Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-01-31

/ dLdl, m0ooQy bnlS pane OF human Ills
Destroys all earthly ties, the prison fills
With fallen creatures, their own conscience
shocked
At being so easy led, so cruel Knocked,
Plnng'd in fearful crimes by INVESTIGATIONS
Unaccountable infatuation.
The brain is fired, the bsser passions led
To rule the mortal, now already dead
To self-control, or reasons prudent sway.
Virtue disappearing, all shame away,
Friends, cares of business, love of home for
Proud man becomes a slave, poor drunken
sot.
Vile, miserable in all its features,
Such the case with simple-minded orea-
lures.
But mark the difference in another kind
Of beings, blest in cultured thought of
mind,
With muscular proportions in the scale
So equal balanced, yet indeed SO frail
To shun temptation. They are easy tools
When once adapted always greater fools
Than other people, when to vice they turn.
For every feeling in them seems to burn
To dive in deeper ~wiekedness, and win
A popularity in every sin.
Created appetites they must appease;
Indulgence to excess becomes disease;
Their judgment blinded, they imagine still
The mind can reason Ger their stillborn
will.
Till, suddenly, a demon grasps the whole
Free agency of body, will and soul;
Andin its madness, with afendish speed,
Propels the action of some fearful deed.
Then, the mental agony condenses
In remorse to bring him to his senses.
Too late, too late the horrid act is done
The dearest friends forsake the guilty one.
For tho'their plying eyes with tears grow
dim
1t would disgrace them to acknowledge him,
So lately loved, respected, by them thought
Irreproachable in honor, now brought
To degradation, bordering DER his doom,
Unthought, uncared for, in a living tomb
A castleated cage where cruel fate
Shuts every ray of Hope outside the gate;
Menagerie of human Woe Within
The victims of depravity and sin.
Coming and going daily are the tides
Thieves, burglars, eounterfeiters, homicides.
Fresh recruits, some old veterans in crime,
yet innocent, biding each their time
When judge and Jury justly sit to hear,
Their lawyers talented with wit to clear
The charge, or till the evidence has built
Testimony of sure and certain guilt.
Then no time to pine for late repentance;
Convicted criminal, get your sentence,
Crest-fallen, hopeless back to Jail, from
thence
To death or to the home of peniteBes.
And there in lonely meditation cast
To view tho misdemeanOrs of the past,
Bereft of home, of children and of wife,
To learn the moral of a misspent life.
Or if by youth or choice there is no tie
To bind, yet mothers, sisters hrothers lie
Exposed to all the shame, disgrace that
tend
To bring their relative to such an end.
Wages of sin, equity disburses
To the criminal, yet caves the curses
Round our doors for ready cash. Eureka
Sure temptation for the pleasure seeker
How plain Ohio's statute, still the law.
Can varnish over well, to find a flaw
In the indictment, just by petty fines
Smooth over sin, to draw the moral lines
OF give and take, and not of right and
wrong;
The liquor law is hardly worth the song
Of GROCERIES, which reap the greatest gain
OF Western practice in the law of Maine
Ny fellow-eitizens do you suppose
Incarceration holds the 1.-THE of those
Amenable to punishment? Oh, mol
Right in your midst, in calm assurance, go
Criminals, bad as any in the Jail.
But they nave friends, who readily go
their bail
For each and every crime, or pay the fare
Thro' litigation or, just on the Square
Compass it in friendship, to let it slip.
For what's the odds, if we're in fellow
ship?
All these are good; we dare not throw a
shade
On any skilled in such a trade,
Nor by an imputation in the least,
Ignore the ancient travellers to the East,
Oft 10 we morn the loss, but to condemn
Ourselves, to pity, we are not of them.
I Philanthropic mystery, two in one,
Friends by the Cygnet of King Solomon.
Then who are punished? those by fortune
thrown
Upon their own resources, by their own
Extravaganza, are left without redress,
POverty-stricken, poor and penniless;
No friends nor influence, they have no fee
To palm the prosecutor and be free.
For cen in homicide We often see
The crime reduced from first to last de-
gree.
The manners simple, tho not often told
Just calm the conscience with the ready
gold.
But he who is not blessed with gilded pelf
Must die the death, DO sacrificed himself
For al example to his fellow man
Who takes so many months to form 8 plan.
Pre-ixed maliciously in purpose, set
To meditation, deliberate, to get
Official stepping %stonos, great ambition
SNAN gOoA NAAAA6 SAONAAO W BOA0AAAOAA
Bed-ridden judgment, bigoted, endow'd
By notoriety to please the crowd.
Clearest ease for learned prosecution
The fee-scientihc execution.
Such wisdom, man'slaw Of God by Moses
IT'S obsolete, or who to-day supposes
Adultery, Sabbath breakers, the breath
Of SANDER, each and all "be ston'd to
death"
The same for other scores Economy
T. L. G.
Did Jesus say SO, mid The crowds uproar ?
ENo? Saint throw first Go, woman, sin
no more"
Just one points sacred, such logic's fallow,
A gnat to strain at, a camel swallow.
Not quoting punishment TO pride, "Naaman,
Wash, be clean" but hang him up like
Haman.
In Numbers xxxv is this decree,
"Crazed homicides, to refuge cities fee"
We have one tho they had nearly seven
How! we save trouble, send them straight
to Heaven.
A foreign patriot soldier saith,
I fear not hardships, nor ready death.
Admitted I am guilty of an act
Of cruel madness, yet rehearse the fact
Of service rendered, and in merey's name
Jsst spare the infamy, disgrace and
shame
viii be bequeathed from the fated tree,
An ignominious fame for legacy,
To save the widow'd relict, offspring young,
The taunt that one so dear to them was
hung.
A momentary pang and ell is done
For him. Who then,is punished wife and
son.
Now reason, which is best proof is ample
Crime is not decseased by deaths exam
ple.~
If he has any talent in his trade,
Whate'er his calling, be it pen or spade,
Instead of double murder let him rue
The deed by doing all the work of two
In meeting his atonement face to face,
A useful servant to the human race.
Punish, reform, not in GOODNESS giving
Life to death with curses for the living.
Such ideas do not shift a suture
In the operations for the future.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, ancient reason
Is lead by law, Christ says, out of season.
If not satisfied with such conviction,
Let the argument be proved by fiction,
Our mind is too much troubled to rehearse
Far-fetched says now, but, to end my
verse,
Like prosecutors, Editors, I'll go
From Scripture texts to Shakespeare's
plays, to show
That law is fiction, decreed diversion,
Still immutable like Mede and Persian.
They pick speeches given in the quarrel;
We give othello's words; IT'S the moral
Of others like him; mark the quotation,
The dying Moor gives his last grafton