The Portland daily press., 1869-02-04

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HEay Man RightfuIIy Commit, s.;.;..,
This is question more capable of fair do.
bate than E. f. seems to assume. The on
clients, whose ethical notions were maipIv
sound, held that he might. Among the He
brews, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans sui
eide by the man overtaken by great dis
grace, an irretrievable loss, or an intense sor-
row was regarded as not only excusable but
even honorable. The horror of suicide ex-
cited in later ages, and expressed by the bar
barous punishment Of burial with a stake
driven through the body is due to an esti-
mate OF life which makes all suaerngs, losses
and sorrows attending it of no sort of account
when compared with the compensations of a
future endless bliss, and sacrifices everything
to securing the favorable conditions of such
supreme good. The harsh Judgment of sui
eide which prevailed in the middle ages has
evidently given way to more charitable and
just views, and now the man who QUIETLY de-
parts from life, that, by his own or anotber,s
fatal choice, has become hopelessly incapable
OF ans nswering life's great end has his doubtful
FAULT merged in considerate pity and regret.
remember my own childish surprise at
being first told that the prohibition "theu
shalt not kill" embraced myself, the interpre-
tation my ingenious mind had put upon the
words being what still believe is the true
enc thou shalt not kill another. Suicide is
evidently only prohibited and prevented in
the instinct of life more or less strong put in
to every man, as it is into every other living
thing. If il is prohibited by any other law. it
is a law which has no sanction and from tbe
nature of the case has no punishment. The
canon 'gainst selfslaughter fixed by the Al
mighty, which Hamlet deprecated, is fixed in
he very citadel of life itself, and nowhere else.
10 learn whether it is always and in all cir
cumstances morally reprehensble or not we
must carefully note the feeling it excites in
intelligent rght-thinking minds. -a
In the face of the universal appreciation
and admiration which the voluntary surren-
der of life, by persons seeking to accomplish
some good excites, 1 think it cannot be claim
ed that suicide is always wrong. Who has
not admired the heroism of the English queen
who sucked the wound made by the poisoned
arrow in the arm OF her husband, though
modern science has much lessened the risk of
the experiment in telling us that poison fa-
tai to life in the blood is comparatively harm
less in the stomach? viii God condemn
Winkelried for gathering into his own body
the arrows of the Austrians, or the nameless
negro who showed off the boat behind which
the surprised scouting party were crouching,
exclaiming, "Somebody is bound to be shot ?"
Do we keep censures or respectful tears for
the six hundred that rode "into the Jaws Of
death, into the mouth of hell" and for the
six times six hundred that on many bloody
field in our late war gave their throbbing
young bodies to stop bullets and shot, so that
their comrades might march over them to
victory? Can we help admiring the devotion
of the wife who insists upon ministerlng to
her husband wasting with contagious dis
ease? Do we think worse of Judas himself
that, in the recoil of his better nature, he
went and hanged himself? He might have
done worse. He might have lived. He might
DSN,hN UNITY PlCCCo Va SiINCl d
respectable house in street where only the
chief priests dwelt, have been elected to the
Sanhedrim, and spent an honorable old age
in prosecuting and crucifying his quondam
fellow disciples. That he was capable of sui
eide showed that his moral sense was not
dead, and his intimate association with the
Master had not been wholly without its fruit.
With such evident favorable judgment of
self-eaused death, ii must, l think, be conced-
ed that though the ordinary instinct is to be
accepted as sefexecuting law. yet there
have occurred and there are liable to occur
circumstances and occasions which will justi-
fly man in taking, or surrendering TO be
taken, his own life.
But this side question has little to do with
capital punishment. 1t would not follow that
because man may not kill himself that all
other men might not kill him. The good and
safety OF all is paramount to the safety OF ad-
vantage of one. .s. ....,,r t...r
e. f. admits thai he may slay the murderer
to save his own life. This surrenders the
whole argument. Society slays the murderer
to save the lives of other men, whom he has
shown himself capable OF numbering. But it
IS asked, can t.. ey do it after he is effectualy
securedS How secured? Do not murderers
sometimes kill their keepers? Do you not
put your enemy, the person that endangers
you, in the very position where he is tempted
every day to take life, the only alternative, 10
make his escape? ae tfa ..srr It.