attributed the ambitious crime of Mac-, and cold calculation of their poisonings beth to a much more mature age than it Lydia Sherman in America, and Mary pleased Lord Lytton to suggest. It is Anne Cotton in England were mature impossible to suppose, if we study the women, who did not begin to think of context, that there is any considerable in- such crimes till near the age of forty, or terval of time between the murder of Dun- beyond it. The Countess de Brinvilliers can and that of Banquo. In the scene and her accomplice Gaudin de St. Croix describing the plot for the murder of Ban- were apparently both over thirty-five when quo, Macbeth speaks of Duncan's sons as they begun their career as poisoners. having just reached England and Ireland, And a German poisoner as notorious as whither they fled on the morrow of Dun- any of them, Anna Maria Zwanziger, can's murder, so that a few weeks at most whose strange series of crimes, trial, and must be supposed to have intervened. confession Lady Duff Gordon narrated in Yet it is in the scene in which Banquo's her "Remarkable Criminal Trials," some ghost appears that Lady Macbeth ex- twenty-seven ago, was nearly fifty when cuses her husband to his guests for his she began to revel in the power which delirious talk, as follows: poison gave her over human life. Indeed, if Lord Lytton had had Lady Duff Gordon's volume before him, he would have seen that among the more remarkable murders, murders of calculation like both Macbeth's and that of the King in "Hamlet," it is very rare, instead of very common, to find the murderers young. Anna Maria Zwanziger,-who is sometimes called the German Brinvilliers,- confessed to the Judge that her death was fortunate for mankind, as it would have been impossible for her to discontinue her practice of poisoning, so much did she revel in the power she felt it gave her; and we suspect that Lydia Sherman and Mary Anne Cotton, and probably Catherine Wilson, the poisoner of some ten years or so back, and Christina Edmunds, the Brighton poisoner of last year,-none of them in their youth, Sit, worthy friends; my Lord is often thus, - a form of expression certainly not easily I have given suck, and know gums And dashed his brains out, had I so sworn A young mother could hardly have spoken might have said the same; indeed it is hardly possible to conceive that a very young woman could have felt this frightful pleasure in the wielding of an evil power of destruction,-if for no better reason because other and more natural hopes and pleasures would keep their attraction till the season of youth had passed. Then take the more serious murders of deliberation. Certainly Sandt, the German student who murdered Kotzebue, was a lad; and Ravaillac, who murdered Henri IV., was only 31, a little over Lord Lytton's age; but Felton, the murderer of Buckingham, seems to have been a mature man; Louvel, the murderer of the Duc de Berri in 1820, was 37; Guy Fawkes was 35; and in our own time, Orsini, who attempted the life of the late Emperor of the French, was 39. But to leave the world of dramatic fiction, which is important only because Shakespeare's knowledge of men was so marvellous that what he represents is sure to have a basis of fact beneath it, is it true that the more remarkable of real murders, murders committed not in sudden passion, but from ambitious or other calculations, like those of Macbeth and Hamlet's uncle Claudius, have been committed by the young? Certainly The ages of men who first engage in in the case of women it has almost always calculated crimes of violence range, no been otherwise, though Constance Kent doubt, lower than that of women, for the was a remarkable instance to the contrary. obvious reason that women's strongest Both the women who have attained a hor-instrument in working for even the same rible notoriety this year for the number class of ends is, while young, a different one, that of persuasion, and that they are failing sense of life as the warning which only likely to have recourse to violence first precipitated him into the plot that when their chief engine fails them. But ended in the murder : — in any case, Lord Lytton's analysis of the reason for the youth of murderers fails, and it is to that we wish to draw attention. It is not the experience of maturity, of the great power of the world and the little power of the individual, which deters from calculated violence, but more often, one might say, the sense of being utterly baffled which that experience engenders in a self-willed mind whereon some one desire has fastened a firm hold, that most often leads to it. It is far less "irrational hope and the sense of physical power," than rational fear and the sense of moral incapacity which precipitate men who have once fixed their desires in a particular groove into this desperate last resource. Scott's Balfour of Burley is an admirable type of the higher kind of murderous resolve of this sort,-the kind due to a grim tenacity of purpose