St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1879-03-21
Perversion of Sympathies.

The perverslon of private and public
sympathy in regard to crime and crImi-
mails is one of the easiest, the most COM
mon and most dangerous consequences
of extreme audacity or bloody atrUcity
of deed, on the one hand, and on the
other hand, of protracted delay in the
int1ictiOn of the penalty of the law
When great crime has suddenly been
committed which shocks the sensiblli-
ties of the people, all hearts are alive
to the magnitude of the guilt of the
perpetrator. All eyes are open and
vigilant for his arrest and speedy pun
ishment. Sometimes the multitude be-
come trantically excited and impatient
for swift vengeance upon the villain.
Without stopping for due forms of the
law, they are eager to seize any one,
on whom suspicion may chance to rest,
and to wreak vengeance on him at
once, without law and despite of the
law, without justice and in despite of
it, even under the stimulus of an honest
but immoderate and unreasonable meas
ure of Indignation swollen into fiery
and uncomfortable lawlessness. When
bloody murder is first heard of, who
is not shocked and moved with indig-
nation at the horrid deed? Who does
not pity the poor victim, instantly
plunged into eternity-the family and
kindred, suddenly bereft of loved one
that was as dear to them as he was
hated by the assassin Who does not
cry out for the speedy arrest and pun
ishment of the guilty perpetrator
Whose heart then warns toward any
body but the poor victims of the vii
lain's malice and brutality But, let
weeks, months and years pass-let the
arrest-the slow process of trial-the
long delay of conviction and sentence,
and the longer delay of the execution
of sentence prOtract the space between
the hour of the crime and the hour of
punishment, until memory of the atroci-
ty of the deed and the sufferings of the
victims begins to grow dim, and the
details of the shocking event begin to
fade away in dull fOrgetfulness, and
who thinks much of the aggravatiOns
or. the guilt of the case? At such dis
tance i'll time from the horrible deed.
the eyes begin to be fixed Oh the suffer
ings of the victim of justice. The heart
warns toward the villain himself; and
the terrors of the law, in the calm in
Fiction of its righteous sentence, rise
up in such dreadful visions that SYM
pathy cries out for suspense of the final
blow, even when mercy herself would
weep and bow her head in distress at
the cruel delay. Thus, in the begin
ming and at the end, sympathy alone
would practically inflict the gravest
wrongs, as well upon the criminal as
upon the community.
Thus, to-day, (Friday) as Henry
Gravelin may expiate on the gallows
bis crime in the murder of Herbert o.
White, most people think only of
Gravelin and his doom, not of the MUIR
dered man, and the blows inflicted up
on civilized society in the crushing of
Whites skull by the murderer's bludg-
con. Sympathy for the laws victim
now sweeps away all thought of the
murderer's victim and many who, un-
der other circumstances, would be stout
for the laws course, now finch and
shrink from its execution. This is one
of the great evils of the wide distance
in time, as now fixed by the law, be-
tween conviction and the execution of
the sentence-being two full years by
the statute and, as we have seen. in the
case of Phair, possibly four years. An
abbreviatiOn of that time would doubt-
less subserve the best interests of ms
tice.- Windsor Journal.