CHAPTER XXXIX.
English Newspapers on the West Port Tragedies—The “Sun,” and its Idea of the Popular Feeling—Gray and his Wife.
These strange on-goings in Edinburgh, it has been seen, met with the approval of the greater number of the Scotch newspapers; but many journals on the Southern side of the Border professed the utmost horror at the manifestations made by the populace of Edinburgh against the West Port murderers. Indeed, so much was this the case that the Times was constrained to speak in this way—“Some of our contemporaries affect to be shocked at the shouts of disgust and horror against the miscreant Burke which broke from the excited populace of Edinburgh while witnessing the legal retribution for his crimes. We are more shocked at the sickly and sickening pretence to fine feeling by these newspapers. The exclamations of the Scotch were ebullitions of virtuous and honest resentment against the perpetrator of cruelties unheard of: we honour them for it; they proved themselves to be unsophisticated men.” That, certainly, is a generous view of the conduct of the crowd at the execution; but perhaps as generous, and certainly a more thoughtful and fair one, was taken by the Sunday Times:—“The extraordinary sensation created by Burke’s atrocities caused a display of feeling on the part of the populace while the last dreadful ceremonies were in progress, similar to that witnessed in England when the wretched Jonathan Wild, and when the cruel Brownriggs suffered at Tyburn. In that awful hour, when the hand of justice is about to descend on the devoted sinner it were to be wished that no clamorous shouts of abhorrence or of sympathy, should interrupt the parting prayer which would fit the crime-stained spirit for the passage; but certainly, if any excuse can be offered for exulting over the dying agonies of a victim, it is furnished by the extraordinary guilt of the sufferer in the present case.”
At the time of the trial the London Sun contained some comments on the few circumstances connected with the tragedies, which had been revealed to the public by the Scotch newspapers before that great event shed a flood of light and information upon the actual nature of the occurrence. The writer of the article was apparently ignorant of the real state of matters, founding only on the few scattered and not very accurate paragraphs then published, and not being within hearing of the vague rumours of impending revelation which circulated in Edinburgh, and from it gradually over the whole of Scotland. The editor of the Caledonian Mercury, however, took the matter up, and being able to read between the lines, he penned an admirable article upon the production of his English contemporary. He thought some specimens of the “ignorance, presumption, and talent for abuse” in the Sun would amuse his readers, and on the same principle, and as having a direct bearing on the subject in hand, the following quotation is made:—
“‘The Scotch character (quoth the Luminary) is amusingly developed in the comments made by the different Edinburgh and Glasgow papers on the subject of the late West Port murders. Each journal seems to think its own honour implicated in the business, and hastens to prove, first, that Burke and his wife are both Irish; and, secondly, that the idea of cutting people’s throats for the sake of selling their bodies to anatomists is far too original for the inferior conceptions of Scotchmen.’
“‘The Scotch character is’ much more ‘amusingly developed’ in this paragraph than in any of the comments made by the Edinburgh or Glasgow papers; for it bears to be an editorial lucubration, and as such must proceed from an exported Invernessian, who seems to be ashamed of his country, very probably because his country had some reason to be ashamed of him. It is false, however, that any Edinburgh journal ever dreamt ‘of its own honour being implicated in the business,’ or ‘hastened to prove that Burke and his wife (concubine) are both Irish.’ Our contemporaries, like ourselves, stated such facts as came to their knowledge, without ever imagining the nonsense which this blockhead thinks proper to ascribe to them; in fact, they appeared much more anxious to express their horror of the crime than to ‘prove,’ as the Solar scribe has it, what country was entitled to claim the ‘honour’ of having given birth to the criminals. But it seems our brethren and ourselves also ‘hastened to prove that the idea of cutting people’s throats for the sake of selling their bodies to anatomists, is far too original for the inferior conceptions of Scotchmen.’ We know of nothing, however, which we should not consider ‘too original for the inferior conceptions’ of one Scotsman, whom we need not name, and whose talent for misrepresentation seems to be nearly on a level with the shallow petulance and presumption under the cloak of which he tries to hide his ignorance. This, however, is not the best of it.
“‘Further than his name,’ continues the Solar gentleman, ‘there is nothing to prove that Burke is an Irishman.’
“Indeed! Why, man, Burke himself has confessed it in his declaration, read at his trial; and, if the murderer had been silent on the point, his brogue would as certainly and inevitably have betrayed his country, as your Invernessian nasal drawl, with a little touch of the genuine Celtic accent engrafted thereupon, would have betrayed your Northern origin and your Celtic descent. Burke is Irish, and so is Hare, and so is Hare’s wife; and so is the woman M‘Dougal, Burke’s concubine, though her name would indicate that some of her ancestors might have been Highland cousins to some of your own—a relationship which your ‘amiable bashfulness’ will not, we trust, ‘prevent you from publicly claiming.’
“He proceeds,—‘with respect to the inferior conceptions of Modern Athenians, what, let us ask, can equal the ingenuity of Lord Lauderdale’s famous torture boot?’ Nothing, certainly, except it be the ‘ingenuity’ of such a driveller as this, who fancied that there is anything at all ingenious in putting a human leg in an iron hoop or ring, and driving in a wedge between them. A more brutal decree, or one betraying less of ‘ingenuity’ was never fallen upon to inflict torture on a fellow creature. It might even have been invented by the blockhead who here calumniates his country; it is not below even his ‘inferior conceptions;’ we consider the device on a level with his capacity: and, we believe, it was generally from among his countrymen that persons were sought for, and found to enact the part of executioners in putting the heroic martyrs of the Covenant to this species of torture. The following is his concluding touch:—
“‘The West Port murder,’ judging from internal evidence, is decidedly of Scotch origin. There is a cool, methodical, business-like air about it, a scientific tact in the conception, and a practised ease in execution, which no Irishman could ever yet attain! An Irish murder is hasty, sudden, impetuous,—an English one, phlegmatic, cunning, mercenary,—but it has been reserved for the Scotch, in this last unequalled atrocity, to blend the qualities of both English and Irish guilt, with a scientific effrontery peculiarly and pre-eminently their own.”