which cannot deny itself the satisfaction of a violent collision with all laws human or divine that seem to balk its purposes. There is an element of desperation, rather than of over-sanguine, over-youthful hope in almost every calculating murder, though, as in Macbeth's case, there may be a sense of predestination, too. Evidently neither he nor his wife believed that the witches' prophecy could fulfil itself without their own aid. The prophecy suggested to them that the murder of Duncan was the only possible path to the throne, and whetted their ambition for it; but the conviction that it would be quite impossible for the preternatural prediction to be fulfilled without their help, was akin rather to desperation, than to "irrational hope and the sense of physical power." The great calculated murders have far oftener sprung out of the savage and brutal despair of ambitious, but only too much experienced self-will, driven back upon itself, and fully conscious of its want of living resource, than out of the glowing audacity and excessive hopefulness of youth. Count Guido, in Mr. Browning's "Ring and the Book," character painted not from imagination, but from history, and after a most careful study of the real pleadings of a real trial, -is a perfect type of murderers on calculation; and Count Guido is middleaged, nearly fifty, and his crime is essentially the crime of middle age, the crime not of flowing but of ebbing life, of resource failing and hate growing at the expense of life. He himself speaks of his -a The tick of time inside me, turning-point, That I was near my seventh climacteric And how does the poet describe his And thus I see him slowly and surely edged From The Saturday Review. RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS IN ROME. THE Italian Government has now held possession of Rome for two years and a half, and if its new conquest has given it some trouble, it has given it much less trouble than might have been expected. After Sedan and the establishment of the French Republic, there was no difficulty in the way of the occupation of Rome; but it is only because things have gone ed to the authority of the King, but had been left as a city apart, following its own customs and virtually governed by its own laws, while Florence engrossed the national attention, there would have always been a non-Italian spot in the midst of Italy. Being fixed at Rome, the Legislature has had no option but to resolve that in coming there it shall be found to have brought Italy with it. smoothly with Italy lately that we con- curses, and gradually to establish in the ceal from ourselves how many embarrass- minds of friends and foes the fact that ments the occupation might have entailed. Rome is now a part of Italy, that Italian Italy is the luckiest of nations. It has law must prevail there, and that when the thriven by the blunders and misfortunes interests of Italy at Rome and the interof others, as well as by its own audacity ests of the religious body or hierarchy and good sense. If a danger threatens conflict, the former are to prevail. it, something is sure to happen, which no Whether the decision to make Rome the one could have expected, to save it. The capital of Italy was wise or not, whether Pope never lets his quarrel sleep for an the physical evils of the place and neighinstant, and the Pope might have made bourhood can be surmounted, and whether himself very unpleasant to Italy if he the population of Rome is suited to form had but had any external support. But the material in which the centre of Govwhile Germany kept down France and ernment resides, are questions which canAustria so as to make them unable, if not properly be answered for years to they had really been willing, to befriend come. But there can be no doubt that the Pope, the policy of the Pope sudden- Italy has derived one immediate advantly took the form of extreme hostility to age from the transfer of the capital to Germany. As Prince Bismarck lately Rome. There has been no choice but to said, it formed no part of the Imperial fight boldly with the pretensions of the plan that Germany should become the Papacy, and to carry out the doctrines of ally of Italy against the Papacy. Italy modern Italian policy to their legitimate had not been disposed to court the favour conclusions. If Rome had been subjectof Germany during the war. The King was desirous of sending his troops to aid the French, and although his Ministers had sense enough to stop the perpetration of so fatal a blunder, they did not, or could not, prevent Garibaldi from going to kill as many Germans as he could lay hands on, in the name of the Universal Republic. The new German Empire cared for nothing except to consolidate its unity; and Prussia had for years been Italy has been for centuries the home on the best terms with Rome, and had of ecclesiasticism in all its forms, and remade every possible concession so as to ligious bodies of many kinds have nestled avoid any opposition