The Parricides.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6830, 18 April 1890, Page 2

The Parricides.

Parricide is the GKme 'Which 'th'e'^tffcßlt world has in horro'rV^ln "the" annals 1 * of every nation that ha$ a annals,' and the customs of every nation "j&at has depetoastf on tradition, there is £he same 'things namely, an authentic story 'thai; of aUt i criminals the one who was treated wlta 1 ' a special inarkß of severity •wsS t^parric{ae."| w In old Borne they out off hia hand firtii^hii mediaeval Europe they bachf'iVofti'^Witlr^ fbi

ua the parricide simply dies like any othe murderer. IKb firßt thought when he gets up on the Bcaffold ought to be to bless his stars that his parricidal lot was not cast in the good old times. Yet there are good people whoare scandalised, and soreandhysterical, because those youngscoundrels.the Daviesof Crewe, were allowed to be hanged. A perfunctory news collector has cabled out the statement that the Press is indignant. "We simply refuse to believe it; partly because the statement is incredible, partly because the references to the Crewe parricide that have reached us are couched in a tone of horror. The news collector is probably of the imbecile kidney of the three thousand who sent telegrams to the Home Secretary begging him for reprieve, and then howled at him for hanging the criminals, as if he was a parricide himself. In the celebrated story of mediaeval Rome, the story of the Cenci family, a motive for the parricide was assigned in the allegation that the father bad behaved with a brutality as systematic as it is unnameable. Historical research has proved that theie was in this a great deal of political and poetical exaggeration. But, right or j wrong, the famous parricide has in this way received some commiseration from several generations of men. But, in j this case, even the confessions of the parricides afford no hint of extenuating circumstances. By these very documents they wrote themselves down the most callous of abandoned young villains, j Without principle, dead to natural feeling, < they told their loathsome story without compunction and without a- single shudder, and without a shadow of a sign of remorse. Nothing so revolting to the human conscience has been seen for many years. Of all the victims who have passed through the hands of the hangman since there was a hangman to the present day, none have more thoroughly deserved their fate. Yet there is a public "agitation I against the Minister who permitted that act of imperative justice.