Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-11-17
THE supPREss1oS OF MURDER.

Every morning the newspaper reader has
laid before him accounts of greater or less
number of murders, and those accounts are
very defective, for those who read The coun-
try papers, which circulate in only a con-
fined locality, find numerous reports Of muir
ders which never come to the knowledge OF
the country at large. What, then, is the an
nual number of murders that take place in
the United States in q year? One great
means of REFRESHING this awful crime would
exist if we could have regular statistical
statement of the murders aud homicides that
take place annually spread before the pub
lie. Murders read of at the rate of three or
four day experience proves to be inefect-
i've in arsusiHg public sentiment, but full
statistics of homicides could scarcely fail 10
arouse the sluggish, apathetic feeling with
which those crimes are now contemplated.
If each State should require its magistrates
and police authorities to make such report,
condensipg those reports into an annual
table for the whole State, when these State
reports were aggregated for the whole nation
there would exist material that would
DCCOA1C pOWCNAuA AZ pEcbSlOk
crime. All too lightly we pass over indi-
vidual instances of murder that excite at
tention for day or a week, and are then
forgotten, but mass the facts in one immense
list annually, and no decent, right-feeliug
man in the whole community would fail to
be affected; and those who were stirred up
to demand that active measures should be
Il g. d - -,
the lowest possible point, would be supplied
by these statistics with arguments whose
cogency and fearful force no Legislature
could resist, no judge or jury be insensible
to. Should we read some morning that,
somewhere or other, 500 persons. had been
murdered in one night, we should be
shocked, Mortified, and cry ont loudly
against such an exhibition of blood-thirsii-
ness. Spread the 500 murders over month,
some taking place in one locality and some
in another, and the victims are no fewer, and
the crimes no less atrocious. We have socie-
ties for the suppression of various wrongs
and vices and crimes; do we not need a So
ciety, as extensive az the limits of the
United States, whose object should be the
extirpation of the crime of murder? The
great value of statistics of murder would be
their effect on public sentiment, and public
sentiment requires aroasing upon this point.
Public sentiment will not tolerate horse
stealing, burglary or highway robbery as it
tolerates murder. Public sentiment will not
tolerate the horse thief, the burglar or the
highwayman as it tolerates the murderer.
Is it not fearful things thing worthy of
the profoundest condemnation-that crime
against property should meet with an amount
of exeSration greater than is accorded to
those who. regardless of the sacredness of
human life, crimson their guilty hands with
the blood of their fellow-creatures? There
is something amazing in the insensibility Of
the religious world upon this subject. Would
not the same effort directed against going to
theaters, playing at cards, dancing and other
peccadillces, do something toward arousiDg
public sentiment if directed with as
much force and earnestness against
murder? Local sentiment is sometimes 90
excited by the commission of this horrid
crime that it even goes TO the length
Of perpetrating further murder to ayenss