on the part of its and flourished there. The statesmen of Catholic provinces to the central Govern- modern Italy had at an early date after ment. Prince Bismarck did not want to the establishment of the Kingdom to have the Rhine provinces stirred to dis- consider how they would deal with these affection, intrigues revived in Polish dis- religious bodies, and they gradually tricts, and religious differences set blaz- worked out three propositions. The first ing to scare Southern from Northern was that the buildings destined for the Germany. If the Pope had been willing, use of such bodies must be held to be as he might have had very good friends and much liable to be expropriated and approtectors at Berlin; and although force plied to purposes of public utility as any of arms would not probably have been used other buildings. The second was that reto turn the Italians out of Rome, yet the ligious bodies must not be allowed to Pope in all the disputes which the occupa- hold land, as the resources of the country tion of Rome has excited would have had a were wasted, and the population encourbacking which the Italians could not have aged to live under subjection to masters afforded to disregard. Most fortunately possessed by a spirit alien to that of modfor Italy the Pope chose to quarrel with ern society. The third was that religious Germany, and the Ultramontane party set bodies must, in order to be allowed to exitself to revenge 1870 by the disruption ist at all, have some recognizable charof German unity. The consequence has acter of practical utility. They must not been that Italy has not been hampered be merely collections of persons retiring in dealing with the Pope by any external from the world to lead a saintly life. difficulties. It has been at liberty to take When the Italians got hold of Rome, they its own course, and its course has been naturally found a very vast field for the to treat the Pope respectfully and kindly, application of these principles. Rome is to care little for abuse and calumny and ill built, ill drained, very dirty, and very inconvenient. If it was to be improved, | visable to correspond with the Governmany of the buildings belonging to reli- ments interested in the subject, but this gious corporations must disappear in or- ought to be done unofficially, and merely der to let in light and air, and to make as an act of courtesy. The corporations new streets possible, and to give accom- are to be dispossessed of their buildings modation to the legion of national offi- if public utility so requires. Their lands cials. A large portion of the district are to be sold, and they are to hold the round Rome is held by these corpora- proceeds invested in the funds; and they tions, and they possess much urban prop- are to have two years in which to make erty. The number of persons leading a proposals to the Government as to the purely monastic life is of course consid- purposes which they are henceforth to erable in the capital of Catholicism. The serve, and the rules to which they are to Italian Government had, however, no be subjected. If these proposals are not hesitation in applying its principles to all satisfactory, the Government will, at the Roman religious corporations that were end of two years, have power to make of a merely local character, assemblages schemes for them. of persons who are now Italians settled on what is now Italian soil. But many of the religious corporations of Rome consisted of foreigners, had been founded by foreigners, and formed the chief machinery by which foreign adherents of the Pope associated themselves with the life and work of the head of their faith. How to treat these foreign corporations was a puzzle which for a year baffled the wits of the Ministry, and at last they could arrive at nothing better, in proposing a Bill to Parliament, than an enactment that during two years the corporations should be at liberty to make proposals to the Government, and, if those proposals were not satisfactory, then that the Government should be at liberty to negotiate on the subject with the foreign Governments interested. A Commission was appointed by the Chamber to consider this Bill, and it is only after the lapse of some months that the Commission has been able to arrive at a conclusion. Those who served on it have had the merit of really thinking over the matter which they had in hand. The Commission could not satisfy itself with the vague and timid proposal of the Government. It asked itself what was the basis on which the Italian Parliament proposed to deal with these corporations at all. This basis was that these corporations were established on Italian soil, possessed Italian lands as their property, and formed part of Italian society. No foreign Government could have a right to say that any of its subjects were entitled to live on Italian soil, hold Italian lands, and form a part of Italian society, if they thereby prejudiced the interests or evaded the law of Italy. The