A LIFE OF CRIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 7863, 4 February 1887, Page 6

A LIFE OF CRIME.

By Coloxus.

I* may be assumed that the list scene in the cruel career of Hall, the Tiinaru poisoner, has been fixed, and that a few weeks will see the close of a life that happily has not ita parallel in the colonies. The history of these colonies has the record of many a career of blood, but tha class to which Hall belongs has been the growth of a more complex state of society than ours. Colonial murders have commonly been sudden and violent, and we require to go away to old and complicated forms of society, where the texture of the web of social life is closely woven, to find even the necessity felt for such cunning and cautious premeditation as has been brought to light in the various investigations into the poisonings of Hall.

1 Nor is the temper of colonial life calculated to foster such a form of crime as this. The feelings of revenge are probably as strong in the colonies as anywhere, and perhaps passions are under even less restraint than in the more staid and orderly life of matured communities ; but a cool, premeditated scheme of slow and systematic slaying, for the sake of money, does feem someway alien to tho spirit of colonial life, even injits criminal phases ; and even if nothing had been known of the previous life of Hall, we might have come to the conclusion that there had been circumstances antecedent to these crimes, which had dulled the sense of the Bacredness of human life, and brought the mind to coldly look on murder as an admissible factor in a scheme for getting possession of wealth. It is generally known nowand it seems strange that the knowledge of it before does not appear to have affected the social position of Hall—that he was already connected closely with two violent deaths ; and whether or not one of them was inflicted by his own haud, they wore both the direct result of his criminal conduct.

The one was tha case of a young girl in her teens, who, although she owed her ruin to him. was so infatuated that in spite of the warnings of her relations, she persisted in meeting him, and who after one such meeting was found drowned in a tank, being supposed to have committed suicide to hide from shame. After events have naturally raised the question whether death was self-inflicted I but whether so, or whether the now convicted murderer slew her, he was morally guilty of her murder ; and the influence of such a knowledge ou his mind was, doubtless, one of the factors in preparing him for the perpetration of the slow and deliberate scheme for removing those who seemed to stand between him and the possession of wealth. The second case was brought somewhat

dramatically before public attention after his conviction for the attempted murder of his wife when, on his being taken to Lyttelton gaol, immediately on entering the yard, he was accosted by one of the convicts in these words, "Ah, you scoundrel, have you got here at last This man was doing a penalty of twenty years for the murder of his own wife, whom he had slain, flagrante delicto, for her criminality with Hall himself.

These two deaths, directly traceable to the acta of Hall, must have had their educating influence on his mind, and prepared him for the ultimate consummation of a double crime, which has so startled the colony from its peculiarly uncolonial character. At first sight we can hardly believe it possible that a human being could be guilty of such a deliberate and murderous plan for acquiring in a country like this, where so ji-i.j-doors of enterprise seem to invite to honest effort, and where, despite the difficulties people have to confront, the spirit of hope, and especially in the young and strong, is always buoyant. But the incidents in Hall's former life had so blunted the moral sense apparently, and his connection with crime and death had so familiarised him with death, that he came to deliberately take it up as an ordinary instrument within his reach to be used like any other commercial instrument for making wealth.

We venture to think that no colonist without such previous crimes of violence blunting his moral perceptions, could bring himself to deliberately plan such a cruel and coldblooded murder ; and more shocking even than that murder, deliberately plan and coldly and persevering'.y work for his sick and feeble wife's death. And probably there ha 3 been no more striking case in the colonies of the gradual development of the criminal instinct, or one more startlingly showing how—when a man enters on a life of crime—how very little he knows of what he may be capable, or where it will end. Colonial life is shocked at such a revelation of deliberate crime, and hardly thinks itself capable of it. But shocking as the culmination has been, there are probably hundreds in the colony who, if they had been gradually subjected to the same sequence of influences, might have been "roaded on" to the same tragic end.

Rut what startles us even more, is the fact that the dark incidents in Hall's former life were known, but they do not appear to have had any perceptible influence on his social position. I am not going to talk maudlin morality, nor preach a homily to young men. Let that be done by those whose business it is. But it does seem incomprehensible that, with such known antecedents, Hall should have been an honoured member in social life. It is true that Captain Cain disliked him, and strove with all his strength to repel his admission into his domestic circle ; and it was only the usual infatuation which seems to blind woman to all consequences, when her heart is caught, that placed Hall in a position to carry out his schemes of murder. His admission into that circle is intelligible enough, for there probably never was a bloodthirsty beast on earth, but a woman could be got to love him. But how does it come that Hall, with those two revolting and startling incidents appended to him, remained an honoured member in 'l'imaru society ? As I have said, I am not going to talk maudlin, but this was something more than mere youthful irregularities, and I can not help thinking that, when a gentleman with these bars sinister on his shield, moved freely in society, the morals of social life down thereabouts must be rather ragged.

And another thing that startles one is this, that Hall was an educated and a cultivated man. Some time ago I gave very grave offence by propounding the heresy in these columns that education does nothing to diminish crime ; that it merely whets the criminal instincta, and gives them a new direction. We have at the present moment two . notable instances of the violation of law ; they have tilled the public mind for some time, and they are both representative crimes; the one is the form of crime of the illiterate and uncultured criminal instinct, the other of the same iustinct refined, and quickened, and cultivated by education. We have an opportunity of comparing them in their origin, their methods, and their consummation, and I, for my part, would rather be hanged for the death of Taylor than for the death of Captain Cain, and the virtual murder of his daughter. I think, every thing considered, the violent death at the Grreat Barrier #ives less a shock to humanity than the trained aud skilful, the educated and scion ti lie, slaying at Timarti. Whero the criminal instincts are, education 3ervis to givo a distaste for the coars and brutal forms of crime, but it points out a better way in which the criminal objects may be compassed, with less risk of discovery ; and whether we class it among the blessing or the curse of education, under the influence of education, the criminal instinct simply uses antimony instead of shooting irons.