The mercy which is infinite, and the repentance which secures it, invited Peace as they invite all other mortals, and upon the mystery of the felon’s grave all comment is struck dumb.
It may be noted, however, that though the last utterances of the dying criminal were full of contrition and paternal solicitude, there is a certain tone in the whole speech which suggests that the man had in reality not awakened to a full estimate of the greatness of his offences. His demeanour throughout indicates the same moral defect.
There were in his character many signs of an idiosyncrasy which, like kleptomania and other depraved mental compulsions, dragged the possessed being into the vicious path and disabled the faculty of remorse.
Peace had the cunning of the rogue, plus that of the intelligent man he was. But until the eleventh hour he was playing a part.
First he shammed ill, then he had a spell of sullen silence, which was succeeded by that fit of communicativeness, oral and written, which has taken up so much space in the newspapers. He appears to have made a great many contradictory statements or confessions; and, if all that have been published as such are really his, there is some difficulty in accepting as authentic even the most solemn of these avowals on the scaffold.
One of these confessions purported to be an admission of a series of murders, known and unknown, committed by him singly, or with accomplices, in London or the provinces.
If Peace reduced this horrid catalogue to two, and he in troth and in fact stated what appeared in print, would require clear corroborative evidence to sustain anything he asserted.
Peace declared in more than one of his many confessions that he murdered the policeman Cock at Whalley Range, near Manchester, in 1876. For this crime a young man named Habron was sentenced to death.
The sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and that terrible penalty the innocent and signally unfortunate man was still undergoing when Peace was first rendered amenable. The real assassin, according to his own avowal, was present in Court at the trial, and heard Habron sentenced.
The same night Peace shot Mr. Dyson. There can be little question, but he would have held his tongue to save his neck, had the poor man been permitted to suffer for his crime, and been put to death for it.