MURDER OF DANIEL CLARKE.

We shall close this register of blood with the account of a murder remarkable in all its circumstances, for which a person, called Eugene Aram, suffered at York, in the course of this year. This man, who exercised the profession of a schoolmaster at Knaresborough, had, as far back as the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-five, been concerned with one Houseman, in robbing and murdering Daniel Clarke, whom they had previously persuaded to borrow a considerable quantity of valuable effects from different persons in the neighbourhood, on false pretences, that he might retire with the booty. He had accordingly filled a sack with these particulars, and began his retreat with his two perfidious associates, who suddenly fell upon him, deprived him of life, and, having buried the body in a cave, took possession of the plunder. Though Clarke disappeared at once in such a mysterious manner, no suspicion fell on the assassins; and Aram, who was the chief contriver and agent in the murder, moved his habitation to another part of the country. In the summer of the present year, Houseman being employed, among other labourers, in repairing the public highway, they, in digging for gravel by the road side, discovered the skeleton of a human creature, which the majority supposed to be the bones of Daniel Clarke. This opinion was no sooner broached, than Houseman, as it were by some supernatural impulse which he could not resist, declared that it was not the skeleton of Clarke, inasmuch as his body had been interred at a place called St. Robert’s Cave, where they would find it, with the head turned to a certain corner. He was immediately apprehended, examined, admitted as evidence for the crown, and discovered the particulars of the murder. The skeleton of Clarke being found exactly in the place and manner he had described, Eugene Aram, who now acted as usher to a grammar-school in the county of Norfolk, was secured, and brought to trial at the York assizes. There, his own wife corroborating the testimony of Houseman, he was found guilty, and received sentence of death; notwithstanding a very artful and learned defence, in which he proved, from argument and example, the danger of convicting a man upon circumstantial evidence. Finding all his remonstrances ineffectual, he recommended himself in pathetic terms to the king’s mercy; and if ever murder was entitled to indulgence, perhaps it might have been extended not improperly to this man, whose genius, in itself prodigious, might have exerted itself in works of general utility. He had, in spite of all the disadvantages attending low birth and straitened circumstances, by the dint of his own capacity and inclination, made considerable progress in mathematics and philosophy, acquired all the languages ancient and modern, and executed part of a Celtic dictionary, which, had he lived to finish it, might have thrown some essential light upon the origin and obscurities of the European history. Convinced, at last, that he had nothing to hope from the clemency of the government, he wrote a short poem in defence of suicide; and, on the day fixed for his execution, opened the veins of his left arm with a razor, which he had concealed for that purpose. Though he was much weakened by the effusion of blood, before this attempt was discovered, yet, as the instrument had missed the artery, he did not expire until he was carried to the gibbet, and underwent the sentence of the law. His body was conveyed to Knaresborough-forest, and hung in chains, near the place where the murder was perpetrated.—These are some of the most remarkable that appeared amongst many other instances of homicide: a crime that prevails to a degree alike deplorable and surprising, even in a nation renowned for compassion and placability. But this will generally be the case among people whose passions, naturally impetuous, are ill restrained by laws, and the regulations of civil society; which the licentious do not fear, and the wicked hope to evade.