A case of murder?: a reply by Pat Rogers

Letters

October 2009

A case of murder?: a reply

Burke

was right!

Pat Rogers replies:

Aldan Markson is right of course that the impeachment of Strafford failed in the Lords, but to describe a parliamentary bill of
attainder as "murder" is an extreme use of words, unless the termis taken to mean "judicial" (i.e. legal but morally unwarranted) killing. Normally, a murder is defined as an unlawful killing, but parliament had the right to pass a bill of attainder, with the royal assent, whether or not this was the proper course to take. As it happens, I agree with Markson that Strafford was treated inan extremely cruel and unjust way, but it's not clear that we can call such things murder as ordinarily understood.

Pat Rogers is the author of Johnson (Past Masters), The Samuel Johnson Encylopedia, and the entry for Johnson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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November 24 2009

OPEN EVENT: Laura Jacobs reading

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December 02 2009

Friends Event: The Swallow Anthology Reading

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December 17 2009

Friends Event: New Criterion Holiday Party

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New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 4
"The Criminalization of Making Money" by Lionel Shriver, Recorded 9/25/09

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 3
"The State and the Threat to Democracy" by Jeremy Black and "The Paradox of the Intellectual and the Future of Capitalism" by Tim Congdon, Recorded on 9/25/2009

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 2
"Nice 'N' Easy: The Age of Micro Tyranny" by Mark Steyn, Recorded on 9/25/2009

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