No other case bears the same resemblance to that of Joseph Wall as the incident of Kenneth Mackenzie and his cannon-ball execution. Some, indeed, have a certain affinity, and exhibit the national conscience overwhelmed by periodical fits of morality--a hysterical turning-over of new leaves. A few days before the red giant of Goree passed through the debtor’s door, Sir Edward Hamilton of the ‘Trent’ frigate was dismissed from the navy for an act of cruel tyranny, only to be reinstated in a few months. Thomas Picton, England’s “bravest of the brave,” was shaken by the same wave of humanity. Yet, after all, the guilt of the Admiral or the innocence of the hero of Waterloo were of little moment to a nation that continued to mutilate its enemies in the fashion of a dervish of the desert, under the sacred name of high treason. For, years later, the bloody heads of Brandreth and Thistlewood stained an English scaffold. Luckily for their oppressors, the victims of Hamilton and Picton--officers who did not stand in the desperate position of the Governor of Goree--survived their punishments, not having a leech-Ferrick to reckon with, else Farmer George and Doctor Henry, in the face of those dangling ‘Téméraire’ seamen, would have been in an awkward dilemma. The case of George Robert Fitzgerald, often held forth as a parallel by contemporary pressmen, has little similarity to that of Wall. Both belonged to the 69th Foot, they were antagonists in a Galway duel in ’69, and both ended their days on the scaffold; but here comparison ends. The retribution that overtook ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’ at Castlebar was the fitting penalty of a vendetta murder, brutal and premeditated, and wrought without a semblance of authority. Fifty years before the death of Joseph Wall, the London mob was able to indulge its fury in like fashion against another black-beast of its own choosing, one James Lowry, skipper of the merchant ship ‘Molly’ compared to whom the Governor of Goree appears to have been a mild and merciful commander. At different times, three sailors expired beneath the terrible floggings of Captain Lowry, who was wont to salute his dying victim with the cry, “He is only shamming Abraham.” And as the cruel seaman was carried in the cart to Execution Dock, the furious mob howled forth this ghastly catchword, just as they saluted Wall with the echo of the phrase which they supposed he had uttered while Benjamim Armstrong was being flogged to death, “Cut him to the heart--cut him to the liver.”