The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-06-15

may be, is murder, and deserves, in the interest
of society, to be punished as murder, ought to
be reasserted. The only possible excuse that
can be put forward for the conduct of juries in
refusing to convict "injured husbands" for
killing seducers in cold blood, is that the honor
of wives cannot be preserved in any other
way but this excuse we imagine very few
men would be willing to accept as valid, If
presented to them in its naked simplicity.
II wives need any legal assistance in pre-
serving their virtue, it ought to be supplied in
the regular way, by making adultery crimi-
nal offense; so that when a man is accused of
destroying anybody's peace, he will at least
get hearing for his version of the affair; and
even If he is to be put to death on conviction,
will be put to death with decent human for
malities instead of being shot like mad dog.
But pending the provision of legal punish
ment for these offenses, wives and husbands
must be left to take care of their own honor,
and must find other means of taking care of it
than the use of deadly weapons against any
body the wife chooses to point out as her ''be-
trayer."
We think that, however opinions may differ
as to woman's fitness for the suffrage very
few people will be found to deny that, in her
present state of mental and moral develop
ment, married women, at least, ought to be
able to take care of their own chastity, and
ought to be made to do IL. Their whole train
preparation for this one duty, and society and
the Church have surrounded the discharge of
1t with the most terrible sanctions. Married
women, too, have what young unmarried
women have not, the knowledge and expert
ence necessary to warn them of their danger
and there is something ridiculous in the popu-
lar theory that when they fall they are the
innocent victims, the men the real criminals.
Women, to be sure, are proverbially "frail,"
but so are men; and in the existing state of
opinion woman brings to the violation of the
marriage VOW much stronger and more deep
rooted sense of the sin of it than a man does,
and is, therefore, on any sound theory of
accountability, by far the guiltier of the two.
The theory of woman's character and position
on which blame, in cases of adultery, is now
distributed, and ON which the murder of
seducers is justified, is really very little supe-
ri0r to that set out in the laws of Menu. She
is so helpless, so conscienceless, so ready to
fall, that to throw temptation in her way is
considered the foulest act man can commit,
and it is so hard to keep her from falling that
public sentiment authorizes the husband to
assassinate his best friends in broad daylight
for the protection of her purity.
The case of young, unmarried women is, we
admit, different. Whether rightly or wrongly,
they are so educated that they neither know
when they are running risks nor how to guard
against them; and as long as this system of
education is or has to be continued fathers
and brothers must be armed with summary
powers for protecting them, or the legal penal
ties of seduction must be made vastly heavier
than they are now. But as a matter of fact,
the women who take the law into their own
hands, and kill their faithess lovers, and
secure impunity from juries, are hardly ever
youthful innocents.
They are generally tolerably mature SPIN
sters, who know perfectly well what they are
about, both when they are laYishing their
affections on the unworthy object, and when
they are pistOlling him for running away, and
there is probably no more repulsive spectacle
to be witnessed than the mock trials of offenses
of this kind by which our Courts are some
times disgraced. In fact side by side with the
agitation in one portion of the community for
woman's admission to greater social freedom,
is growing up tendency, in another portion,
to release her more and more from both legal
and moral responsible. There is strong
reluctance abroad to convict a good LOOKING
woman of any ofense whatever.
We even doubt whether Bridget Dergan.
| who killed her mistress the other day in New
Jersey, would, though not good-loOking, have
been convicted had she simply killed her mas
ter. But when II is made to appear that love
is at the bottom of young woman's crimes,
| juries become deaf to the claims of order and
law and morality. As soon as the tender side
OF the tragedy begins to show itself in the
evidence, the jurymen wipe their eyes, the
Court blows its nose, the counsel's voice grows
husky, and the poor young thing is dis.
missed with the deepest emotion and the
friends OF the dead man sneak to their desc
late homes amidst the frowns of the indignant
and virtuous crowd. t4 t
d