New Orleans Republican., 1875-10-07
sU1orDE-..1Ts POSSIBLE CAUSES.

SUICIDE-.-ITS POSSIBLE CAUSES.
The frequency with which this melan-
choly event occurs among us renders
some discussion of its possible causes not
inappropriate. Every man will live as long
as he has motives for existence in his own
opinion superior to those for death Is
proven blythe poor and miserable objects
which cling to life long after, in the
opinion of others they have lost all the
causas ,vivendi, as the Roman satirist has
it. Hamlet seems to have had the refuge of
self-murder running through the whole of
his calamitous career. He states the induce
ments tor and against the termination of
existence in such a manner as to show
that it must have been a subject of deep
reflection. It is to be remarked that in
his celebrated soliloquy he estimates moral
causes as alone justifying suicide. He has
not assigned poverty or even the incurable
disease of age as reasons for using the
"bare bodkin's point" ''The oppressor's
wrong, the proud mans contumely, the
whips and scorns of time, the pangs of
despised love, the laws delay, and the
spurns that patient merit of the unworthy
takes" all these are moral motives. He
cites no physical infirmity as justification.
When we regard the immense changes
in social condition to which our city has
been subjected, we can not but observe
that there must exist moral causes of self
murder which would not exist under
greater social prosperity. There is no
mode of comparing the number of sui
cides before the change in the commercial
condition of our city, but it would be, we
think, safe to say that they were not so
numerous as at present, just as we may
assert that in agricultural communities
where the means of subsistence are as
sured suicides are almost unknown.
Without affirming that particular sui
cides have been caused by the loss of for
tunes and the extinction of hope we may
safely affirm that the tendencies to end
the inevitable trouble of life is much
stronger when man of high social posi-
tion, with large and dependent family, is
brought to abject poverty without the
hope of being reinstated. In proportion,
then, as this class is more or less numer-
GUS in community, the percentage Of
this mortality from moral causes is in
creased. ...rG 's
Leaving this question for the clergy
and the metaphysicians we assert without
hesitation that it is the highest duty of
society to provide its whole membership
with the means of providing for them
selves by honest, industrial employment.
To stimulate the expectations of political
salary, to quiet the pangs of hunger by
the exhibition Of vain spectacles or to
distribute charitable loaves or blankets
only when society is startled by some ap-
palling demonstration Of popular malady
or misery is wholly insufficient
It is the highest duty Of society to unite
to harmonize, to employ. A conference
of moderate and thoughtful men, without
regard to the complexion of their skin or
their politics, might devise some means of
giving impulse to the industries or restor-
ing the trade of our city. Such an effort,
even if successful, could not bring back
the breath of the dead, but it might
bring bread to the living. Self-murder is
often shocking reproach to society,
which might have prevented it, but these
exceptional cases Of human despair by no
means estimate the depths of moral suffer-
ing. The woman who drags through
painful life to rear and protect her off
spring, without the hope of employment
for herself or them, enddres an aggregate
of suffering which might have been long
before terminated by suicide. When we
estimate in imagination the amount Of this
misery, it appeals to every humane heart
to forego, for moment, the conflict of
abstract opinions, and unite with others,
and with all, in alleviating the sorrows
and sufferings to which such conflicts,
whatever their issues, can bring no timely
relief Hostile armies, after bloody battles,
though enraged OF humiliated by the re-
suit of the fight, grant truce to permit
the relief of the wounded victims of
human passion. who writhe under the