The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1875-09-30
Legal Punishments.

1t will doubtless always be maintained,
and with good dea: of reason, that legal
punishments should lie enforced without
distinction of persons. There must be, it
is claimed, the same law for the rich and
the poor. This is fundamentally very true,
and the truth of the maxim is so generally
accepted that in every civilized country
capital crimes are equally punished.
Whenever there are any distinctions at all,
they pertain to minor offenses. Rich pecu-
latOrs sometimes succeed IN escaping the
penalty OF their misdeeds, not because the
law makes a distinction between the rich
and the poor thief, but because the pecula-
ton has not been the theft direct, has been
adroitly managed SO rs to stand beyond
the reach of the law. In all cases of a
graver character where the offenses COM
mitted are identically of a like nature the
penalty is the same, no matter who the
person is. But there are few cases that
necessarily involve question of condi-
ton or of antecedents. The rich and the
poor forgers suffer alike; but perhaps the
rich and the poor drunkards, or the rich
and the poor combatants in an as
sault, are quite likely to have
different sort of penalty dealt out to
them. But this different justice in APP
pearance may be very far from being
different in fact. The noisy vagabond
who is sent to the penitentiary for ten days
probably feels no disgrace, and expert
ences only little temporary inconveni-
ence in the penalty; but to the man of
customary sobriety, who in an exception
al convivial hour disturbs the peace, a sim
gle light in the station house is an in
tense humiliation, bitter fact likely to
or on6 1,or 81 1,sc f,,f, 1sfo To
a man of sensibility and refinement q
prison is ten times more formidable than
to man of course instincts and rude
habits Of life. Everything in this world
is much or little by contrast; a mode of
life that to laborer is comfortable and
even agreeable to one of another kind of
training would be uncomfortable; the tasks
that some find easy others find intolerable;
the act that with one man is a matter of
custom to another is bitter humiliatiOn
and hence if the law in the infection of its
penalties makes no distinctions it simply
succeeds in making practically tremendous
differences. If it be fundamental maxim
that all men should suffer alike for
similar offenses, then, in order that they
may suffer alike the penalty should be adj
justed to the character, rank, and condi-
tons pertaining to the persons under judg-
ment. An infiexible law is sure to be an
unjust law. A law incompetent to recog-
nize the difference between woman
reared tenderly, amid ease and luxury,
and fierce termagant of the gutter, or in
sensible to tire difference between man
of breeding and lifelong repute and one
hardene0 to every form of degradation,
such law is actually very unjust, how
ever much it may carry upon the surface
seeming equity. How far it may be
practicable to act upon these differences
of character and condition, it is not easy
to say. In many kinds Of offenses it is
certain that it cannot be done; but. as the
law always falls even at its best with
peculiar harshness upon that better class
who are not habitual criminals, who have
under some mad temptation sacrificed
every thing that had made life dear, there
need be no fear that these unfortunates
will not experience the bitter consequences
Of their misdoing to the full.-Appletons'
Journal.