As far as can be ascertained, the sale of Broad-sheets in the Mannings and Rush’s case far exceed that of any now before us. Even that of Müller did not amount to more than two hundred and eighty thousand copies--though no modern murder ever surpassed it in atrocity, or in the profound interest which it excited throughout England. And this difference is no doubt to be explained by the fact that since Mannings and Rush’s day the daily penny newspapers have almost forestalled the “Dying Speeches and confessions”--with or without the “copy of verses”--by giving a full account of the different enormities in all their minute and hideous details. The force of public opinion, too, thus exerted through the Press, has been brought to bear on the question of crime, and much of the morbid sympathy which found expression in the case of such a monster as Rush, had died away in 1864, when detectives tracked Müller across the Atlantic, and brought him back to be hanged by an English hangman, in the presence of an English mob. To every one of the murderers, Constance Kent at Road hill house, Jeffery, Forward, at Ramsgate, and the Pirates of the “Flowery Land,”--one and all alike,--stern justice is meted out with inflexible severity. The wretched girl who at Salisbury confessed her crime to the judge, makes no excuse for her guilt, but tells only of the intolerable remorse that would give her no rest-- “My infant brother so haunted me, I not one moment could happy be; And if for the murder they do me try, I declare I’m guilty, and deserve to die.” “Scoundrels,” “malefactors,” “villains,” are the gentlest names for this Newgate gallery, and the gallows in every case is promised, with a sort of grim satisfaction that augurs strongly for a deep popular belief in the justice of those solemn words, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” With the recent Act of Parliament abolishing the execution of criminals in sight of the public. Halfpenny and penny newspapers, and the capriciousness of Home Secretaries, the Dying Speech trade has in its turn received its death-blow. Still old memories and customs yet cling to the “Affectionate Copy of Verses.”--“The (cooked) Love Letters” and “Confessions”--made only by the Street-Patterer, and are found sufficiently remunerative to author, printer, publisher, and vendor--But for THIS DAY ONLY! [Illustration]