Case of the Mannings.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 481, 13 March 1850, Page 4

Case of the Mannings.

The Times of October 27th has the following :—: — The verdict of the jury in the case of the Mannings has been but the announcement of a foregone conclusion. In commenting upon the case until the present moment we have been restrained by the decent reserve which forbids the organs ofpublic opinion to influence the decision and sway the judgment of those from whom the fatal twelve whose duty it will become to decide upon the question of guilt or innocpnce must ultimately be selected. But never in the annals of crime was such a precaution more superfluous. Twothirds of the testimony brought forward by the prosecution might have been spared, and still the instant conviction of the prisoners by any twelve men of ordinary intelligence was a matter of certainty. Certainly O'Connor was murdered and buried in the back shambles in Miniver-place. The charred and mutilated remains were there, to bear terrible testimony against those who had deprived them of life. Certainly, between the moment the murdered man was last seen alive on London-bridge, and ..that of the discovery of his corpse by the policemen, that house was tenanted by no other than the Mannings. Certainly, the fatal deed could not have been accomplished without the consent and mutual aid of both the tenants of that dismal abode. Certainly, Manning and his wife both fled from the spot under false names, and the property of the murdered man — the worthless motive of so pitiful a deed — was found in the possession of one of the criminals, who, as though to leave no crime unattempted, after violating the sanctuary of life, crowned her guilt by endeavouring to filch fiom her accomplice his paltry moiety of their unholy gains. Were all considerations but those we have suggested in these few brief sentences elimi-

nated from the evidence, there could not be a shadow of doubt as to the guilt of both the prisoners. But, if we would make certainty more certain, there was the careful preparation of the grave, and the purchase of the quick-lime which was to destroy the identity of the corpse, even before corruption, under its ordinary conditions, should have done its duty. Yes, for days beforehand, while, the unconscious victim was entertained by the wretched woman now under sentence of death with all the grimaces and arts of a simulated affection, he was sitting but two or three feet from the grave which bad been appointed for the receptacle of his mangled remains. For Manning himself there can be but one feeling of loathing and disgust. If his was indeed the hand which struck the first blow, one thinks of the insensate brute but as of the butcher who slaughters the ox without a feeling of the bloody work in which he is engaged. We can picture to ourselves the fixed determination of the wpman, and the shrinking repentance of the man, at the moment the deed was upon the point of accomplishment. It may well be that it was Manning who in his maudlin fits of wickedness first suggested the thought of the murder to his sterner partner, and even busied himself in the preparations for its actual commission ; but we are much mistaken if it was not the wife who quenched his last scruples, and by her sarcasm and reproaches spirited him up to strike the fatal blow. Every incident of the evidence points to the female prisoner as the chief actor in the crime. She it was who, when they were balked of their purpose by the accidental presence of a stranger, on the night previous to the actual assassination, fondled and caressed the intended victim ; she it was who renewed the fatal invitation — who proceeded to his lodgings to abstract his property — who received his friends after the murder, and feigned a hypocritical anxiety for his disappearance. In short, throughout the whole tale Mrs. Manning appears as the protagonist, and her brutal partner but as the minister and executor of her will. We will not insult our readers by descanting upon the justice of the verdict. JEvery one must feel as sure that Manning and his wife were the joint murderers of Patrick O'Connor as he can be of any occurrence that has not actually taken place before his own eyes. Even the counsel for the defence, with all their ingenuity, could not escape the hypothesis that the murder was committed by one or other of the prisoners. . If Mr. Serjeant Wilkins attempted to save Manning it was by casting the responsibility of the bloody deed upon his wife. If Mr. Ballantine endeavoured to exculpate the wife, it could only be by fastening the rope round her husband's neck. The attorney-general might almost have left the prisoners to prove each other's guilt. But it is well the murder should have been established in the minutest points, in order to add yet another example to the many which Btand recorded in the annals of criminal jurisprudence of the certain vengeance which dogs the murderer's steps. We would willingly stop here ; but in the conduct of the case there are one or two points to which we are compelled to call attention. Fallen and degraded as were the wretched creatures at the bar, it was strange to find an English advocate rising in his place and permitting himself to be made the medium of conveying to the jury the dastardly lies and equivocations of such a ruffian as Manning. Mr.' Ballantine, in commenting upon his coarse invective against the female prisoner, is reported to have said, " I will do that which is my duty as an advocate ; but if my duty as an advocate required that I should cast upon the male prisoner the sort of observations and accusations which have been made against the woman, I should feel that my profession was a disgrace, and that the sooner I abandoned it for one somewhat more creditable, the sooner I should be a respected, an honest, an honorable, and an upright man, and placed in ft position better to respect; myself." Nor is this the only point in which Manning's counsel acted an unjustifiable part. His misrepresentation of the course pursued by what he is pleased to style " a degraded press," with regard to the murderers might call for admonition and rebuke; but with the welldeserved sarcasms of Mr. Ballantine tingling in his ears, Mr. Serjeant Wilkins may be safely left to the public judgment on this and other matters connected with his defence of Manning.