THE ROAD-HILL MURDER.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 298, 17 August 1865, Page 1

THE ROAD-HILL MURDER.

fProra the Times.] Constance Kent has achieved a celebrity ’which eclipses the pacification of half the ’world, and will certainly last as long as the English ‘language is spoken. She is not only the heroine of a foul murder, but an example in the science of mind. As a psychological type she will long survive the vulgar crowd *of poets, .philosophers, and historians. There <is a splendid and almost crystalline consistency in the young lady’s horrid career. This girl of sixteen, at home, we believe, for the holidays, rose from her bed earlv one fine Midsummer morning, stole downstairs ■to the nursery, crept up to the cot of her half-brother, near four years old—a fine, lively, comping boy, very fond of her—griped his threat till his ■colour and obtruded tongue =sh(W9ed fehst -he was ■dead, or insensible; 'thea, icarefuKy sssteacetog « small blanket, wrapt him -up cn tit, ‘carried him—no small ■burden—into the garden,-almost cut Ms head ■off, gashed and stabbed his body elsewhere, and returned to her bed, carefully opening and shutting the doors and windows she had to pass and repass, and observing, as the result show r s, every precaution necessary to safety. Having made up her mind that the evidences of the murder, its manner and circumstances, were to remain, and that -ail the world would do its best to Jink them with the perpetrator, she cooly confined her attention to isolating herself from them. Not a footmark could be traced, not a soiled shoe or stocking, and the assembled country could only throw ridicule on the incident of a night gown alleged to be missing, and a small .piece of flannel found near the dead body. When the household got up, and there was . a great cry for the poor child, people hurrying to and fro:; and when, upon a natural surmise, a hideous discovery was made, Con- ; stance was calm and collected; in her panoply •of .caution neither throwing suspicion on others, nor going out of the way to avert it, ■ and sharing the family grief and horror. After that she had to take her turn as the ■object of suspicion, which at one time ran so ■■ strong against her. and so occupied the 'public attention, that the magistracy and the police incurred some ridicule for having allowed themselves to be drawn away on an ■evidently false scent from the real perpetrator. Up to this week it has been believed by ninety-nine out of a hundred that Mr .Kent added to his other crimes the still greater villainy of setting justice and her jpack upon .the track of his daughter Constance to favour his own escape. The young lady must have seen and fully comprehended that several times her own father has been in peril of an ignominious death for an accumulation of crimes, amid the execrations of .a whole people; and it does not appear that five years ago she would have stirred an inch •or said a word to avert this consummation. She was ready to be a parricide as well as a fratracide, and up to a certain point it seems . likely that she would have been glad to see tbe question so set at rest.

The public at last were baffled, disgust--ed, and worn out. They felt certain of •the only possible murderer and his only possible reason, and moralised , on the lengths to a brutal and casual passion might drive a man to protect himself. If Mr Kent. ;sold his furniture, or went .abroad, or was reported to,have died, the public observed! variously on his hardened-character or upon! the stings of conscience, and the mark of, iinfamy that even such a ruau-hadsnccuai ed -to. But we never heard anything of Constance, who for years seems to have endured with much complacency the sense of hideous •crime, not without a taint of suspicion, which she knew to be welMounded. First with | her family, then at a French convent, and I for two years as the member of a charitable | Sisterhood at Brighton, she has had to undergo the incessant : and searching ordeal of js. religious life. She has hed to jisten to„

continual appeals to conscience, to make general and even personal confession, to be profoundly humble, to be open as the midday, and to profess sentiments and aspirations incompatible with the smallest wilful unkinduess, But in solemn services, in holy conversation, in the house of prayer, and in the lonely cell, she still carried in her memory and in her whole being a most horrid, unnatural, and unprovoked, and yet most deliberate murder, involving even worse crimes, and still rendering her father infamous and his life intolerable. For these five years the sight, the mention, the passing thought of brother, child, parent, household, sleep-itself, must have had a horrid purport, and must have chained her soul by an evershortening tether to that one blasted spot. How could she endure the continual contemplation of that which stood before her eyes in bolder relief and stronger colours than any martyrdom in painted glass or rude outdoor ’“Calvary?” At last she has given way, but apparently still quiet and unperturbed. The leakage of a few drops will mine a vast embankment, and a voice will send the avalanche headlong Some trifle has shattered the hard and brittle exterior of this strange unsympathetic frame. But even in her ruin and self-immolation, Constance Kent is calm, consistent, fully conscious of alt the bearings of her fearful confession, and ready to abide the consequences.

Lady Macbeth was a bold bad woman, but she had a reason, though a bad reason, for her crimes; she did not murder her own flesh and blood ; even to embolden her for what she did she says she drank as much as made her victims delink ; she would have done the deed herself on Duncan had he not resembled -her father as he andy strong spirit as she was, her conscience wove her out. This young Lady of sixteen, without any reason to speak of, most composedly and foully murdered an innocent child, her loving, romping little brother ; endured a protracted scrutiny of many months, —a whole year,—without even betraying agitation; and has since gone through the routine which appears to be prescribed in these days for young women whose names have been before the world. She has now survived a hurricane of accusations, true as it appears, for five years, and has at last thought fit, for reasons of her own, to make amends for one of the most horrible crimes ever committed, by public confession, Yet Lady Macbeth was a woman who lived in a castle, among savage retainers, and amid scenes of violence—this, a school girl. How shall we account for a contrast in which, if there is fact on one side and fiction on the other, it is a national faith to hold one as true as the other ? Hard physiologists and shrewd observers give an answer that will shock tender minds. From twelve or fourteen to eighteen or twenty is that period of life in which the tide of natural affection runs the lowest, leaving the body and the intellect unfettered and unweakened in the work of development, and leaving the heart itself open for the strong passions and overwhelming preferences that will then seize it. Youth, it must be confessed, does not feel much ; and, sad to say, it is the softer sex -especially which is said to go through a period of almost utter heartlessness. As for boys, it is said that their case is not quite so bad, though bad enough. Yet girls, it is said are harder still where there is a want of active employment, and that peculiar brooding, imaginative, inventive tendency found in many young girls exists. In these cases the dream seems to grow and become an inner life, unchecked by social feeling and by outward occupation, till a mere idea, equally causeless and wicked, fills the soul, and masters the very act. Circumstances, too, may unfortunately favor such an evil possession, and such circumstances there were in this case. Constance Kent, it is said, only did what myriads of her age and sex only wish should come to pass by other agency their own. and cared as little for what she had done as they for the sponevent. If this be so, youth and sbekiitj are not quite what they seem; yet ms ;BQe no reason to •complain if, as we grow olßee*and, may be sadder,, we become,, -or. ought ito become, more tender gentle, end dutiful