The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Thursday, August 9, 1888. FOREIGN FINGERS IN THE PIE.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 180, 9 August 1888, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Thursday, August 9, 1888. FOREIGN FINGERS IN THE PIE.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Surely the news agents have been playing a joke on us or somebody has been hoaxing them. We are told that the English Government has asked the American authorities to grant a respite to Maxwell, the murderer, It seems so absurd that we certainly cannot give credence to the statement until it has been further verified. If the British Government has so compromised its dignity as to request the American Government to modify its intentions with regard to a perpetrator of one of the most brutal and barbarous of murders, then surely events are moving at a pace which must leave us in the rear. It is an astonishing reflection to consider the dilly-dallying and shuffling that has characterised Maxwell’s affair all through, and afterwhathas gone before it would not come now as a very great surprise were we to learn that the murderer had been reprieved and also granted a sinecure in the Government’s service' The continual suspense which has hung over his fate, would, one would think, be almost as cruel a punishment as hanging or death by electricity, and when a poor wretch has been kept in this condition for months and even years, it seems terribly hard that he should at last receive the full penalty of the law. He has been led to indulge in false hopes, and naturally sympathy at length turns in his favor, as the magnitude of the crime lessens in the public mind by the time that has intervened. But that is the business of the Americans, and it is impossible to conceive what earthly reason there can be fol'

outside interference. Every point of law has been strained and taken advantage of in Maxwell’s favor, and there can be no possible doubt but that he is guilty of a brutal crime. In the same, circumstances—of course avoiding the Irish troubles—the English Government hardly dare take such action in their own country, because the outcry would be so great. If this interference has really taken place, there must at any rate be some grounds for the unusual course; otherwise we can view it in no other light than as an act of the utmost indiscretion, if not a disgrace upon the nation. How can we conceive the possibility of the English Government interposing in favor of a criminal of the worst class, one not only tried and convicted, but with that sen. tence (death) confirmed time after time ?