New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-08-23
INFANTICIDE.

Woman has been 80 long tho pop ular topic,
tho piece de resistance ready for every scrlb-
bier to fail back upon when he wanted to
show his skill in hewing a subject to pieces,
that there is really very little left to be SAID
about her. However, we have the wrong side
of the subject, with its tags and rough ends
turned out now, by class of philosophers in
England who are bent on proving, not pre-
cisely the Mussulman doctrine that women
have no souls, but that their souls are of such
different make from those of men that the
same rules of salvation will hardly apply to
both. One of these metapbysicians in The Lon
don Examiner falls back on statistics to prove
that men are more addicted to crime than
women, and begin their career earlier, and
that marriage has a more sanctliying effect on
the woman than the man. Out of every hun
dred criminals in France SO are men, only II
women. In England about six times as many
married men as women are proved guilty OF
crime.
Another chivalric defender of the sex sets
ont with QuixOtic heat to prove that infantl-
eide is not only not murder, but, on the whole,
a rather venial oflense. The Nervousness OF
a crime must be measured, he alleges, by the
amount of mischief it produces and the lndul-
gence that may be claimed for the criminal
The loss of child is not as serious one to
the community as that of an adult; and be-
sides, the woman who kills her child is not sn
offender likely to be dangerous to the rest OF
the community. He then proceeds grayely to
discuss the time of confinement proper as
punishment for the child-mUr,lerer, period OF
seven to twelve months being quite sufficient,
trTrR. ln
woman who committed the crime to rid her
self of the burden of supporting the child.
Such an Imprisonment, to a calculating woman,
would be reckoned more damaging, he argues
than the expense of the baby. As for the
mother who kills her offspring in an agony OF
despair or dread of shame, any punishment
however light would be enough for her. In
"fanticide then" is the conclusion OF his ar
QHuent, is crime not because 1T causes
I" the loss of a member of society for we have
"enough children, and TO spare, hut because 10
"is the grOssest form of violation OF parental
"dutv.- Why these superfuous babies whom 1t
no sin to kill should not be comfortably put out
of the way by good citizens who are not pa
rents, or why 5he aged and qauper burdens OF
society should not be added to tine holocaust,
he neglects to state.
Il is curious that the evils of ovcr-pOpula-
ton have thus promptly led the educated
Christian mind back to the world-Old devices
and arguments of heathendOn. The arguments
against hanging women guilty OF lntanticide
are hardly worth setting forth, as IN England
there has been but one execution for the
crime in the last twenty years, and impriSon-
ment is limited ordinarily ID two years. Such
popular speculations concerning the relative
tendencies TO crime of the two sexes are of
little use; but when our metaphysicans can
make clearer the secret connection between
active crime and diseased body, or hereditary
cerebral ailments, III men or women, We shall
know better how to meet vice and to carc it.
Many men, and certainly most of the women
who commit mnrder or suicide, have been the
| victims for years before of abnormal physical
| tendencies, which are sure to find some ter
rible outward elimination. We can recall at
| the moment within the records of the last five
| wears in N.w-York aud Philadelphia eight or
| ten noted criminals whom epilepsy or hys-
terra had without doubt prepared for their
final work. There are certain diseases which,
| ike liquor affect the brain, the nervous
power, and ultimately the conscience, by as
sure q sequence of physical causes as scarlet
fever would the throat, or scrofula the lungs
We would not have society exposed TO the
| depredatiOns of these diseased step-children
of Nature, as Maudsley calls them, any more
than to the ravages of n beast of prey; but
surely in the name Of the mcrciful God whose
crcatmes they 0le, science should teach Us