New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-07-04
THE ANARCHY or FREE LOVE.


II il not wise nor ingenious 10 Use great
catastrophes merely to strengthen ones pre-
conceived notions of social problems. There is
nothing 50 easy as to insist upon your mag
mary prophecies in such cases. 1t grows at
last 80 fixed habit, that no absurdity stands
in the way of this chiIruping Self-contdence,
"a the old lady showed when she said calmly
" told you So when her eXaSpcrated hus-
band told her the COW had swallowed the
grndstone 1t is infinitely safer and more
useful 70 devote q space of serious thought to
those startling incidents which sometimes
come with a sudden shock across the orbit Of
Society, and to try TO revise our views Of
social relations in their lurid light We are
confronting at this moment two terrible
crimes, upon which the legal tribunals
have not yet given their Judgment.
A prominent citizen of New jersey has been
murdered under circumstances of peculiar
horror. woman is in prison in the quiet
town of Derby, in Connecticut, charged with
a system of pOisOnings 50 vast and so elabO-
rate that it will make the story of the Borglas
a tale of laundering essays. In the TOmbs
lies a stalwart criminal waiting public death
which will end a most revolving story of I'M
bridled passion and swift and relentless retri-
button. All of these frightful histories depend
upon the mutual relations of the sexes For
bearing TO touch upon the life of Fosters
victim, we may say the murder proceeded
directly from baflied attempt of the rulan
to approach a young girl in the car Slayer
and slain were married men, precisely as In
the Newark tragedy. A disregard of domestic
obligations preceded the shedding of blood
made the circumstances possible in which
blood was shed. And if the horrible recital
of Mrs Shermans death-bew can be
credited, she vigorously restricted her fatal
attentions to those over whom the law and
the church had given her certain claim. 1t
is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that
these events are fraught with profound sig
nificance which bears directly upon one point
of our social system. The institution of mar
rage is undergoing a searching trial, and it is
idle TO say there is not weighty lesson taught
by the split blood of Newark and Seventh
ave-, and the hell-broth of that pale Connec-
ticut matron. The Interpretation of the lesson
is not to be rashly made.
Yesterday morning we published an earnest
and graphic letter from Mrs. Paulina Wright
Davis, in which she gave her view of the
proper way to escape from the evils that seem
inseparabe from the institution of marriage.
She sees no other avenue but that of comforting
upon women the right of repudiating their mari
tai obligations whenever 40 disposed. She asks
that woman, the subject, shall be her own
"ruler; shall be the queen of her own realm (;
"shall give the marital law and be every
where free to regulate her own life in ac-
"cordance with her own highest idea of truth.
If women were free from helpless
"ness, free from timidty, from compromise,
L" they would be good enough, and strong
enough, 10 love one and all human beings,
from the richness, the fullness, and not from
"the poverty, of their natures; thus free, their
Glove would go out to the wretched drunk
ard, to the outcast of every type, to the Pa
"riah of their own sex by the power of such
"a love, 40 large and FREQ, Is tho world to be
redeemed"
"This," says Mrs. Davis " ID Free Love-