The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1875-03-11
The Real Evil of the Beecher Case.

The trial of Henry Ward Beecher has al
ready occupied two months, and the public has
many reasons to regret that it was ever forced
UPON their attention. It is too painful, too
dirty, and too iong-like a sewer that pours its
poisonous tide through sinuous, subterranean
miles, river of disease and death. OF course,
there is supreme reason why the trial should
be accepted as blessing to society, notwith-
standing its offensive features, and that is that
it promises to end scandal which has for
years tainted the very air, and made Plymouth
Church seem like whited sepulchre The
trial was demanded by public opinion. Mr.
Beecher could not avoid it, and Mr.. Tilton was
bound to bring suit, or become himself the
convict of an indignant public opinion. Yet
now that we have the trial, we should like to
of Congreve's wittiest comedies, in which
mother, defending her daughter from charge
similar to that brought against MIR. Beecher,
insists upon the proof. "Prove it, madam p
exclaims her prudent friend. "What! and
have your name prostituted in public court;
yours and your daughters reputation worried
at the bar by pack of bawling lawyers? To
be ushered in with an o Yes of scandal; to
become jest, against rule of court, where
there is no precedent for jest in any record;
to discompose the gravity of the Bench, and
provoke naughty interrogatories IN more
| naughty law latin" No wonder Lady Wish
fort declared it to be very hard, when she con-
tempated this vivid picture, portions of which
we refuse to copy out of respect to the Court
and the counsel in the Brooklyn trial, aud IN
! Justice to their merits. But the picture is not
vet completed in the comedy: "And then to
have bv en- nv Young revelers of the Temple take
notes. like prentices at conventicle," contn-
ues the comforter "and after talk it over again
in Commons or before drawers in an eating
house." Is not this true to the life of the
Brooklyn case, when the counsel, and the prin-
cipals, and the witnesses go out to lunch, IN
the daily recesses of the court, and revise the
testimony, and debate the question before the
walters? 1t is worse and worse and yet the
warning continues "Nay, this is nothing; if
it could end her 'twere we'll but it must, after
this. be consigned by the shorthand writer to
the public press, and from thence be transferred
to the hands-nay, into the throats and lungs
of hawkers, with voices more licentlous than
the loud founderman's. And this you must
hear till you are stunned nay you must hear
nothing else for some days" This description,
which might we'll be given in play called
'"The Way of the World,' might have been
intended for the Beecher trial. so friable is the
application. 1t has become odious, and only
for r the hope we have expressed that it will
finally put an end to the abominable scandal,
it would be insupportable
The trial has certainly done more, as has
been said, to demoralze society, than any GRIM
inal case known in the history of American
Courts. And this is not for the reason given
generally that makes crime clear to the lmagl-
nations Of those who are supposed to know 1T
only by its name. All the talk and scandal
that attends it, nauseating, as it may be, is
nothing rs compared with other evils. Naugh-
tv Jokes and vulgar nuendoes are inseparable
from all trials of the kind, and must be endured
as inevitable offences But the Beecher trial
has debauched religion. The crime, of which
the defendant is accused is less than the crime
which he has committed against the very faith
he processes, and in which he has the great and
wealthy congregation OF Plymouth Church lor
his accomplce. We have seen, for the first
time, a clergyman going from the court in
which he is tried for adultery to the pull pit in
which he breaches the gospel. Mr.. Beecher is
accused of carnal love on Friday afternoons,
and on Friday evenings he explains divine
love- He appears every Sunday in his pulpit,
not so much as the pastor as the defendant.
The curiosity of his hearers as to the fact OF
MS guilt or innocence extinguishes all capacity
in their minds for listening properly to the
truths he claims to expound. The inconsisten-
cy of his position is manifest and there is little
more that he can do to violate the unsupported
purity in which the pulpit should be clothed,
unless he should choose the seventh command
ment as a subject for his sermon. That religion
is brought into dsrepute by Mr.. Beecher's as
sumption of the moral right to preach in dc.,-
ance of the position in which he is placed, IS
too plain to be argued. But he is not alone
guilty of this wrong but is aided and abetted
in it by the Plymouth Church congregation.
That church, at his order, undertook to acqult
him by packed committee, which virtually
proclaimed in advance that it would accept no
evidence that should establish his guilt. But
when that mock investigation had been made,
when the whitewash failed to hide the black
ness of the case, when the public derided the
folly and scorned the efrontery of the verdict,
when real trial was insisted upon, Plymouth
Church still sustained Mr.. Beecher on the bold
ground that, whether innocent or guilty, 1T
Would not let him go. This is the common talk
now in Brooklyn. His champions declare that
the scandal has caused the sale of pews this
wear to exceed by fifteen thousand dollars that
of any previous sale, and they predict that If he
is convicted the sale next year will be at least
TWENTY-FIVE thousand more Religion is sacrl-
feed both by the church and pastor, and this
is the great evil of the trial, aud not the mere
notorietv that, in common with all adultery
causes, it has given to the crime in the columns
of the press Wilkes Spirit Of the Times.