Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-01-08

of wearing clothes. Yet even in the case
of wrongs it cannot be said that they have
any fixed and Interchangeable foundation
What We call morality is quite as much
matter of civilization and custom as what
we call crime. 1t is considered immoral
to cheat, to lie, to steal, but it has not al
ways and among all peoples been so consid-
cred. It is considered immoral to commit
murder, thoughtin California; it is no crime
But it has not always been thought wrong
to kill. THERE'S not in fact single clause
in the moral code of to-day the reverse
of which has not been accepted as the
moral rule of some other time. 1t is fur
Their to be observed that society does not
always class among crimes those wrongs
which produce the most evil consequences.
1t is not Tor example true that the greatest
scoundrels of existing society find their way
to the penitentiary. The reverse of this is
true. The men who are branded as criminals
the men with whose laches the Courts
are ooncerned-are in fact our most insig-
nificant offenders. The real enemies of
society, the really dangerous classes, are
at liberty, and scarcely ever see the inside
OF Jail. But we do not punish our worst
wrong doors. On the contrary, We fatter
and caress them. The man who can plum
der an entire community the man who
can put himself above the law; who can
handle the political machinery who by
means of his stolen wealth can buy tools
who will DO his will; who is in a posi-
ton through his unpriucipled and immoral
practices to prosecute his enemies and re-
ward his friends; is regarded by society
with respectful admiration. He may have
ruined hundreds or thousands of honester
men than himself by the basest deceit. He
may have driven his fellows to suicide
He may have destroyed the widow and
the orphan. He may have beggared his
own family. But for all this il ne has
succeeded in acquiring riches and power
ne will be treated with every mark of es-
TEEN and approval. Beauty VIII smile
upon him, and Virtue will accept his at.
tentions gratefully. There is, in fact, no
immortality which the world Will recognize
in wealth producing vice. 1t is only the
poor wrong-doers who are locked up in iails
and penitentiaries and for whom we
trouble ourselves with tedious inquiries
into reform methods, as though any of
these miserable creatures were half as
much in need of reform as the sleek and
well-fed rogues who swagger in purple and
fine linen, and whose pompous defiance of
all ethical principles is at once proof OF
our barbarisn and gauge of our morals.
II must sometimes be doubted by think
ipg men whether moral system which
allows the chief wrong doors to escape pun
ishment, and only inaicts penalties upon
those who are the least responsible for what
they do, is not all wrong. The poor wretch
who first opens his eyes in some dingy
alley in city SUM, VINO is brought up III
squalor and hunger and cold and filth,
whose only associates are thieves and
warrants, may well be expected to steal.
How indeed should he understand any
other mode of life? But the man who has
had the advantages OF education and COM
Portable rearing and sound instruction,
whose intellectual faculties have been
trained and disciplined, whose moral per-
ceptions have been cultivated what shall
be said for such a one when he with open
eyes plunges into vice, and for mere greed
lies and cogs and steals and wrongs all who
stand in his path? Would not lust code
put the latter at the head of the criminal
class, strip him of his i'll earned wealth,
thrust him into the convict's cell, and pun
ish him to the uttermost? And would not
the same code deal gently with the i'll
nurtured and uninstructed child of
the street, whose every experience
has led him further from the
right? Can social system be
regarded as stable which presents in
consistencies and inequities so fragrant
and irritating as these CAN'T be sincerely
believed that as higher types are evolved
in the course of time, the desire to re-
form society and to place it upon founda-
ton of Justice and truth will not necessi-
tate great revolution in this respect 1t
is said that the tendency of civilization is
more and more toward democracy. If
this is so, and if also the tendency OF civil
ization is more and more toward the edu-
cation of the masses, can it be imagined
that day viii not come when the masses
will refuse to be governed upon the pres
ent principles any longer when they will
insist that wrong doing shall constitute
criminality, that the real capital olfenses
shall be recognized as such, that to whom
much is given from them much shall be
demanded, and that wealth shall cease to
be either an apology or a screen for vice
and meabness and treachery and deceit
and tyranny and greed and every immo-
rality which the law affects to punish in
poor offenders?
THE DEBRIS BILL.
We are glad to see that at least one San