New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-11-13
THE IlfvoRALIrY OF NEGLIGENCE.

calmly7 Those misanthrOpists who have
not declared man to be a knave, have usually
pronounced him. from head to heels and from
breast to back, a fool; and q fool he certainly
is so far as he deliberately dscards the les
sons of experience and does over again that
which he has found, to his exceeding sorrow,
to be unwise. The reason of this miserable
faulty is to be sought i'll our weak devotion
TO the doctrine of chances, and in that blind
reliance upon good fortune which has been
the curse OF man ever since his creation. The
sum of it al is, we may say, that wisdom
sometimes runs risks in small matters, but
never in large ones, and prefers the nothing
which comes of not venturing to the nothing
which may come of bravadO. Even so
much wisdom as this, however, rarely
asserts itself in human affairs and
there are especially certain kinds of catas-
trophe to which we have become accustomed
through habit, and which we have taught our
selves to regard as well nigh inevitable.
Among them we may reckon peStilence, rail-
way accidents, marine disasters, and great
CONGREGATIONS and about these, from their
constant repetition, there has come to be
character Of unwhOlesOme mOnOtony. We are
startled, but we are not startled sufficiently
for our own good. We can ourselves recall
time when one of those great accidents which
are now occurring daily, by sea or by land,
would have been freshly remembered for
long interval until jOstled out of recollection
by something of the same kind. There were
two or three of such stock casualties, If we
may so call them, which long served our
grandfatheTs and gTandmOthers with food for
freside conversational massacre by Indians
a great storm, or the burning OF
theater Now one fright has trodden so fast
and closely upon the heels of another, that
we have grown not perhaps courageous, but
certainly to some extent indifferent The
question, this morning, which we should like
to have seriously considered is, Hoe much
does the Boston fire diminish the probability of
a similar disaster there m any other great
american city? All insurance and other imam
cial problems to which the event has given
rise are of no importance in comparison with
this. The story will be old in a week. Other
occurrences will speedily crowd it out of mems
minds. We want to know what will have
been gained from all the suffering when the
recollection of it has become just a little
feebler-we want to know if children Of a
larger growth, having been so sadly burned,
will or will not dread the fire.
1t is easy to say that there will be no more
wooden roofs placed upon si1-stOry stone
buildings. We are not so sure of that, and
we will tell the reader why. If n steamboat
should be burned tonight upon Long Island
Sound, and hundred or two hundred lives
should be sacrificed for the want of life-pre-
servers, would that prove that the cxigent
necessity of life-preservers had never been
before demonstrated by a like tragedyR The
truth is that we understand perfectly and
thoroughly the conditions OF safety; and the
sins of Idiotic carelessneSs which we commit
are sins against knowledge. We Will still, in
spite of woful warning, be playing at the old
game of chances. Take another illustration.
If a steamboat were advertised to leave this
city this evening for some domestic port, and
if ut the last moment some defect were dis
covered in the boiler which under certain
remote contingencies might impeTil the lives
of all the passengers, that which the engineer
and captain would chiefly consider would be,
not the contingency itself but its remOtcness.
The VOYAGE would be undertaken not indeed
without some extraordinary precautions, but
still it would be undertaken. And the shame
of il is, that if all the passengers were called
together, and the risk were fully explained to
them, not five in a hundred would return to
the shore and thus refuse to be privy to their
own destruction. Any railway conductor will
tell you that if he cautiously waits for an
other train to come up. be usually gets nothing
from his passengers but grumbliDg and fault
finding for his pains. If they are willing to
run the risk, why should he indulge in such
an untmely and inconvenient timidity Here
4. ,,,H, G
the doctrine of chance. There is nothing
peculiar abOut it. We are simply fools in re-
gard to our travelling, just as we are fools in
regard to our health our money speculatiOns,
aud almost every other concern OF life.
To bring the matter practically home and
to consider it in the light of the recent Boston
burning we may say, by way OF formula, That
no fire should occur for ichich an adequate
human cause can be assigned after It's occurrence.
This is general, we know, and we purposely
make it so. We understand perfectly well
that many exceptions may be taken to the
prOposition but we never shall be secure
against the conflagratiOn of our cities until we
adopt the rule in all its stringency, and then
let Providence take care of the exceptions. The
truth is, there are very few of those casualties
which are basphemOusly called Acts Of
God, against which we might not protect our
selves. Everybody pities the manufactures
whose buildings are destroyed by spontaneous
combustion, but there would have been no
such combustion if the sufferer had understood
the laws of nature and had acted according
to his light. Take still another illustration
drawn from the recent event One year ago
. gentleman stood with us in the very center
OF what is now the burned district Of Boa