The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-06-30

The old story of the traveller, ship-wrecked on
an unknown shore, who, while in search of hui
man habitaton, encountered a gallows, and
straightway rejoiced that he was in a civilized
country, is not without its moral. Even in the
exuberance of his JOY, the man rescued from the
sea did not, indeed, invest the grim apparatus of
death with the singular pcturesqueness of that
English humorist, who described q family man
sion, having gibbet in the rear, as ''backed by
hanging wood" but he recognized in the gaunt
framework symbol of the majesty of the laws,
and an-cvidence that offenders did sometimes meet
with the punishment due to their crimes. There
time when the judicial code was altogether
too severe; when life was too lightly taken, and
the moral sense too often offended by the severity
of the penalty inflicted, as compared with the
nature of the crime. OF late years, however so
strong reactionary feeling has set in, that the
ends of justice are often bafed by the conscien-
tous scruples of jurors, or by popular sympathy
for the criminal Yet nothing is more clear, than
that every additional loop-hole of escape afforded
to the offender operates incentive to lawless-
ness, and generates scornful contempt for those
who are clothed with judicial functions The
sibility, that this awful prerogative should only
be exercised from the cearest convictions of duty
to the community and under a profound con-
seriousness of the necessity for making an example
OF the convicted criminal. But we are certainly
not now open to the sarcasm of the poet With
us no 'wretches hang that jurymen may dine"
On the contrary, our jurors too frequently refuse
to hang at all, and thus cheat the gallows of the
fruit that has long been rpenng for it, but which
it is never destined to bear 1t is to this reluctance
to convict, capitally, that more than two-thirds
of the terrible crimes recorded in the daily papers
owe their origin; and while. therefore we ac-
knowledge that mercy is divine attribute, and
one that ''besseth him that gives, and him that
takes, we are constrained to doubt whether that
tenderness which displays itself in toler-
ance of vice, is not in itself highly criminal,
inasmuch as it is wrong done to virtue
prompt, vigorous, and impartial administration
OF the laws, is the best safeguard against the in
crease OF crime in community, and is the nobest
assurance that can be given to the world of well
ordered, and permanent frame of government
So long as people remain assured of perfect pro-
lection in person aud property, and are permitted
to exercise their political rights fearessly, and
without obstruction, they can afford to disagree
among themselves on minor questions of govern
ment or morals; but when the judicial ermine be-
comes soed by too close contact with the popu-
lace, and are overawed in the exercise of their
political perogatives by bands of armed mercena-
ries there is but step from the license thus en-
gendered to that condition of anarchy which con-
tennis private opinion and sets all law at defiance
Towards this deplorabe condition we have of late
years been gravitating; but see, or we think we
see, in the occasional evidences of firmness with
which the laws have recently been administered else
where in the unanimity with which the better class
of Journalists denounce the too frequent abuse Of
the pardoning power, and in the check which has
been given to rowdyism in various sections of the
Union, the growth of healthy reactionary move
ment, which, if properly sustained, will go far tc-
wards suppressng in the future those sanguinary
excuses by which the peace and good order of our
populous cities have been frequently COM
promised.