Commission, therefore, decided that the bold line was the only line that could be taken, and that foreign Governments must be held to have no claim to negotiate with Italy as to these corporations. It will be ad These recommendations of the Commission are bold and logical, but statesmen have got to think of something else than of being bold and logical. They have to think of safety and prudence, and of not running their country into dangers greater than those from which boldness and logic propose to relieve it. The irresolution of the Italian Government arose, not from their hesitation as to what they would like to do, but from their hesitation as to what they could dare to do. Would foreign Governments be disposed to allow that Rome was merely an Italian city like any other, and that a new body of law should be imposed on their subjects who had for generations been encouraged to hold a position in harmony with a totally different system? It is certain that unconquered France, even if the original ideas of the late Emperor had been carried out, and the Italians had been permitted to occupy Rome, would never have tolerated the treatment which the Commission wishes to see applied to these corporations. Even now it is nothing but the quarrel of the Pope with Prince Bismarck that gives the Italians a chance of uniting safety with boldness and logic. A year ago Italian statesmen might well hesitate, for they could not tell how far this quarrel would proceed. Even a few months or a few weeks ago it was not easy to say whether domestic opposition might not cripple the action of Prince Bismarck. The Commission has the advantage of making its Report at a moment when it is known that the policy of Prince Bismarck has been successful, that he has made the Prussian House of Lords bow before his will, and accept the ecclesiastical changes he has proposed; and that the nature of these changes is such as to make it impossible that there can be a reconciliation between Germany and Rome. The Banker's Almanac for 1873, Richly Illustrated with Sixty-three Engravings, Three Hundred Pages. Price Three Dollars. Issued in January at the Office of the Banker's Magazine, 251 Broadway, New York, CONTAINS 1. A list of all the NATIONAL and STATE Banks of the U. S. in operation-2,500 in numberthe location, names of officers, capital, and New York correspondent of each. 2. A list of PRIVATE Bankers in the United States-2,300 in number-with the New York correspondent of each, and population of each place. 3. A list of SAVINGS BANKS in New England, New York, California, Maryland and New Jersey-500 in number. 4. An alphabetical list of 2,500 CASHIERS in the United States. 5. List of Stock Brokers in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans. 6. The fluctuations in prices of Government, State and City Bonds; Railroad Stocks and Bonds; of Cotton, Sugar, Corn, etc. 7. The production of Gold and Silver throughout the world, in the last twenty years. 8. Annual Report on the National Banks of the United States for eight years-1863-1872. 9. The daily premium on Gold at New York, from 1868 to December, 1872. 10. The Census of the United States for 1790, 1800, 1810, 1840, 1850, 1860, 1870 (each State). 11. Population of fifty cities in the United States-1850, 1860, 1870. 12. Wealth, Taxation, and Indebtedness of each State, by the census of 1870. 13. Annual Report on Cotton, Breadstuffs, Provisions, Grain, and other staples. 14. The monthly prices of eighty leading articles of Commerce, 1872, at New York. (Continued annually.) 15. Finances of the United States, Revenue, Expenditure, Debt-1870-1873. 16. Weight, Fineness, and Value of Foreign Gold and Silver Coins, at the U.S. Mint. (Official.) 17. The production of Gold and Silver in each State, seventy years. 18. Coinage of the United States Mint and Branches-1796-1872. 19. The Parities of Exchange-the comparative values of English, French, German, and United States Exchange or Currency. 20. Annual list of new publications on Banking, Finance, Commerce, Trade, Political Economy, in England and the United States. 21. List of Foreign Bill drawers in New York, 1873, and names of their London correspondents. 22. List of Banks and Bankers in London and in Canada, 1873. 23. Annual Report of the Bank of England and the Bank of France, for 1870-1873. 24. Market Values, Dividends, and Annual Interest, on Foreign Stocks in London, 1872. List of Sixty-three Engravings in the Banker's Almanac, 1873, WITH THE WEIGHT, VALUE, AND FINENESS OF EACH COIN. II. Five Yen, 1872. Thirty-three new Coins of 1871-1872, viz.: Japan, 9. Russia, 1 Denmark, 1 Value, $4.981. Mexico, 1. Netherland, 1. Thirty Bank Buildings, etc., in United States, England, France, &c. Twenty-second annual volume. Three hundred pages. Price three dollars. Issued at the Office of the BANKER'S MAGAZINE, 251 Broadway, New York. The Banker's Almanac for 1874 will contain fac-similes of all the new coins of the U.S., and other nations, of the year 1873. |