Weekly Trinity journal., 1867-03-02
A sc.thinx Sentence.

The following is an extract from the remarks
of Hon. N. NJ. Hubbard, District Judge of the
Eighth judicial District of Iowa, when passing
sentence upon large number of convicted rum
sellers and dstllers for violation of the temper.
ance laws of that State:
"While there greater crimes known to the
| law, and which punished with greater sever
| ity, there none that involve more of those
qualities known as despicable meanuess and au-
dacty than selling intoxicating liquors.
| There is something in the taking of human
life, by violence, instantaneous that it shocks
and terrifes all minds; and yet we look upon
the man who takes human life quite as surely,
but by slow, lingering process, if not without
condemnation, at least with less horror. You
who stand before the Court for sentence, are in
every moral sense murderers. And YOU are
within the SPIRIT if not the letter, guilty of legal
manslaughter for the law says that whoever
accellerates the death of human being unlaw-
fully, IS guilty of the crime. Your bloated vic
Tins who stood upon the witness stand and who
undoubtedly committed perjury to screen you
from the law, abundantly testify that you are not
only accellerating death, but that you are induc-
ing men to commit still greater crimes than your
own.
You still maintain the outward appearance of
respectability, but how mortally leprous aud
scrofuous you are inwardly-the ruin, poverty,
and idleness which you are inflictine upon this
community declare, as from the house-tops.-
You are living in idleness, and eating the bread
of orphans, watered by widows tenrs-you are
stealthily killing your victims, and numbering
the peace and industry of the community, and
thereby converting happy, industrious homes in-
to misery, thriftless poverty and rags. You are
sowing the seeds of ignorance, idleness and
want among generations to come.
Anxious wives and mothers watch and pray in
tears nightly for the coming home to desolate
hearts, of your victims, whom you are Turing
with the wiles and smiles of the Devil, into mid
night debauchery.
In fine, one can have no adequate conception
of u great cataract until he has seen Niagara,
nor of the terrible furore and grandeur of
storm at mid-ocean, until he has witnessed one
so no one can know the utter degradation and
total depravity to which this species can be
brought, until he looks upon the desolate ruin
caused by your helish traffic.
You have been frequently admonished BY this
Court, of yonr crimes and their terrible effects,
and you have been repeatedly fined therefor
but you give no heed
You are persistent, defiant law-breakcrs, and
shamelessly boast that in defiance of the law
and the moral sense of the community, you will
continue in your wicked and criminal practices.
1t has therefore, now become the imperative
duty of this Court to let fall upon you SO heavily
the arm of the law, that you shall be either
driven from your nefarious traffic, or ruined in
your fortunes and wicked prosperity. You have
become a strench in the nostrils of this commu-
ty, and all good men praying that you be
speedily reformed or summarily destroyed. By
the providence of God, and the favor of this
Court, these prayers shall be speedily answered
by signal and exact justice for your crimes.
This Court will feel proud satisfaction in
taking from you by law, your ill-gotten gain, and
giving i to the Common School Fund of this
county, where, let us hope, it will assist in edu
eating the rising youth to shun your vices and
wicked practices.
And fnally,A me entreat you, if you are not
already lost to every noble sentiment of human
ity, to desist from your criminal vagabond traffic.
and betake yourselves to some honest calling for
a livelihood and you, may yet become virtuous,
useful citizens, and entitled to the respect of a
Christian community; while if you persist in
this way, your own ruin is certain, and you will
receive, as you deserve, the execrations of man
kind.
You may, perhaps, think that these remarks
are harsh and unjustly severe, but the Court as
sures you, that as compared with your crimes,
and the desolation you have brought upon this
community already, they as the mildest May
morning to the bleakest December"