible to make her understand what had happened. Sentence of death was commuted to a term of penal servitude, by the Home Secretary, with merciful promptness; but it was not until the 22nd of December, nine days after the trial, that Mahoney's reason was sufficiently restored for her to realise what had passed and what was before her.

In the opinion of every honest man who witnessed it, or who afterwards learned the facts, this trial was discreditable to English justice. The sentence pronounced was indeed one which the judge had no power to modify or to withhold, but it was nevertheless a sentence which every one, except the unhappy prisoner whose reason it overthrew, knew to be a mere cruel imposition. For thirty years

certainly, probably for a longer period,' no woman has been executed in England for the destruction of her newly born child: the conscience, the justice, the humanity of the country render such a thing impossible. The sentence is a fiction which serves no purpose but the infliction of horror and despair. A law whose action in a certain class of cases has for a generation been invariably overruled is, with respect to that class of cases, obsolete. Death is not, and has not for thirty years been, the punishment of infanticide at birth. The existence of the old law has only been tolerated by the public because they have known that it is inoperative: carry it out in one single instance, and the indignation of the country would probably sweep away our entire system of capital punishment. An educated woman —a woman rich enough to have ascertained the state and operation of the law, and calm enough to rest upon that knowledge-might answer the judge who had so passed sentence upon her: You think to overwhelm me with the prospect of death: I know that I shall live. You think that I take your sentence for a fearful reality: I know it to be a form. You think that I am ignorant enough to believe you in earnest: the unvarying experience of thirty years proves that you are but acting an enforced part. Your black cap is a stage-trick your appeal to heaven for the sinner face to face with death, a solemn mockery.' 2 What answer can we make to this, except that the law may rightly count upon the poverty and ignorance of most of those whom it sentences in these cases, and that, for one person sufficiently informed to brave its imposture, there are many who may be successfully terrified and driven to the brink of madness. The words used by the judge in pronouncing sentence upon Mahoney were as follows:- I will take care to forward to the Home Secretary the jury's recommendation to mercy, but I can give you no hope whatever, for I have no authority to do so.' Then followed the sentence of death, concluding with the solemn prayer, And may the Lord have mercy upon you.' There is something so awful in the form in which death is pronounced in an English court, that even those are affected who know that the sentence will not be carried out. How overwhelming, how absolute, how inevitable, must it appear to the untaught prisoner who knows nothing of the action of the law beyond what she sees before her! What does a poor Irish girl, who cannot read or write, understand about the Home Secretary? She sees the judge assume the emblem of death; she hears him utter the words no hope whatever;' she listens to him describing minutely the mode of her execution; and she hears that solemn appeal to the

1 The Judicial Statistics' of recent years, and the evidence of Sir George Grey before the Capital Punishment Commission, exhaust all cases since 1848. The Parliamentary Papers earlier than that are so unmethodical, that I am not able to make a positive statement as to a longer period.

2 This is not my expression; it is Mr. Justice Keating's.

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