The New York herald., 1870-02-27
Tho Murder Mania.

Tho Murder Mania.
It is a favorite idea with the optimists that
If advancement is slow it is yet sure, and that
the mind once acquainted with Improvement
leaves ignorance and crime contin ually further
behind. But history and the silent evidence
Of the desert refnte this. Nations have been
rebarbarized, and plains once filed with the
music Of human life now echo only with the
warwhoop and shouts Of madmen. In Massa-
chusetts, among our own States, which plumes
Itself on its special condition Of civilization,
some of the'most cold -bloodcd and ingenious
| murders which have stained the criminal
records Of late years have been perpetrated.
That most charming writer, Charles Lamb,
whose humor was always subservient to his
| humanity, in a letter to Quaker friend, de-
clares, between fun and philosophy, that he
looks on the five fingers Of each hand with
] which nature has furnished him with certain
degree Of horror when he reflects on their
strange and mysterious adaptation to the
purposes of crime, aud he concludes
with pathetic admonition to the Quaker
banker to take thought and know
himself and stay his fingers in good time.
Many readers of Lamb doubtless fancy this
joke; but Lamb meant something by every
thing, and his meaning here was deep and
serious. The moral of his jest is that no disci-
pline makes sin impossible; that there is q
strength Of latent mischief in the hearts Of men,
nay, in their very fingers, which can break
through all the bulwarks raised by education
and to which even the murus ahcneMs
Of religion opposes no irnpregnable bar
| rier. To evil natures to whom s'good
] is forced notion" to use the language
! of Lord Bacon, return is ever quicker than
progression. Awell-bred Irish gentleman will
read in the pages Of Strabo without composure
concerning his fathers-the contemporaries Of
the hstorian-who were cannibals; and yet,
| it he turn historian himself, and take all
periods, with their respective features, into his
philosophical contemplation, there is some
room for discomposurc about the condition Of
human life in his country just now. Even in
the highest state Of civilization man is but the
old savage tanned, aud it the brute is in the
breast he breathes.
In commenting on this murder mania, which
seems for the moment to have seized society
here, and which, like any other baleful dis
ease, appears to have its seasons of visitation
and then pass away, the foreign journals seem
desirous to attribute it in large degree to the
publicity given to acts of crime by the press OF
this country in all their circumstantial details,
and to argue that such exhibition of vice,
however loaded with chains Of popular cxecra-
ton, does not assist morality. Even with
ourselves, when some fiendisb act of savage
crime appeals to the minds of the community,
and makes even the most sanguine of us grow
! faint-hearted about the state OF our society,
the press, instead of being encouraged to place
the matter before the public in such startling
manner as even to rouse the attention OF the
dulest intellect or most steeled heart, is
accused by certain shallow class of people OF
''pandering to vulgar tastes by indelicate dis
closures"-of chnckling over prurient details
and such like.
Both such classes entirely mistake the genius
and what we may term the philosophy Of our
institutions. With us the whole people, not a
special class, are the conservators Of order, the
protectors Of life and property, the punishers
of crime. When the HERALD, with its vast
circulation permeating every vein of this huge
country, carries through the length and breadth
| of the land the details down to the smallest
| particulars Of one of those murders which have
recently disfgured the face Of society, every
i IL
criminal in reality finds policeman in every
bush. We live in acountry where bad as well
as good is made 80 transparent that 1t can be
seen By all, and in such sight all find remedy.
What constitutes the cancer of European
society is that the sores which tester at its
heart and gnaw away its vitality are carefully
tied up and concealed by triple-edged feudal
bands. The comparative order which reigns
there is nothing but that delicious state of
quietude to which Louis Philippe once so wit
ty referred with respect to Warsaw, there
is little French milliner behind the screen.
| Indeed, whatever detractors Of onr free in
stitutions may say, or whatever old European
ladies, frightened by transient catastrophes,
may think, history will record the fact that we
have borne hitherto the luxuries Of indepen-
dence and disenthralment from feudal or mo.
narchcal fetters with wondrons moderation,
and if it had not been for the audacity Of Euro
| pcan governments in sending us SO many oi
| their subjects without the previous educational
| preparation TO bear our free institutions, many
| of the scars that disfgure our society would
not exist We may even 60 so far as to assert
that in monarchical societies where intellec1
is not so universally developed there may be
less crime, because there is less mental ac-
tivity. Our inventors are as daring as our
criminals arc revolving; our navigators as full
of audacity as our burglars are OF pluck. Sc
let us calmly pursue our path Of progress.
This murder mania will soon, like other ghastly