The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TRIES.--There has been au unfortunate tendency
of late years to punish crimes of 'violence against
the person with but slight severity in comparison
with crimes against property. Everybody, perhaps,
feels himself endangered by crimes of embezzlement,
but judges and magistrates have appeared hardly to
realise the amount of injury which is inflicted on
society by acts of violence. It is not, indeed, very
long since the prevalent leniency in this respect was
rudely shaken by an audacious outbreak of violence
on the part of our convict population. The alarm
which was created when garotte robberies were com-
mitted in the open street has left permanent traces
even upon our criminal legislation. When ticket-
of-leave men found so little to terrify them in the
consequences of their crimes that they made nothing
of knocking down passengers in such thoroughfares
as Oxford-street, and brutally maltreating them for
the paltry value of their watches, we felt that it was
time to adopt some sharp measures of repression.
The judges took to passing severe sentences, and
such crimes were rapidly checked. But it is rather
with regard to crimes of mere violence, committed
for no other reason than the indulgence of brutal
passions, that this leniency has of late been so con-
spicuous. In the case, especially, of cruelty com-
mitted by husbands against their wives, the mostin-
adequate punishments have been dealt out to- the
most brutal offenders. This is a class of crimes,
indeed, as to the degree of which it is often difficult
to obtain exact legal evidence. The wife, as a rule,
avoids complaining till the last extremity; and, after
she has once obtained the protection of the law, she
constantly endeavours as far as possible to extenuate
her husband's offence. Moreover, in too many cases,
it is only the last piece of brutality, and by no means
the worst, which breaks the poor wife's patience ;
and the husband is punished for only a common as-
sault, when he is really guilty of an aggravated
series of malicious cruelties continued for years.
It is with great satisfaction, therefore, we ob-
serve from the report of the Middlesex Sessions
in our impression of yesterday that a very diffe-
rent course was adopted by Sergeant Dowling in
some cases of this character which came before him
for sentence. There was, in the first place, a rob-
bery, accompanied by the most open and undisguised
violence. On a Sunday afternoon, in broad day-
light, a gentleman was descending the steps of the
steamboat-pier opposite Essex-street, when he was
attacked on the top of the steps by two young men
with canes, who felled him with a blow on the
temple, robbed him of his watch, gave him a serious
fall on the steps as he was attemptingto follow them,
and eventually made their escape. They were ob-
served to belong to a gang of notorious thieves and
pickpockets, and they were subsequently arrested.
Their accomplices were placed at the bar with them,
and they were convicted of several violent robberies
in Holborn and Gray's-inn-lane. We shall, hap-
pily, be freed from these ruffians for a long time by
the sentences which were passed by Sergeant
Dowling. Three of them were sentenced to penal
servitude for ten years, one for seven, and another
for five years, and a sixth was condemned to a
year's imprisonment with hard labour. This, how-
ever, is a class of crimes with regard to which our
Judges are not again likely to commit the errors
that were so disastrous a few years ago. The other
two cases were instances of that brutal and object-
less violence to which we are principally referring.
In the first of these a man and woman, with their
daughter and a young man, who was their daugh-
ter's paramour, were convicted of what the Judge
called the most " outrageous and murderous"
violence upon a respectable man who lodged in the
same house with them. It seems he had corn-
plained,
and with justice, of the indecent behaviour 1
of the daughter, and in revenge for this they all
attacked him one evening, dragged him into a
back court, threw him down and beat him, and the
young man kicked him with such violence that he
has permanently lost the use of one of his arms.
