New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-06-05
THE PAINE or gUuAN LIFE.

The current topic ia of course the latest
murder. Stop, it is MT current; twas Cor few
hours after the killing, and IN the Immediate
neighborhood of the scene of the crime; but that
was forty eight hours ago, and thousand
things have happened since then to distract
the public thought. 1t WAS only murder.
Last week boy of 20 pulled his pistol from
his breast pocket, and in trying to shoot an
acquaintance killed his mother by accident,
and felt very badly about it, This time it is
a boy of 10 who draws his pistol and kills his
father, not accidentally but deliberately, and
does MT feel bad about it at all. Two lessons,
short and easy, from these events. First,
the pistol is handy thing TO have-especially
Tor boys. Second, there are few things
cheaper than human life. There is something
very suggestive in the manner in which the
public mind is affected by these crimes. In
the first case, although the young man was
carrying deadly weapon in violation OF law
and intended TO take life when he drew it,
the fact that he killed the wrong person and
felt badly about it is accepted apparently as
sufficient justification and defense, and the
probability is that instead of being punished
by so much as public reprobation of his Jaw
lessness, he will shortly be dismissed with
offerings of sympathy for him in his sudden
bereavement.
In the case of Young Walworth, almost
before any of the facts beyond that of the
deliberate murder had become public, there
was an eager sort OF reaching out for
extenuating circumstances; the community
fairly jumped to the conclusion that there
was something in the history Of the case that
justified the parricide. There was no shudder
of horror at the unnatural crime; scarcely a
thought given to the enormity of the ofiensc
of taking life per SC it was only a murder
after all. And then to see how, in the process
of mems thinking upon it as the facts came to
light, they fell by sort of logic that has
come almost to be second nature, into a kind
of Qualification of the crime and apotheosis Of
the criminal. There were circumstances, true
enough, if the young mans story is to be be-
lieved, that to the public apprehension seem
to take it out of the class of utterly heartless,
selfish, brutal murders. For, though he de-
hberately killed his father he alleges il was
TO defend his mother from insult and outrage.
1t is tinctured with that strange notion of
masculine chivalry which erects woman
into something resembling divinity, and
Furnishes discourtesy TO her as sacrilege.
There's something indefnable about this
maudlin sentimentalism that throws n glow
of heroism round the murder that is done
under its influence. It's the fashion of the
time to hold womans comfort and ease and
her good name of such supreme account that
human life weighed in the balance against it
kicks the beam, and society is almost ready
to justify any murder that has "a woman in
" the case" 1t may be that this fashion Of
chivalry has an elevating and ennobling in
huence; that such Difference to the gentler
sex is calculated to csoften and refine the
hardness and harshness natural to man; but
we submit that 1t might stop somewhat short
of murder 1t ought not to be necessary to
any woman's comfort or happiness to have a
man killed in her behalf. Human life should
not be held quite so eheaply.
No doubt this boy had cause for ipdigna-
ton and anger. Perhaps his fathers conduct
toward his mother was 80 persistently and
diabolically brutal that tho poor lad came to
think life at this rate utterly intoerablo AS
q matter of fact it never Ia intolerable, for
the nearer it comes TO it the larger are the
sacrifices required, and great sacrifices make
always grand and noble lives. But he, blindly
beating against tho bacJ OF his limitations