Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1866-07-04
[From the New York WOrldI
The InquIsition in 1he Nurser,Y.. ].

The country has just. been shocked by
obe of the most hideOus crimes which have
ever stained the annals of humanity, A
person exercising the profession of amin
lister of Christ, in an interior town Of this
State, now lies in prison charged with
beating to death his own child, an infant
no more than three years of age, because
the helpless little creature could not be in
duced by its step-mother to Say its Hray-
ersw
The simple statement of the case fairly
staggers belief. That a man, however
coarse and dull of brain, who had been
sufficiently educated to conceive. even
dimly and incoherently, the meaning of
the word prayer" and the nature of the
Being to whom 'prayer" Is supposed by
Christians to be addressed, should be capa-
BILE of perpetrating so revolving an outrage
upon the instructive feelings Of humanity,
is thing to shake ones faith in the moral
superiority of mankind over the beasts that
perish. And yet we are not left at liberty
to doubt that this thing has been done, and
done by preacher of the gospel of Him
who took little children in His arms and
blessed them, and said to His disciples,
"Sufftr little children to come unto me,
and forbid them not, for OF such is the
kingdom Of Heaven" The wretched
criminal himself bears witness to his own
guilt, in the following inconeeivable con-
tession, made to the coroner's jury sum-
moned to sit upon the body Ofthe little suf-
terer .i..a". aFa...J fa.Ul te ~. ..
''0n the 18th of June, the child disobey-
ed his step-mOther, and l commenced cor
recting him, using shingle for the pur-
pose, and continued to chastise him for
more than two hours, when the child be-
gan to show signs of debility and ceased
to punish him and laid him on couch and
81 ., ,..l., H. ~. ~
she said he was dying, and before II o'clock
he was dead"
When one considers such deed as this
in all its relations, it may be fairly said to
enter into the category of those monstrous
offenses against nature for which, as the old
jurlsts tell US, no adequate provision Of
punishment has been made by law, human
Legislators holding it to be tooindecent and
horrible TO proceed upon the theory that
such offenses could ever be perpetrated-
But in recording the shameful truth, under
the mild caption of clerical sternness,"
and in speaking Of it as the "result of vi
combined" the Tribune unwittingly pre-
sents it under an aspect from which it may
be considered with some possibility of
philosophical and profitable speculation
upon its origin and upon its lessons What
is this "clerical sternness," the result of
vicious education and defective Judgment
combined" which has thus horribly paro-
died, in community of American Chris
tians and In the middle of the nineteenth
century, the ancient Hebrew story of the
projected sacrifice of Isaac by his father?
Is it not simply the reduction, to the most
sickening and revolving extreme of crimi-
nal absurdity, of that always shocking the
ory of human life according to which, as
John Stuart Mill admirably expresses it,
the one great offense of man is self-will ?"
By this theory, "all the good of which hui
manity is capable is obedience - and in the
murder of an unreasoning child, to compel
its obedience to the unmeaning service eX-
acted of 1t by domestic mquisition, we
have only the extreme and exaggerated
form of that despotism of opinion clothed
with force, over Individual thoughtand feel
ing, which was established throughout this
country during the war by the self-stgled
"party of great moral IDEAS" and which
journals like the Tribune and politicians
like Senator Wade and Thaddeus Stevens,
are now moving heaven and earth to con-
solldate and perpetuate. The exaction of
political "test-oath' as q condition pre-
cedent to the exercise of the functions Of 9
the Christian ministry in Missouri, and the
social ostracism and personal persecution
practiced, against those who honestly OPP
pOSOu buO BlOoOCublOL Ot AOOOub CtNtA
war, by the popular majority and the au-
thorities of its creation In the Northern
States, are identical in principle with this
horrible act of domestic inquisition beat
ing the life out of a helpless child'"for the
glory of God."fu 3dl j qfnao9 na9iI
No doubt this miserable Clergyman"
who now lies in prison under the weight Of
his nameless crime was an earnestsupp0rt- Z
er of all the machinery which the Radicals
of the Tribune school have organized and
set in motion for crushing out the life Of
moral independence and mental freedom
among us, a devout worshipsr Of what
Stuart Mill justly calls .the narrow theory
of life, and the pinched and hide7bound
type Of human character which 1t patrons
ICES" whereof the latest public Ilanifestas
ton among ourselves Is seen and scQrned
by all truly liberal men in the recent excise
legislation of the State Of New York. us
there one person on earth,n asksthe Tffba =
une, s'who does not instinctivelyi that
this Rev, Mr.. Lindsey Is q, champion Of /.
capital punishmentP" ?" is there one per-
son on earth," we may add, 'who does not (
instinctively know that this TOrquemadA
of the nursery, who tortured his child to e
death to make 1t act as he willed II 70 act,
is a champion of the despotic aboltlonlsnt
OF Now England, the persecntlng ,patrlotrc
ism of the Loyal Leagues, the bIgoted Leg
islation upon private liberty OF the Sab
batarians, and the tyrannicai fntefferthce
with individual rights Of the fanatics of