'This ruffian was sentenced to imprisonment with
hard labour for two years ; the father and daughter
to a similar punishment for one year, and the
mother for six months. The last case was one of
those horrible instances of the maltreatment of a
wife by her husband. The unfortunate wonytn had
been so brutally misused, and the effects of the
man's brutality were so manifest, that though he
had at first pleaded not guilty, he changed his plea,
and submitted at once to judgment. He had, in
fact, almost murdered the woman. He had been
constantly imprisoned for assaults and for other
offences ; he had failed*to support her, and had
then, as the judge said, " behaved towards her more
like a wild beast than a human being." There were
no considerations which could in any way mitigate
the brutality of his crime, and he was sentenced to
the utmost punishment which the law allows—to
penal servitude for five years. These are just and
necessary sentences, and we are glad to see a judge
display such a sense of the enormity of these das-
tardly crimes. Nothing short of stern and sharp
justice will make any impression upon the class of
men who commit these cruelties. Such men are,
like wild beasts, and like wild beasts they must be
tamed. There is, it may be added, a peculiar neces-
sity for the exercise of befitting severity at the pre-
sent moment. It is impossible not to be struck with
the fact that crimes of violence are becoming un-
usually prevalent. The public have been horrified
lately by a succession of murders such as it is diffi-
cult to remember within a similarly short space of
time. Some of them have been on the most whole-
sale scale, and all have been marked by one most
revolting feature—they have been committed on the
most slender provocation. An angry word, the
most ordinary feelings of spite and jealousy, or
even, it would .seem in one case, a desire for noto-
riety, have been sufficient incitements to the most
cold-blooded murders. But it is seldom that such
a crime as murder could be thus recklessly commit-
ted unless the mind had been first familiarised with
lesser crimes of the same nature. Murder is the
very extremity of violence, and the impulse to
commit it would not generally be thus ripe and
ready for action unless its seeds had been fos-
tered by long familiarity with thoughts and scenes
of violence. Murders, in short, are but acts of vio-
lence full grown, and acts of violence, on the other
hand, are• nothing less than incipient murders.
They should be regarded, therefore, with similar
indignation, and should be visited with a punish-
ment in proportion to their ultimate tendency.
It is not, indeed, improbable that the pernicious
leniency with which murders have of late years been
too often regarded may have stimulated the whole
series of kindred crimes. Every act of violence loses
something of its heinous character when murder
ceases to be execrated as the highest and most un-
pardonable of offences. We trust, however, that the
period of this perverse philanthropy is at an end.
Crimes of violence above all others, are absolutely in-
compatible with civilised society. Other crimes are
an abuse of society ; these are its very annihilation.
They area return to the most characteristic conditions
of savage life. They are the crimes, moreover, against
which the sufferers are most defenceless. In cases of
fraud a man makes use of weapons which are, to a
certain extent, at the disposal of his victims.lnge-
nuity and cunning may be baffled by acuteness and
watchfulness. But by the very fact of civilization
every one is deprived of those weapons and precau-
tions by which alone we could defend ourselves
against superior strength. In these matters we
place ourselves absolutely under the protection of
the law ; and we have a right, therefore, to demand
that we shall receive a more ample protection than
in the case of dangerg against which v.:co are more
or less able to take precautions for ourselves.
POST.—The question of negro suffrage-stands on
a footing so entirely distinct from that of negro
emancipation that it is with difficulty we can bring
ourselves to believe that any persons at all conver-
sant with the nature of political institutions can re-
gard the right of sharing in the administration of a
State as a legitimate consequence of elevation from
a state of servitude. That such persons do exist,
and in great numbers, on the other side of the
Atlantic, is, however, an incontestable fact, and it
is no less true that they include amongst them men
endowed with a fair share of sagacity, and pos-
sessed of no inconsiderable influence over those to
whom they are placed by their social position in
the relation of teachers. It would therefore be
equally idle and unbecoming to assume that several
millions of people, who, until the commencement
of the present summer were mere chattels, incap-
able of acquirini or transferring the smallest
articles of property, must be obviously unfitted for
the discharge of high political functions, since there
are men of unquestionable intelligence and large ex-
perience who think otherwise. The question whether
a slave, who, until yesterday, knew nothing beyond
the range of the plantation in which he worked,
ought to be entrusted with the power of determin-
ing who shall be the rulers of a mighty Republic,
and of indirectly dictating the policy which shall
guide the State, is therefore one which is open to
dispute, and which, like other controverted points,
ought to be canvassed, without prejudice, on its own
merits. Horror of slavery is a very humane and
praiseworthy sentiment, but it must be apparent
that there is nothing in the question now submitted
which should, "however remotely, tend to bring it
into operation. The civil war in the United States
has now terminated. Slavery has been abolished.
