HARE’S APPEARANCE, &c.

We believe we speak within bounds, when we say, that scarcely an individual among the thousands who visited Hare here, could have identified him from the descriptions given in the Edinburgh papers; and still less from the caricatures in the shape of wooden blocks or cuts, which, when daubed over with printer’s ink, were palmed on the public as excellent likenesses.[6] Close confinement may have made him thinner, and terror and reflection more subdued; but his features, of course, remain unaltered; and in place of the goulishness, squalor, and ferocity, upon which the changes have been wrung so long, the people in this quarter could only recognise the contrary characteristics of apathy, vacancy, and mental imbecility. His eyes are watery, curiously shaped, and have certainly a peculiarity about them, which seems to hover betwixt leering and squinting; the forehead is low, as in all murderers; combativeness is large—destructiveness middling; the nose, mouth, and chin, very vulgar and common-place; and his countenance, on the whole, though it may betray more or less of what we may call a sinister dash of expression, indicates anything but intense ferociousness. The common remark was, that “he was a poor silly-looking body;” and nothing can better describe his appearance; for though Hare is certainly no beauty, every one has seen hundreds of uglier men. He can neither read nor write, and his mind, in other respects, is just as untutored as an Esquimaux Indian’s. What is called the moral sense, seems in him to stand below zero; and in this opinion we are borne out by all the medical gentlemen who had an opportunity of seeing and conversing with him here. He is five feet six inches high, and weighed, he says, at one time, 10 stones. When his venerable, and we understand, respectable mother, visited Edinburgh about a fortnight after he was apprehended, she stated that he was about twenty-five years of age, and this part of his personal history he seems only to know on her authority. He is a native of Armagh, though he refused to tell the particular parish. His father, who is dead, was a Protestant; his mother is a Catholic; and though he never cared much about the matter, and either could not, or would not give the name of the priest he attended, he seems inclined to prefer his mother’s religion. He has two brothers and two sisters alive. He came to Scotland ten years ago, and after landing at Workington, travelled to Newcastle, &c. He worked seven years with Mr. Dawson, at the canal boats, Edinburgh, and two years with Mr. Johnston, quarryman. He married more than two years ago, and has two children. His wife, he says, was lately in Glasgow, and got somebody to write a letter to the governor of the jail, stating particulars “which are nobody’s business,” and suggesting an arrangement for meeting her husband in some part of Ireland. With regard to Burke, his statements were so loose and contradictory, that we question whether any one heard him say the same thing twice over. Sometimes he denied, and sometimes admitted that he had seen his confession; sometimes hinted that the whole truth was not yet known, and at others that far more had been said than was true. To one person he averred that he had only witnessed two murders; and he was only, perhaps, consistent in this, that he seemed uniformly willing to blacken his associate, and whitewash himself. Burke’s statement that his female associate had no knowledge of the murders committed, goes far to damage his whole testimony, and if both assassins had been confessed and gibbetted, we question whether the truth could have been got at between them; and though we think it right to give the above particulars, we would not, for our own parts, believe a single word that Hare says, where the circumstance he speaks to is at all material, if unsupported by other evidence. To one gentleman who pressed him pretty closely, he positively declared that he believed that even Paterson himself was ignorant of the manner in which they (meaning, of course, Burke and himself), came by so many subjects. A great number of persons were certain that they had seen Hare before, and one or two farmers insisted that he had worked as a reaper on their lands. But he denied ever having been in Dumfries-shire or Galloway, and it seems probable that this is the real truth, otherwise it is very difficult to explain why he did not leave the mail at Albany Place and proceed to Portpatrick quietly on foot, before the hue and cry was raised here. To one of the individuals who saw him out of town, and who strove to open his eyes to the enormity of his guilt, he remarked, as soon as he could speak from terror, “this has been a terrible day for me.” “Yes,” said the other, “more terrible than any day I ever witnessed in Dumfries, and all owing to your own character.” To this he seemed to assent, and added emphatically, “I see it now.” Again the other enforced the great duty of repentance, and found him, for the moment, apparently penitent, though he soon recurred to his worldly prospects, and said, “it’s of no use going to my own country—or indeed anywhere.” On this his guide advised him to try and get to the South, and inlist as a private in some of the regiments of the East India Company. His answer was, “God knows what I will do, though I must do something.” And here he went on his way, after offering to shake hands with the officers, and thanking them for seeing him out of town.

Hare has not been heard of since the morning of Sunday the 8th Feb. It is probable that he has found his way to Liverpool, where a passage to Dublin could be readily procured, or that he has embarked at one of the Cumberland ports. By this time he may be in Ireland, where he can hide his guilty head with less fear of detection. We may hope that his presence will never again pollute our soil.