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appeared to have been slashed, and battered, and mangled, as if with the fury and malice of a demon. On inquiry it was found that the family-whose name was Kinck-had only the day before arrived from Roubaix, that the wife had inquired for her husband at the Hotel du Chemin de Fer du Nord, and had then gone, no one knew whither. A person who had been staying at the hotel, and who had given the name of Jean Kinck, had disappeared about the same time, and about him, for some days, no information could be obtained, though the accession of such a group of dead bodies made the Morgue by far the most popular of Parisian attractions. Three days after the first discovery, a man who called himself Fisch was arrested at Havre as a suspected person. He had been staying at different hotels, making sinister utterances, and trying to obtain fraudulent embarkation papers, in order to start for the United States. His answers to the gendarme were confused and unsatisfactory. On his way to the Procureur Imperial he almost successfully attempted to commit suicide, and when searched a number of the missing Jean Kinck's papers were found upon him. Clearly, the "suspect" had had something to do with the Pantin murder, which was just then making so much stir, and the conversations of his gaolers soon made him aware that he was to be interrogated with respect to them.

As soon as Tropmann (the soi-disant Fisch) heard this, he must have felt that his game was up. But with consummate craftiness, he endeavoured to put the best face on a very suspicious-looking situation. The authorities scarcely believed that any single man could have committed such wholesale homicide, and their prisoner forthwith turned their doubts to account. He had been present, he said, when Madame Kinck and her children met their deaths; nay, he had been in a measure the instrument of their murder. But at the worst he had been only an accessory. Jean Kinck, the head of the family, had doubted his wife's fidelity; had arranged with his son Gustave to leave France for America, and the two had taken their friend Tropmann into their confidence, with whose aid they had carried out the plan which they had contrived for murdering all the other members of the family. But this fiction was too flimsy to hang together after Gustave Kinck's body was found only a few yards from the place where his kinsfolk had been laid. Then came new subterfuges and fresh falsehoods, ending, however, in a confession that he had poisoned Jean Kinck with prussic acid, and had buried him in the environs of Watwiller, in Alsace, some time before despatching the other members of his family. Search was made, the body was found, and the solution of the mystery was at length complete.

The evidence at the trial showed that Tropmann had ingratiated himself in Kinck's favour, and wormed himself into his confidence, with the set and deliberate purpose to murder him, in order to gain possession of his property. With this view he had fostered Kinck's Durpose of visiting Alsace, had accompanied him to Cernay, with

his own hand had prepared the poison, which he afterwards poured into the wine flask he carried with him, handing it to Kinck at a moment when the two were in a secluded place, in which he might speedily get rid of the body of his first victim. Then began a system of fraud and forgery by which he induced Madame Kinck and her family to come up to Paris. Foiled in his endeavours to get one of Kinck's cheques cashed, he wrote to Madame Kinck, in her husband's name, telling her a story about an injury to his hand, which compelled him to employ Tropmann as amanuensis, and urging her to come speedily to the capital, where he would meet her. The poor woman, anxious about her husband, and eager to join him, took the fatal journey, and only narrowly missed her last chance of life. Tropmann had directed her to come by a particular train, and had promised to meet her at the station on its arrival. By an accident, however, she reached the terminus some hours earlier, and at once went to the hotel, expecting there to find her husband. Had Tropmann been in she would have found that he was passing under Kinck's name, and this suspicious fact might have led to the discovery of the truth. But the soi-disant Kinck was out, and full of hope and confidence the family party set out to keep the tryst at the previously appointed hour. They met the man who had calmly resolved to take their lives. Without thought of evil, they accompanied him to Pantin, where the mother and the two youngest children got out, accompanying Tropmann to the place where the husband and father was supposed to be staying. They must have gone some little distance, for the coachman, engaged with the prattle of the remaining children, heard nothing to excite his attention. Only twenty minutes had elapsed when Tropmann returned, looking as cool as when he left, and yet in those twenty minutes he had committed three murders, and was bent on committing as many more, in addition to those of the father and his eldest son, both of whom had already fallen by his hand. In the presence of these facts, it is not to be wondered that even the ability and ingenuity of M. Lachaud, who defended the prisoner, failed to discover any ground of defence but that of insanity, which in such a case was but "madness run mad." Never has a criminal been brought to justice for whose offence there was less excuse or extenuation, and the Procureur did but express the sentiments of universal humanity when he urged that the punishment should be equal to the crime.

Tropmann was guillotined about three weeks afterwards.

OBITUARY

OF

EMINENT PERSONS DECEASED IN 1869.

LORD BROUGHTON.

