even irrespective of evidence procured since the former trial, the defense against these new charges would assume a new aspect. New questions would be put to the witnesses, and new arguments addressed to the jury. The trial for murder did not in any respect fulfil the conditions of a fair trial on Mr. Matthew's charge of attempt to murder. As regards the meat-juice, for instance, the counsel for the defense thought it sufficient to point out that, as Mr. Maybrick had taken none of it, it could not have conduced in any way towards the death which the prisoner was accused of having caused. The question whether anything took place which amounted in law to an attempt to administer the meatjuice was not made the subject of crossexamination or argument, because it was not relevant to the issue before the jury; and a material item of evidence on that point, which had been given at an earlier stage, was not repeated at the trial. But the Home office has persistently refused not only to submit its new charges to a jury, but even to hold a public inquiry into them where the witnesses could be further ques tioned, and arguments arising on their testi mony addressed by counsel to the Home Secretary or the presiding officer. If the charges in question are really distinct from the charge on which alone she was tried and convicted, she had never had even the faint est semblance of a fair trial for them. Indeed, they have never been defined by such par ticulars of place, time, and circumstances as to inform her advocates of the points to which their arguments ought to be directed. An admittedly wrongful conviction for oiie crime is kept alive for the sole purpose of enabling the Home Secretary to punish the prisoner, without any trial whatever, for totally different offenses, without violating the letter of the law, but in complete viola tion of the spirit and intention of Magna Charta itself. Finally, though the crimes charged against Mrs. Maybrick by the Home Secretary are
punishable by penal servitude for life as the maximum penalty, I know of no instance in which any woman — not to say a lady in delicate health and a first offender — has been sentenced to penal servitude for life on a conviction for them. In a recent case, where the attempt to murder consisted of poisoning, and the man's life was endangered, the poisoner (who had received some prov ocation) escaped with three years' penal servitude. The severity of Mrs. Maybrick's sentence is in fact as unparalleled as the supersession of both judge and jury in passing it. Instead of being a necessary consequence of Mr. Matthew's finding, it is a most unusual one, though just within the limits of possibility. The principles of mercy have been violated almost as flagrantly as the principles of jus tice. A sentence of penal servitude for life is indeed often passed by the Home Secre tary — in cases of infanticide, for instance — without any intention of enforcing it. Many persons thought that this was so in Mrs. Maybrick's case, and that she would have been liberated before the present junc ture. And most probably this was the intention of Mr. Matthews at the time. But Sir M. W. Ridley has informed us that the sentence is to be rigorously enforced, and that this was also the intention of Mr. Asquith. The sentence must, therefore, now be treated as meaning what it says. Was it a fair or a just sentence to pass behind the prisoner's back without hearing a word in defense or extenuation on undefined charges never submitted to any jury, and which at most only rendered it possible as the extreme penalty in the statute book? Mr. Asquith was always merciless, but Sir M. W. Ridley's action in the matter is simply astounding. He literally seems to contemplate mercy for everyone except the convict whom " the head of the criminal justice of England" has officially declared " to be entitled to an im mediate release." He is neither à barrister nor a solicitor; but probably for that reason
