Vermont daily transcript. [volume] (St. Albans, Vt.) 1868-1870, 1868-12-11
New York Correspondence
New YORK, Dec. 9th.

New YORK, Dec. 9th.
L think it is good old Doctor Butler,
who says in one of his books that crime
and insanity, like-smallpoX and cholera,
sometimes become epidemic; and never
has that truth been better illustrated
than in the recent history of New York
city. / do not intend to give you a de-
tailed list of all the burglaries, robberies,
murders, manslaughters and suicides
that have been committed here within
the past two weeks, but will merely call
your attention to the journals Of the day
in which you may see them duly set
forth, as a proof that DR.. Butler was by
no means wrong in his statement. We
have had so many evidences of the fact
that the safe of society is not improv-
ing, so many that with all our improved
method of punishment and improved
systems of police, outlaws are not more
sacredly observed than they where thir-
ty years ago, that we are forced to con-
slider whether it would not be better in
the long run to go back &C injury or two
and begin all over again. Instead of
trial by jury let us have sort of Span
sh Inquisition; for the thirty days eX-
lie on the Island, substitute mild form
Of that torture once known aboard ship
as Using the gunner's daughter': for
term of nard labor in the State Prison,
forty lashes at a Delaware whipping
post, and On hours scOrching on the
yridiron, or a little exercise on the rack;
Tor the scaffold and the rope, the gull
iotine; and for all other severe punish
ments which were intended to make
people better by shortening their lives,
let us have the g0rrOte which the en-
lightened freemen of Spain have just
abolished or the old fashioned French
Ht-de.justice, or the loei,e forte ct dove
by which men were comfortably pressed
to death with stone and iron blankets.
When our trusted public servants i'm
petticoat too much gratill .ty or sell just
ice, or rob the treasury, or in any other
way violate the confidence reposed in
them, let the wretches be forced to COM
NIT hari kari as they do in Japan, in
presence of the rising generation. l
cannot suggest for the punishment of
self murder anything better than the
cOnfi3cation of the suicides effects and
the driving of a stake through his body
at place where two roads meet. AS to
the conliscatiOn business, that will lot
amount to much, as people who cut
their own thrC ats, or blow their own
brains out, or purpOsely drown them
selves, seldom leave large estates. In
fact their departure is, as general thing
taken thus suddenly because of inabili-
ty 70 pay taxes on what little property
lhey car y about their persons. Wheth-
er the impaling of dead mans body
would trouble him much is question,
and / sometimes DOUBT whether the
general public would be wholesemely
warned by this method of indicating
the law. In course of time or cross
roads would be SO many forests of stakes
and these enterprising fellows, who
make pills, I'd hair restoress, and who
print sensation papers, would have all
che stakes rented from the mourning
relatives of the victims of .felo de sc, and
over each long line of graves the travel
Ter would rad, as he rode rapidly along
some such combination as this Use S. 4.
1860, e. for the haircOescdlsam erodica-
tes ddndruT for the teeths old By oil
grocers for cOnsanptiont,y 6arr's clothes
Wosher and aOringer price 25 cents for
small bottles, painted in the largest let
tiers, and displaying in remarkable de-
gree the ingenuity of artists and the tai
ent of those who believe with the ar
kansas annotator of tn great bard, that
"Sweet are theuses of advertisements
This is subject which has occupied
much of my attention for long time.
l wish l could invent something to deter
people from committing suicide. The an