THE RIGHT HON. SIR JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE, G.C.B., P.C., F.R.S., BARON BROUGHTON, of Broughton de Gyffard, in the county of Wilts, and a Baronet, who died on the 3rd of June at his town house in Berkeley-square, was the son of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, the first baronet, by his wife, Charlotte, daughter and heiress of Samuel Cam, Esq., of Chantry House, Wilts. He was born June 27, 1786, and educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1808. He was a most intimate friend of Lord Byron, and accompanied the illustrious poet on his travels in 1809, and was with him during his first visit to Greece and Turkey. Mr. Hobhouse on his return home published an interesting narrative entitled "A Journey through Albania." He was also author of "Imitations and Translations from the Classics, with Original Poems;" and "The Last Reign of Napoleon." To him Lord Byron dedicated the fourth canto of "Childe Harold.” Mr. Hobhouse took advanced Liberal views in politics, and was a zealous and unremitting advocate of Parliamentary Reform. His celebrated letter to Mr. Canning, which appeared in a newspaper of the day, was long remembered as one of the keenest of satires. In December, 1829, he was, in consequence of the letter written by him, which contained some severe remarks on the conduct of certain members of the House of Commons, and which was declared a breach of privilege by that assembly, arrested and imprisoned in Newgate.

A few weeks after his incarceration the death of George III. occurred, in 1820, by which Parliament was dissolved, and he obtained his liberation. At the general election of that year he was elected M.P. for Westminster. In February, 1832, he entered Earl Grey's Govern ment as Secretary of War, which office he held till April, 1833. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland in April and May, 1833; Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests in 1834, but resigned in Novem. ber of that year. He was President of the Board of Control from April, 1835, to September, 1841, and from July, 1846, to February, 1852. He was M.P. for Westminster from 1820 to 1833; for Nottingham from 1834 to 1847; and for Harwich from 1848 to 1851. He was made a P.C. in 1832, and a G.C.B. in 1852. He succeeded his father as second baronet August 15, 1831, and was raised to the peerage of the United Kingdom as Baron Broughton de Gyffard February 26, 1851. His Lordship married Lady Julia Hay, youngest daughter of George, seventh Marquis of Tweeddale, and by her (who died April 3, 1835) had three daughters.

THE EARL OF DERBY, K.G.

Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, fourteenth Earl of Derby, who died at his residence at Knowsley, near Liverpool, on the 23rd of October, was born st Knowsley, on March 29, 1799, being the eldest son of the thirteenth Earl, then only called Lord Stanley. He was educated at Eton, and at Christ Church

College, Oxford, where he gained the Chancellor's prize for a Latin poem on "Syracuse," but took no degree or honours. His literary scholarship, his taste and knowledge of classical poetry, far surpassed the attainments of most University students. He had an equal turn for oratory; and, while yet a boy, would practise elocution under the direction of Lady Derby, his grandfather's second wife, who had been a professional actress. At twenty-two years of age he got a seat in the House of Commons as M.P. for Stockbridge, in Hampshire, a small nomination borough, now defunct. He sat quite silent three or four years, and made his first speech, a clever one, in favour of a private Bill for the lighting of Manchester with gas. The readiness and force of statement he showed on this occasion was noticed by Sir James Mackintosh, a good judge of speakers. Mr. Stanley's second speech was in opposition to Mr. Joseph Hume's motion, on May 6, 1824, for the reduction of the Irish Church Establishment to some proportion with the services it performed. He maintained that the Establishment was of great social use. fulness, and that Church property was as inviolable as any private property. His eloquence was praised by Plunkett. In that month of May the young politician married the Hon. Emma Bootle Wilbraham, second daughter of Baron Skelmersdale, of Latham House, the ownership of Latham having passed from the Stanleys long before and gone to the Bootles. A foreign tour, extending to the United States of America, in company with the late Lord Taunton, then Mr. Labouchere, and with another gentleman, the present Speaker of the House of Commons, took place a year or two later. In his subsequent life Lord Derby seldom cared to travel. He built himself a house called Stanley Lodge at Ballykisteen, in Tipperary, where he would stay three or four months at a time. He was fond of shooting and walking about the country, but made few Irish acquaintances, though his grandfather had large estates there. At the general election of 1826 he gave up his seat for Stockbridge, and was returned for the borough of Preston, where the Earl of Derby owned almost every house in the town. One of Mr. Stanley's speeches of this period was against the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, which traversed the Knowsley estates, when he denounced railways as "a mad and extravagant speculation."

The time was now coming for Mr. Stanley to enter the lists of competition

for political office. When Canning was authorized to form a Ministry, in 1827, that brilliant statesman, too Liberal for his old party, was deserted by the Eldon and Liverpool set of Tories and by the Duke of Wellington, but was joined by several moderate Whigs, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Goderich, Lord Dudley, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Stanley. Lord Goderich, afterwards Earl of Ripon, became Secretary for the Colonies, and Mr. Stanley was Under-Secretary; but on the death of Canning, a few months afterwards, Lord Goderich undertook to be Prime Minister. The Colonial Department was now taken by Mr. Huskisson; but Mr. Stanley did not find the Government quite Liberal enough for him. He was a strenuous advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation, of Parliamentary reform, reciprocity in free trade, with a moderate fixed duty on corn, and the Liberal foreign policy of Mr. Canning. "I am convinced," he said, "that the old and stubborn spirit of Toryism is at last yielding to the liberality of the age-that the Tories of the old school, the sticklers for inveterate abuses under the name of the wisdom of our ancestors, the laudatores temporis acti, are giving way on all sides-that the spirit which supported the Holy Alliance, the friend of despotism rather than the advocate of struggling freedom, is hastening to the fate it merits, and that all its attendant evils are daily be coming matters which belong to history alone." Such were the sentiments of Mr. Stanley. From the autumn of 1828, during the Administrations of Lord Goderich and the Duke of Wellington, and until the accession of Lord Grey to power, in 1830, Mr. Stanley remained out of office.

