Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-05-04

All societies have to pass through this
stage, but until they have passed through
it they are immature and crude. 1t is
necessary that public opinion should reach
higher point before sentimental murder
will cease. 1t is a crime which will con-
tinue to be committed so long as any linger-
ing traces of the old savage creed remains,
so long as there are found people to con-
tend that the taking of human life is, I'M
der any circumstances, a permissible form
of redress or retribution. When the pub
lie becomes intelligent enough to perceive
that murder cannot change facts, or undo
calumny, or atone for Misrepresentation,
the decline of this form of crime will take
place, but not before. San Francisco has
had very melancholy and humiliating ex-
perience in this connection, her discred-
liable record beginning with the murder of
Crittenden by Laura Fair-a most hideous
crime, without one mitigating feature, and
the issue of which was shameful to the
last degree. The sentimental murder then
received its most extravagant and
shocking development, but it has since
been made manifest that the feeling which
facilitated that gross and fragrant failure of
Justice has held its own. And there are
! few relics of barbarism more insidious and
demoralizing than this. What it is capable
of we see in Southern communities, where
the eyes of society are completely blinded
to the cruelty and cowardice of murder,
and where by perfectly natural process of
degradation, even the chivalrous instinct
upon which the people of that region pride
themselves, developes, as in the Chisholm
massacre, into mere brutal ferocity, reck-
less of everything but the contamination
of its bloody-minded purpose. There is
nothing which tends to retard civilization
more than this mischievous and silly notion
about the protection of honor by homicide.
1t is not only mark of barbarism wher-
ever it obtains, but it Is allied with many
other influences all of which work against
progress. The idea that true courage has
anything to do with it is absurd. The
men who commit murder in Difference
to what they think public opinion to be,
are In truth towards, for they are afraid
of an unreasonable and foolish sentiment.
As civilization expands all such crude
and savage notions are abandoned and out
grown, and with their abandonment natur-
ally goes the disposition to resort to those
exasperating methods of attack which are
at present held to palliate or excuse muir
der. In older communities the tendency
to sentimental murder has nearly become
extinct, and this is plainly because public
opinion no longer regards it with leniency.
There the man who takes human life
must expect to be judged sternly and
impartially, without any leaning toward
clemency on account of public belief in
the "code;" and if he is convicted he
hangs, and no man pities him, or regrets
his shameful end. When California has
attained to this condition of public senti-
ment the kind of crimes which have here
tofore stained the annals of the State will
cease, and no one will venturete scandalize
society and outrage the law in that way,
with any expectation or hope of being
acquitted through the aid of popular SYM
pathy.