Litchfield enquirer., 1871-05-18

Once the wayward girl was rescued by aid of the law for brief time from her wilfnl infamy, for she lacked yet few months of eighteen years, and the law is zealons to protect property, and the moth. CT has a pecuniary interest in the daughters services till she comes of age.ugBnt the few months pass and she is eighteen years old. and the law strikes off from her the hand of maternal authority and lays on her no compulsion of it's own, and from the tears of her mother and from the en- treaties of the church of Christ she goes fourth under the encouraging protection of the laws to walk the way whose steps take hold on hell. She has legdl right to abandon herself to wretchedness and in- fanny; .a legal right 10 put herself in train ing as aprofessional corrupter of mankind; 8 legal right to acquire and exercise the arts of seduction on your sons and brothers and mine; legal right that ghastly process sion that is marching nightly through your streets towards misery and rottenness and death and hell; and what has the law to do in such . case but to turn it's austere front towards the mother with her tears, and towards Christian charity with her hands of love, that would fain reach forth and snatch her as from the fire, and shout,
 "Hands offr' Shame on the recreant State that will not reinforce the pleading of do- mestic love and Christian piety towards this wretched one so much as with one authoritative word or threat Shame that you will not give the help of penal sanc- ton to the better resolution of any tempted creature that is struggling with besetting lusts. Go blush, o virtuous citizens and tribunes of the people. for your ostenta tious horror against the licensing of pros titution, when you have no word of pro- test against laws like these that proclaim universal license. and turn cities into brothels. r
 FAITHLESs HUSBAND.
 The other case is this: A poor woman came to me. sick, downeast, heartbroken, under the shadow of a great impending crime, to ask for counsel. Her husband, whese unfaithfulness she long had known. had just sent word to her that she should mend and make ready his linen. and pack his trunk. and that at certain hour he would call for it, as he was intending to live with woman whom he had selected for his mistress. All day long she sat among her children, working through her tears at such task as was ever a wife set upon before? and now she had come to me to ask If there was no law to hinder this awful calamity. I was obliged to tell her No! If she had lived in Connecticut, in Massachusetts. Ohio. if she had lived al- except in England. or under these tradi- tions of English jurisprudence. the law would have laid its hand on the shoulder of f io foh hokf flo frck oe deed, and warned him that he could ven. s;e-.-a f,silS Of f~se.y- Rnt thnsA -~e had revised code, and an advanced civil ization, and adultery is lawful-not even punishable by fine of ten dollars. And 90 I counselled her to go home again and finish mending and the packing, and meek ly and gently without upbraiding, to say goodbye to the husband of her youth, and make up her mind to labor on alone Ill her sickness to support her worse than orphan ed children, and put her trust in God who, though kings are false and states may cow ardly and meanly betray the cause of the helpless, hath declared himself to be the father of the fatherless, and the widows judge. That was New York law. Mary land law is worse, by as much as adds in- suit to injustice.
 THE IMMEDIATE RESULTS.
 have now stated to you the facts con- corning the condition of the law touching crimes against the family. By.and,by, if there be time, may say something con corning the causes that have lead to the origination and perpetuation of such monstrous series of legislative abuses. But just now ask your attention to the results, T snkn l nd t- ton of the laws. s,..s.. .
 l. l will not insult your intelligence by citing facts to prove, what no one will against such crimes is attended with vast increase of them. a
 2. Neither will argue with you to show penal law against this whole class of offen-- egory of personal differences, tends to the the consciences of the people. Will any. public comment in this community upon these base and dreadful and infectious crimes? Gan any one inform me how much of the staple evening reading of our fam. flies is made up of the daily infamies that SkO SA0A0SsSsC0 AA knO GOM4Au4lUy uEOEy into numerous adveE lures by the small newspaper, wits who exercise their ribaldry therein? Fools, who make mock as sinl Bnt consider. O citizens who groan and grumble at this nuisance, what excuse they have, to whom the majesty of the State itself has set so eminent an example, and whether it is altogether strange that they should somewhat better the instruc- ton.
 ASSASSINATION INEVITABLE.
 3. But the most miserable consequence of the dereliction of the State in it's duty of punishing crime, is that which is exem plied in that great class of bloody assas- sinations to which a new case has just been added in this State. The sure and infal. lable result of the abdication by ysociety of the duty of pnnishing criminals is not that crime becomes innocence, and that the and hearts of men are revolu- tionized by stroke of reformatory legisla- tion and the abhorrence of the guilty abol- the result is this, that the exer- else of punishment, which should be firm ly and temperately held by the hand of or derly and impartial justice, is delivered over to the wild justice of the mob or of the lynch court, or to the more frantic hand of private vengeance Where, tell me, lies the great safeguard of the public order in times of great public indignation against atrocious crime, or of the wild stirring of revenge for the fighting of a personal