In the Whig Ministry of that momentous period, Mr. Stanley, then about thirty years of age, was a member of the Cabinet, as Chief Secretary for Ireland. He had lost his seat for Preston in spite of the Derby local influence, being there defeated by Henry Hunt, the ultra-Radical declaimer, in a fierce election contest, and taking refuge in the Crown borough of Windsor. Mr. Stanley was quite as earnest as Lord John Russell, and much more vehement, in his advo cacy of the Reform Bill. It is said that, when the House of Lords first rejected the Bill, and a Tory Government was to be formed, he leaped upon the table at Brookes's Club and harangued his politi cal friends, proposing that they should recommend to the people a general refusal of taxes. Mr. Stanley had charge, more especially, of the Irish Reform Bill.

The administration of Ireland, too, was for him to defend in Parliament. Mr. Stanley had a very difficult task. The state of Ireland, excited by its triumph in the struggle for Catholic Emancipation, seduced by the efforts of its priests and demagogues, and commencing a new agitation for the Repeal of the Union, was full of danger. The social grievances of the land laws and the Church Establishment were intensely felt by the people. Tithe murders, as well as land murders, were frequent all over the country; there were alarming riots, bloody conflicts of the peasants with the constables or soldiers, burnings of houses and ricks, maimings of cattle -every sort of mischief. The Lord Lieutenant, the Marquis of Anglesey, did his best to uphold public order and to soothe the furious nation under his rule. But it was necessary to pass a Coercion Act, with other such measures, which the Chief Secretary had to introduce. In so doing Mr. Stanley was often embroiled with O'Connell, who was his bitter opponent. Mr. Stanley was doing much good work for Ireland. The Irish Board of National Education, in which the Protestant Archbishop Whately and the Catholic Archbishop Murray, with the Presbyterians of Ulster, could unite their efforts to provide an unsectarian, but not irreligious, system of teaching for the people, was one of the acts of his official time. The Irish Board of Works, the Shannon navigation improvements, and other useful performances must also be placed to his credit. He had much to do with the arrangements for compensating the clergy for the non-collection of tithes. He had ceased to be Chief Secretary for Ireland, and was promoted to be a Secretary of State, just before the Irish Church Temporalities Bill was introduced, in the Session of 1833; but he declared, in the debate on the second reading, that no one was more responsible for it than himself. It went to the abolition of two archbishoprics and ten bishoprics; the payment of Church cess was to be stopped, and other ecclesiastical abuses to be redressed. Mr. Stanley, while he still refused to allow that any Church property could be directed to secular purposes, yet supported the 147th clause of the Bill; for he always held, with the other Whigs, that the contemplated surplus, thus to be appropriated, was not property actually belonging to the Church; it was a fund to be gained by an improvement in the mode of leasing episcopal estates. His consistency was afterwards vindicated by reference to this distinction.

His great achievement, however, as a Whig Minister was the emancipation of the negro slaves in all the colonies of Great Britain. His speech of May 14, 1833, in bringing forward that glorious measure, was a noble utterance of generous philanthropy and an admirably clear exposition of the complicated subject. His ardent indignation was never more worthily bestowed than in denouncing the shameful outrages upon humanity then practised in our West Indian plantations, and the persistent evasion or neglect of protective regulations by the colonial governments. In the progress of the Bill through Committee, where all its details were discussed and readjusted, including the loan or grant of twenty millions to the planters and the arrangement of the term of apprenticeship, Mr. Stanley discharged a most laborious duty, in spite of manifold opposition, with a zeal that showed his heart was truly in this work.

In 1834 Lord Stanley separated him. self from the Whigs on the question of the Irish Church; he, with Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and others, resisting the proposed appropriation of its surplus revenues to purposes of education. He rejected the overtures made to him by Sir Robert Peel, when that statesman, on the fall of Lord Melbourne's Ministry, in 1834, undertook to form a Government; but seven years after, when these overtures were renewed, he accepted them, and became Secretary of State for the Colonies. Lord Stanley proved a tower of strength to the Tory party, though he was much too independent and too willing to smite friends as well as foes to make its leader feel perfectly at ease with him. Sir Robert Peel was glad of an excuse to raise Lord Stanley before his time to the Upper House, and he had good reason for his distrust. The Repeal of the Corn Laws could no longer be delayed, and Lord Stanley was bound by all the traditions of his family to resist Free Trade. The result of the great conjuncture of 1846 was that Lord Stanley broke loose from Peel, and the rank and file of the Tories rallied round him. Lord Stanley was now formally, and by the advice of the Duke of Wellington, installed in the leadership of the Tory party, and though in Parliament there was a tremendous force arrayed against it, he found in Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Disraeli lieutenants of great courage and force of character, men whe could fight a losing battle with skill and keep the party together. In 1852. through the dissensions of their chiefs,

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