In the inquiry into the collision at Kildwick, near Skip-
ton, in Yorkshire, which was fatal to six persons, —persons somewhat unfeelingly and rashly described by the Times last week as "mostly of the vulgar sort,"—as though, even if it had been exclusively so (which it was not, if vulgarity and education be incompatible), we measured the value of life by social prestige, and as though, too, it were well to add a new pang to grief by speaking contemptuously of the sufferers,—the coroner's jury have brought in a verdict of manslaughter against the driver of the express train for disobeying the signal at Kildwick, and have censured the signalman at Cononley Station for altering the red signal to green a minute too soon. The responsibility of railway officials for life, even though it were only life "of the vulgar sort," cannot be too strictly enforced.
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