The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-05-10

the fact to be accounted for? The answer is
as obvious as it is deplorable. Poets and
'novelists have drawn no gloomier pictures of
squalor and indulgence than those in which
misery has overcome shame, and the sexes
take no more care to veil their persons or
their appetites, and are no more scandalized
by obscenity in word or act, than an infant in
the cradle or the beasts of the field. If society
at large were peryaded by this shameless
license, it would certainly dissolve and perish.
For its degradation would be lower and
worse than brutality, since, freed from con-
science, it would be also without the conserv-
alive instincts of brutes to guard against de-
struetive excuses. Wen, apply the same RUE
of Judgment to the circle in which no limits
are set to the lcentious use of words, and
what must be the conclusion? Why, that
one of the indispensable moral bases of social
integrity and progress has been eliminated
from that circle. And from the moment that
such a circle should extend over the whole
nation, decay would begin to devour the
essence of the national life
When Horace Greeley conceives it to be the
highest proof of an able editor and a forcibIe
writer, to open and to wind up an argument
by calling his opponent "liar," with all the
adiectivial embellishments which his vocabu-
larry affords; when Butler, Nashburne Dom
nelly, and other congressman, vilipend and
are vilipended in turn, with a latitude of
speech not surpassed in Billingsgate or the
Five Points; and when all this seems to come
as matter of course, and nobody is
hurt" apparently, in person, temper,
or character, and complacency seems
to reign all around, what is to be thought of
the spectacle by an observer who has been
accustomed to attach significance and conse-
quence to contumehous language? There
can be no doubt as to what his reflections
must be. Under any code which recognizes
moral distinctions with reference to persons.
the use of superlative terms of reproach. if
not retracted, but repeated and persisted in.
will inevitably stamp with infamy either the
author or the object of such utilization. The
men to whose hcentious habits of speech wa
have referred do not retract and are not
called upon to do so, and yet neither the per-
sonal fame of those whom they insult, nor
their own, appears to be any the worse in the
estimation of the public which they address.
Is it above or below hurt from such cause ?
Two examples will suffice to answer. Ac-
cording to Washburne, who has denounced
Donnelly as an epitome of private and public
rascalities, the latter is anywhere but above
insult; and according to Donnelly, Wash
burne is at about the same moral altitude
wherever that is. Since they remain I'M
scathed by the reciprocation of opprobrious
fiings what can be inferred but that one or
the other is below insult and possibly both ?
The case admits of no other inference. We
dwell upon the inconsequential exchange of
contumely on the part of these two congress-
men, because they are salient types of large
and perhaps increasing class of public men in
the United States. The habits and charac-
teristics which they exemplify would be i'm
possible in a society where manly and
wholesome sense of personal responsibility
prevailed. In proportion as people are per.
sonally irresponsible, they are alike free in
the use of abusive speech and insensible to
it. The ishwomen of Billingsgate, and the
rogues of Newgate or the Tombs, were never
known to hold each other answerable for such
speech, or to feel the worse for its inaiction
and this insouciance, which has its source in
personal irresponsibility character, that is
to say, invulnerable to insult because morally
below it's emulated by Greeley, and But
Ter, and Washburne, and Donnelly, and the
numerous class of which they are shining
specimens On the other hand, the more |
highly the sense of personal responsibility is
the more rare is personal vilifca-
ion, but also the more terrible. In this case
'ne word of reproach may have more sting
md more force in it than volumes of scurril-
ty poured forth in the other case.
In the one case the language of insult is
Ike sword endowed with deadly edge, and
iept sheathed until an extraordinary occasion
hould imperiously demand its use. It is not
Uttered with bluster and uproar, but with
acramental solemnity and the calmness of
Ieath; for it then means death to somebody's
PERSONAL fame and social position, and the
Itterer must maintain this meaning at his own
eadly peril. But in the other case, there isno
noral earnestness and tension. Likea hvpo-
rites prayers, the insulting language poured
orth by Greeley, Butler, Donnelly, and the
est, are simply efforts of the intellect, and
e is deemed the victor who can beat his op-
onent in seurrilous invention and volubiity.
ersonal responsibility being out of the dues-
on, insults necessarily fall pointless as
'eds pitched against the hide of a rhinoceros.
would be well if there were some other ex-
lanation of the growing indecency and license
speech in leading journals, and in high
ubiic assemblies. 1t can surely mean no
pod that in these quarters shame has lost its
ush- Upon analysis, the license and indie
'ney viii be found to arise from decay of
oral dignity and sense of personal response
llty, and without these elements there can
no adequate guarantee of social integrity
national greatness and stability.
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