Los Angeles daily herald., 1876-03-28

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ishing wife beaters with the lash, and
urges as his chief argument against
the proposition that the man who is
publicly whipped by the order of
Court is so disgraced and humiliated
that he will never after hold up his
head in community where his
offense and punishment is known.
There is much truth in the argument.
We concede the point and throw into
the opposite balance the assertion that
the man who will whip or lay his
hand, save in the way of kindness, on
the woman he has sworn to love, hon.
or and cherish, has committed an act
so disgraceful and humiliating that
he must be so insensible to feeling
and such a stranger to the finer emo
tions of the human heart that even
the public lash could not arouse in
him a spirit of manly pride and self
respect. 1t is q hardly tenable as
sumption that the public whipping of
wife whippers will decrease the stock
of self respect or increase the number
of gentlemen who fasten their
gaze on the pavement while walking
the streets. In saying that the wife
whipper should be punished as he
punished his victim We do not wish
to be understood as maintaining that
women are all angels and that men
are all brutes. Senator ROACH, the au-
thor of the whipping law, no doubt en-
tertains opinions of this, from the wo-
mans point of view, rainbow hue, but
the Senator was never married. There
are doubtless scores Of kind-hearted,
high minded gentlemen, who would
no more think of striking their wives
or any woman than of strangling
newborn babe, who would not hesi-
tate to express the belief that the
Great Giver of every good and perfect
gift has sent into this world thousands
of women, some of wl.em become the
wives of men who do not thrash them,
not because they have not an abun-
dance of provocation, but because they
are patient and long suffering, and
live in the faith that their happiness
in the future will be in proportion to
the misery of the present, or because
they have vague consciousness that
an attempt to whip the wife would re-
suit in themselves being numerically
whipped. There is here and there a
woman whom no man brute could live
with without whipping. 1t is only by
marrying "a man saint that such wo-
man avoids discolored optics, and
when she is thus fortunate we fear
her husband is somewhat skeptical on
| the theory that marriages are made
in heaven. On the other hand in.
stances are quite numerous of meek
and gentle woman becoming the slave
of man brute. Such woman has
our sympathy, and it was for the pro-
lection of such a human angel, and
the punishment of such Il human
brute, that Senator ROACH drew his
whipping post bill. We do not care
to discuss the subject from the civili-
zation and enlightenment standpoint.
Whole columns of gilt.edged senti-
ment and high-toned platitudes are
ready to the hand of those who would
neglect the thing that is, to moralize
of the thing that ought to be. We
concede that it is a disgrace 10 any
State to find on her statute books a
law like tl.at drawn up by Senator
ROACH. 1t is also a disgrace to find
in these same pages a law legalizlng
hanging or confinement in the State
prison, but so long as crimes are COM
mitted punishment for crimes must
be devised. Why grow maudlin over
one disgrace and approve others of
| equal or greater magnitude.