Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-07-24
THE RUTLAND HERALD
SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1878.
INCREASE OF CRIME.

1t is startling fact that while the
world has been increasing in knowledge
and culture. the daily criminal records
have become longer and more appalling.
The rapid increase of population seems
to be closely followed by more lax
morality, and the cry is going up all
over the land, what shall we do to be
saved from this carnival of crime There
have been many causes combining to
divert the attention of the people from
the tendency of the age, and as we be-
lieve, in the absorbing interest with
which men have pursued great ends,
without regard to means or details, is to
be found the cause whose effect IN socl-
ETY. is immortality and crime. once the
peonIe felt an adherence for breach OF
Divine or human laws, but now the
question is made one of policy and the
occurrence of great crime is discussed
as a problem of expediency, and the pub
lie sink the offense in a debate over the
question of whether the end aimed at
justified the means used.
Treason against an established govern
ment has ever been justly regarded as
the highest crime that can be committed
against human laws. 1t involves
wholesale sacrifice of human life, par
alyzing of the whole energies of the peO-
pie, vast humiliation of property and
the subversion of healthy laws. 1t cx-
ceeds the crime of murder by its great
destruction of life, it involves the mallg
nifty of the whole catalogue of crime,
and yet in less than eight years after the
close of the most bloody war that has
devastated this continent, brought about
and continued for nearly half a decade
of years, by traitors, actuated by the
most malignant treason to the govern
ment, seeking its overthrow that they
may retain political power and position,
good men who abhor treason combine
with its sympathizers, and under the
sweet name of charity, talk about con-
donation of the crime, and of shaking
hands over the bloody chasm, not only
in forgiveness but rather in exultation
that the crime was committed that they
may now have the satisfaction of a
reconciliation.
This spirit which for the sake of po-
ltical triumph will allow the greatest of
human crimes to be discussed as a ques-
ton of eXpediency, that will not only
wink at treason, but will favor by loud
defamation the obliteration of every
evidence of the feeling that treason is
odious, and the leveling of every land
mark that indicates that the virtue of the
people has overcome this greatest of
crimes and trampled it under foot, is all
powerful as an educator of the people in
the path of immortality and crime. They
justly reason that if the highest offence
can be winked at, and the greatest Grim
inals courted and applauded, then those
who are guilty of only murder or high
way robbery or theft, are entitled to
some consideration. The objects of
punishment are the protection of society
and the reform of the offender, and
when these objects are best obtained by
clemency and forgivness, a pardon of
the criminal and conformation of the of
fence, are the proper methods of admin
istering criminal justice but at all times it
is the prerogative of society while ex-
tending the hand of forgivness to indi-
cate its abhorance of the crime, and we
believe it to be duty of our people and
government to perpetuate the memory
of every field upon which treason
has been punished, by enduring
monuments, and that every man
who was led to join in I'M
holy war upon the government to which
he owes allegiance, should see upon the
the public records and on the colors of
every marching regiment of national
troops, the name of the sacred fields
where loyalty and public virtue triumph
ed over disloyalty and treason.
We believe that by holding up before
the people the rewards of virtue and the
punishments of vice, by constantly
making it apparent that crime is abhor-
ed, and virtue applauded, and that the
human economy as well as the divine,
is founded upon impartial justice, we
take long stride in the reformation of
the criminal records, that the public
face should be strongly set against every
deviation from the path of rectitude,
and no compromise be made with high
or low crimes, and that while justice is
administered in mercy there should be
no uncertain sound as to the adherence
felt for evil deeds.