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REVIEW
OF THE
WEBSTER CASE.
THE calm, unprejudiced observer cannot have failed to observe
the alacrity with which, upon the commission of any supposed
crime, popular curiosity commences the hunt for the guilty offender:
especially if the crime be the taking of human life, does the popular
feeling pant for the murderer. Blood has been shed, and some one
must expiate the offence. We are almost obliged to believe the
horror less that murder has been committed, than that the guilty
perpetrator is not ferreted out to be held up as the universal topic
of conversation and speculation.
If a certain arrangement of circumstances designate an individual
as the probable culprit, how keen is often the satisfaction expressed.
Speculation is received as evidence ; and the desire to succeed sus-
pense with discovery frowns down all juster feelings of humanity.
Repeatedly has it seemed in our community that the rules of law pro-
vided for the proof of innocence instead of proof of guilt. The accused
culprit who cannot immediately and unreservedly explain every cir-
cumstance of alleged evidence has in popular estimation become a
convicted criminal ; and the forms of law which necessarily succeed
are chided for delay or impatiently surveyed. Public prosecutors
imbibe the feeling abroad ; and in numerous instances act as if
they were conducting a matter of self-interest, rather than assisting
in the righteous and calm determination of justice.
Each and all of these " facts of the day" have been strikingly il-
lustrated in Boston, from the hour of Professor Webster's crimina-
tion until the hour of his sentence. From the time that the officious
alacrity of the college janitor furnished the legatees of Dr. Park-
man and the horror-seeking citizens of his neighborhood, with his
piece-meal remains, it was painfully evident, from the prejudice
abroad, that unless miraculous agency was given to the unfortunate
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