Indiana State sentinel. (Indianapolis, Ind.) 1861-1865, 1862-06-23
A Chance for Reformers.

I'LL ID l HumdI laws WHICH operate 10 Cypress OF
demoralize the human race, or any portion of it;
and believing themselves to be specially inspired
with an ability to discern right and wrong in the
acts of Others (if not in their own acts) they
claim the right of interfering, with their reform
ideas, among all those people, States and nations,
who, being less enlightened than they, are there
fore subjected TO their superior judgment.
The same principle on which they are impelled
to interfere with slavery in States which, as to
slave laws, are wholly foreign to them and the
country they inhabit, ought to impel them at
once to enter the field to which we now direct
their attention.
Just across the water from New England are
the islands of Great Britain. including Old Eng
land. Common ancestry and consequent blood
relationship, a common language and a p%roiessed
devotion to the same general principles Of liberty,
commercial and literary correspondence and in
terests binding us together, all these surely are
reasons WHY the philantropist of the North should
direct his attention across the sea, if he deals in
foreign sins ut all. And then, regarding the
motto which has been assumed by the leading rad
cal newspaper of the day, in Boston, since it de-
clared the American Union gone, "our country is
the world, our countrymen are all mankind, " we
do not see that those gentlemen can show any
superior obligation directing their attention to the
South, over that which requires them to proceed
in the work of reforming England.
An examination of the recent English news
papers must convince any rejecting mind that
there are some grave and serious moral sins which
attach to the people in England who are engaged
in the institution of matrimony. To use the radi-
cal expression, marriage is the cause of horrible
sins and crimes in that country. Mark that this
is not our expression. The radical logic is that
because a fact would not occur but for an exist
ing institution, therefore the institution is the
cause Of the fact. As for example, eff there
where no slavery, there would have been no war,
ergo slavery is the cause of the war" We refer
to the London Times of May ID, for a report of
the opening of the Central Criminal Court in
London and the charge of the Recorder to the
Grand Jury. Among the cases to which he call
ed their attention were some which he thus de-
scribed:
"As regarded the other charges to which he
had alluded, of wounding with intent to murder,
it appeared in the first of them the prisoner was
charged with shooting his wife, and the evidence
would go to show that the prisoner had repeated
ly threatened his wife, and that he had made use
of violent language to her ON the day on which
the occurrence took place, and almost immedi-
ately afterwards a shot was fired at the prosecu-
trix. In the second case, it also appeared that
the husband and wife lived on bad terms, and
that upon the occasion of the quarrel taking
place between them the prisoner attacked his wife
with an axe and inflicted very serious injury upon
her. The third case was one of the same charac-
ter, and according to the dispositions the pr soner
appeared to have been guilty of most gross
and extraordinary violence. In the first in
stance lie seemed to have knocked her down
and he then commenced beating her with the leg
Of a chair and also struck her with a fat iron and
the last thing that appeared TO be remembered
by the unfortunate woman was that the prison
err seized her and threw her over the staircase,
and became insensible, and knew nothing more
of what happened until she found herself in bed
in the hospital. In the fourth case of the same
kind the prisoner was charged with stabbing his
wife, and it appeared that in consequence of the
manner in which he had treated her upon former
occasions she had left him, and he had urged her
to return and live with him, but she refused to do
so, and was about go away, and at the same mo-
ment she felt a severe blow, and it turned out
that she had received two stabs from a shoema-
ker's knife. These were the principal facts upon
which this class OF cases was sought to be sup
ported, and it appeared to him that if the fact
should be made out as he had stated them it
would be their duty to return a true bill with re-
gard to each of the charges"
We agree with the Recorder that it appears very
much as if true bills ought to be found in these
cases; and the question then arises whether, the
radical logic being applied, a British and Foreign
Anti Slavery and Anti Matrimony society cannot
be stirred up by the members of the American
Radical party who are now their close cores
pondents, (and who it is understood are united
with them in the support of an anti Union and
Constitution preaching and declaiming place in
New York, and whether they cannot find a lit
tie spare time to devote TO a removal of the cause
of these crimes, which are only a specimen list
from one days report of a London court. If
these people had never been married, they would
never have had these murderous scenes. That
is the line of argument, ufwhich any radical man
can see the consequence.
For the fur ther consideration of the same Brit
ish and American Reformers we annex a para
graph which We clip from the London Times, a
few days later than the above
"ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN The number of
children born out of wedlock in England during
the year 1860 was a., 500, being Ga per cent. of
the whole number of children born. In Cumber-
land, where the proportion arose to its maximum,
it was double that amount; in Norfolk it was
1911; IN Westmeroland l0-6; in Shropshire 8 6;
in Notringhamshire 9 l.. 1t was also high in
Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Herefordshire, Lincoln
shire, and the North Riding of Yorkshire. The
Registrar General thinks that the proportion of
illegitimate children born in London 2 per
cent, in the tabies-is very probably understated.
There is much greater facility for the suppression
OF facts in large cities than in smaller towns and
villages"
There is certainly work for the Duchess of
Sutherland and her American correspondents and
allies, Oh English soil.
One might imagine from this that the Anti
Matrimony Reformers were already at work in
Cumberland. Ore out of every eight OF its chill
dren are born out of wedlockl
Seriously, we have no more to do with the per-
petuation or the removal of slavery in the South
ern States than We have with the sins and shames
of England. Slavery is an evil which good NEE
would be glad to see removed, and which wise
men will leave to those who are i'm
mediately concerned with it. Letting il
alone, here at the North. is just as much
a duty as it is duty to let alone the debtors
prisons, the matrimonial crimes, the terrible i'm
moralities of England. There is a strange pro
peusity in the minds of reformers to look away
from home. The race of men is sinful enough,
even in its best estate. and always, attached firm
ly to its highest forms of civilization. its hottest
institutions. its purest political systems, there are
terrible evils. weighing heavily on the temporal
as well as the eternal interests Of men. We may
all find ample work in reforming these evils which
surround us, and for which we are directly re-
sponsible; and when this system is carried out.
and men reform themselves, and their own fami-
lies, and these over whom they have Immediate
influence. the work will begin as it ought. But
so long as they begin at the other end of the
work. they will inevitably fail there, and neglect
ing themselves, will, of course, grow to be unfit
guides or advisers of others. No man can spend
his time on the mote that is 10 his neighbours eye,
without grave danger that his own vision may be-
come oblique, and be totally destroyed for all
good purposes.--N. Y. Jour. Of Com.