The negro is now a free man, and all that remains
is to determine the precise political status he shall
hold in the Republic. In States such as Great Bri-
tain, where the enjoyment of political privileges is
dependent on the possession of a certain amount of
property, the right of an emancipated negro to exer-
cise the suffrage would probably be determined in
the same manner as that of his fellow-citizens.
With us the possession of property is regarded
rightly.% matters uoq_afit
ON:laethe;

deuce of industry and intelligence, and it is thought
that the man who has a stake to lose will take a.
warmer interest in the good government of a coun-
try than he who has none. But in the United States
of America, and in those countries where the only
qualifications for sharing in the administration of the
State, by electing those in whose hands the executive
and legislative power reposes, consist in being of a
certain age and of the male sex, it would seem natu-
rally to follow that the slave, having acquired the
status of citizen, would acquire with it the political
privileges incidental to citizenship. It must be con-
ceded, then, that the Abolitionists, who protest
against negro emancipation without negro suffrrage
as a half measure, and as a fraud upon the liberated
slave, are, at least, consistent in their reasoning,
and compel their opponents to accept the alterna-
tive of admitting that the foundation on which
manhood suffrage rests is unsound, or of according
to the emancipated slaves those political privileges
which are demanded for them. And, in truth, the
question of negro suffrage now forced on American
statesmen only raises, in another form, that of uni-
versal suffrage, and according as the first is deter-
mined must the second stand or fall. If those who
have the conduct of public affairs in the United
States find themselves in a dilemma, they must lay
the blame at the doors of those who modelled their
political institutions. It must never be forgotten
that those who advocate universal suffrage rest
their views on the assumption that every individual
in a State should have a voicein its management ;
that all are equally interested in its prosperity, and
that all possess for every practical purpose intelli-
gence sufficient to guide them in the discharge of
their political functions. Even supposing such an
assumption to be well founded as regards the mass
of a people possessing as between each other simi-
lar sympathies, and more or less influenced by the
same patriotic feelings, and imbued with the same
prejudices, it is clear that it no longer holds true if
the component elements of the State are in antago-
nism to each other, and, though apparently guided
by the same interests, are in truth diametrically
opposed to each other. Now, it so happens that
m the United States of America abundant oppor-
tunity has been afforded of estimating the rela-
tions in which a free negro population stand to
those who have emancipated them. The process
of emancipation in the Northern States has been
slow, and never perhaps in the history of the world
did circumstances to all appearance more perfectly
conspire to cause a complete amalgamation between
a servile class and its liberators. The white popula-
tion. of North America, instead of being stationary,
has been month by month and year by year re-
cruited from States in which slavery is unknown,
and it might therefore have been expected that
the new corners would be uninfluenced by any of
those prejudices which might actuate those who
personally had been brought up to consider their
coloured fellow citizens as an inferior race. But,
nevertheless, it is unquestionable that the condition
of the emancipated negro in the Northern States
has been, in the opinion of the majority of thinking
men, infinitely more galling than one of absolute
servitude. The slave, at all events, has a recognised
status; he is led to expect nothing, and'he suffers no
disappointment. To be raised to the dignity of a
free man, simply to suffer indignities to which no
free man should be exposed, is a lot which a rational
being in the condition of a slave could scarcely
envy. It is therefore idle to suppose that the violent
act of emancipation by which some millions of slaves
have been suddenly thrust on an equality with those
who have hitherto been their masters, can engender
between the two classes feelings more harmonious
than those which we have seen in operation in the
free States of North America ; and the community
of sympathy and interest which constitutes the sole
basis of universal suffrage must consequently be
wantilig. If, however, to this consideration be
superadded those arising from the obvious incapa-
city of men not only without book education, but
without that knowledge which can alone be gained
by experience, and by the influences of civilisation,
to take part in civil government, the absurdity of
giving the emancipated slaves of the South the right
of selecting the representatives of the people be-
comes transparent. The mistake the advocates of
negro suffrage commit consists in supposing that if
they remove the fetters with which a man has been
confined for years, his limbs may be used with the
same activity as if they had been always free. The
history of the world ought surely to satisfy thorn
that it is not possible merely by word of mouth to
bid a savage race be civilised.