The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-12-12
NOBODY TO BLAKE.

A Cincinnati paper, reviewing the incidents
of the recent steamboat collision near that
city, says that there would seem to be no
reason why blame for the awful occurrence
should be imputed to the officers in charge of
either of the steamers. We do not refer to
this remark as anything extraordinary. In
fact, there is nothing exceptional or eccentric
about IT, 1t challenges attention, and ex-
cites train of grave reflection, because it
illustrates a general rule by faithful CORE
spondence with the tenor of findings by coro-
ners' inquests and all other commissions of
inquiry in cases where human lives are de-
stroyed by steamboat, railway, and the
like disasters. And yet in the instance par
ticularly referred to, as in nearly every in
stance of the kind, it is plain that the calamity
might have been avoided by the exercise of
reasonable prudence and skill, combined
with decent care for human life. II
thus avoidable, then how is it that they
can inpocently happen The idea is per-
fectly preposterous. Avoidability and inno-
cence in case of this nature can
no more be attributes of the same act, than
light can coexist with darkness, than an angel
of benefcence can be identical with demon
of destruction. There must be guilt some
where guilt as hideous and detestable as its
consequences are shocking and deplorable.
Its magnitude is in no degree lessened by the
impossibility Of fastening it punitively upon
anybody either directly or indirectly respon-
sible for the avoidable disaster. 1t is a vi
cious public opinion that gives this impunity.
1t is public opinion, ultimately, that is guilty
and such culprit has an intangibiity which
defes the clutches of the law. But society
over which the guilt is diffused does not es-
cape punishment. Horrors on horrors heads
accumulate to plague it for its criminal tole-
ration of criminal negligence. Indeed, if
there is one truth which may be regarded
as absolute and universal, even in this
world, it is this-that penalty for GRIM
inality will fall some,ohere as inevitably
as night follows day, as reaction fol-
lows action, as the ebb follows the flood.
By the class of disasters in question the
evil that is done, if not malun prohibition, as
the law goes, or as public opinion goes, is
NAHUM in sc. And viewed in this sense
how is its magnitude to be measured?
Not otherwise, surely, than by COM
putting the amount of loss, and suffering
which it involves. And under this method
of estimation it is scarcely possible to imagine
more horrible phantasmagoria than is
brought to view. Suppose, for example, that
instead of the avoidable, and therefore crimi-
nal disaster of the collision, burning and sink
ing of the steamers America and United States,
murder had been committed in the same
vicinity, causing the death of an equal num-
berof persons under circumstances as awful.
Public journals and public opinion would
hardly be content with merely deploring the
fate of the victims, but would doubtless not
rest until measures were taken to bring the
perpetrators to justice. and to provide against
the repetition of such crimes They insist
upon this, indeed, when only single victim
falls by the hand of the murderer; and the
insistance is right, wise, commendsble and
salutary. But, by one of those strange
iroDies that run like internal discords through
the rhythmic web of human existence, they
have shown no desire up to this time, to
pursue a similar course when forty victims
are hurled to death at midnight through tor
ments and horrors of fire, and water, and
lurid gloom, and agonies of fright, Of strug-
gle, of despair, which surpass the tragedy of
all the recognized, punishable and
punished murders that ordinarily occur
in the whole country in the course
of q year. And it is no exaggeration to say
that the aggregate of evil caused by the
avoidable disasters referred to, comprising
loss of life and property, physical suffering,
anguish of bereavement, sorrow and desolate-
ness of widowhood and orphanage, exceed a
hundred fold that which is consequent upon
those acts which the law and the public con-
science justly denounce and punish as MUIR
der. Yet it is said, without offense or scandal,
that for the hundred fold greater evil, nobody
is particularly to blame. Wherefore society
is greatly to blame, and is greatly punished
for there is no such thing as final impunity
for wrong doing, even on the hither side of
the grave. The public opinion that spares
the immediate wrong-doer only transfers the
penalty to society at large.