The Legal Aspect of the Maybrick Case.

of attempting to administer arsenic with intent to murder, the case is still clearer. The finding of the jury related to actual ad ministration only. They made no finding whatever as to what the prosecutors them selves described as "an unsuccessful attempt." Still less, of course, did they find that the unsuccessful attempt was made " with intent to murder." And here again Sir Leslie Ste phen is silent as to the judge's concurrence. He probably saw that the Home Secretary was again traveling outside of the verdict — looking for something that might tend to satisfy the public mind — without regard to whether it could be legally justified or not. The Home Secretary has not, I think, ventured to cite an English statute which enables a jury, on a trial for certain offenses, to convict the prisoner of an attempt to commit these offenses. I am not aware that this statute has ever been applied to a trial for murder, and, judging from the preamble, I do not think it was intended to apply to such a trial. At all events, if it was com petent for the jury to have found a verdict of guilty of attempt to murder in general terms, they could not have returned a ver dict in the terms of the Home Secretary's decision, which does not charge Mrs. Maybrick with attempt to murder, in general terms, but charges her specifically with two distinct kinds of attempt, which come under two distinct sections of the corresponding statute (24 and 25 Victoria, Chapter 100, sections ii and 14). But whether it was or was not competent for the jury to have convicted her of an attempt to murder, they did not either in terms or by implication convict her of that crime. And if the Home Secretary claims the right of substituting for the actual verdict of the jury that which m his opinion they ought to have found, but did not in fact find, how does this differ from punishing the prisoner for an offense of which he or she has never been con victed? Let me now call attention to Lord Salis

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bury's answer to the American petitioners — the only attempt that has hitherto been made to define the new charges and supply the particulars that would be absolutely necessary in framing an indictment on them. She made the attempt relied on, he stated, when pretending to nurse her husband on his sick-bed. Now I think Lord Salisbury will have the honesty to admit that there was practically no evidence of any actual admin istration of arsenic while Mr. Maybrick was confined to his bed, and his wife was in atten dance on him as a nurse. But it was con tended that during this stage of his illness she made an unsuccessful attempt to give him some meat-juice, with which she had meddled, and in which arsenic was sub sequently detected. As regards this attempt, as already stated, the jury made no finding whatever. Their finding, such as it was, related to actual administration only. But we now learn from Lord Salisbury that this charge of actual administration is in fact abandoned, and that the English Govern ment places its whole reliance on an incident quite outside the finding of the jury. Moreover, it will be seen that Lord Salis bury is not satisfied to rest this charge upon the evidence given at the trial only. He refers also to certain " facts known to her Majesty's Secretary of State." These alleged facts have never been communicated to the prisoner nor her advocates, although they are relied on as proofs of a crime for which she had never been tried, much less has the pub lic been informed of them, but so far as can be ascertained they are wholly unim portant. As the charge of murder of which Mrs. Maybrick was convicted by the jury does not include the charges of administering and attempting to administer poison with intent to murder, on which the Home Secre tary relied, so a conviction or acquittal on the former charge would not in any way exclude a trial by judge and jury on these latter charges. It need hardly be said that,