Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-12-09
EFFORTS TO PREVENT SUICIDE.

5SA WIN GAL W Hllil5Sll,
has been put on trial for the offense. 1t
is difficult to understand what the law
makers expected to effect by this provision.
OF course if person attempts to commit
suicide and fails, he or she may be pun.
ished. But by go enacting it looks very
much as though the Legislature desired to
put premium upon thoroughgoing work
in that line. The difficulty of all such
legislation is that the offender, if he car
ries out his purpose successfully, passes be-
You'd the jurisdiction of earthly courts,
and experience has abundantly demon
strated that declaring self-murder felony
does not tend in any way to diminish it.
The New York Penal Code appears to have
followed the old English law on the subject,
According to that statute a suicide was
liable to be adiudged guilty OF .teLo de Sc,
and the penalty was burial OF the corpse
at the junction of four roads, with stake
driven through the heart. This alleged
punishment was on a par with the medieval
processes against animals. In those days
the theory of responsibility was carried
very much farther than at present, aud
animals which had committed offenses,
which, if they had been human bsings,
would have been punishable by statute,
were notseldom formally indicted, tried, and
executed. In the same way the Church
thought it within the line of its duty to
pronouce accommodation against insect
pests, and the latter were solemnly warned
to depart from the country they were raw
aging, under pain of the ecclesiastical ban.
The effect upon the locusts, weevils and
other insects which were thus anathema.
tized has, unfortunately, not been recorded,
but we are justified in concluding that it
must have been no more and no less than
the effect upon dead men of burying them
with stake in their insides," as Hood
puts it, at four crossroads.
And to declare An unsuccessful suicide
felony is to make intending suicides care
ful that their purpose is not baked. Who.
ever fears an attainder for felony on bis liv-
ing body, very few people would be de.
tered from killing themselves by any re.
gard for what would be done with their
bodies after death. For it is self-evident
that before a man can have wrought HIM
self to the state of desperation implied in
the act of self destruction, he must have
absolutely ceased to care what becomes of
him, either in this world or the next. The
suicidal condition of mind, when it is not
induced by brain disease, has some anal
ogies with that of the martyr. The latter
was able to defy and battle the utmost
cruelty of his prosecutors, because he had
convinced himself that the torments to
which he was subjected were sure passports
to eternal felicity. He therefore, like the
suicide, had ceased to be amenable to the.
considerations which govern the mass OF
mankind. The intending suicide is, in
sense, emanoipated from all social and
moral restraints. He has fallen back upon
that one final recourse against all the evils of
existence which the Stoics regarded as the
most inalienable and precious right of the
individual. He is no longer a member of
society or a citizen. He has determined
to hand in his resignation, and to take
whatever consequences there may be. He
has decided that life is not worth living.
and when a man reaches that decision
there are no human arguments capable of
moving him.
The reason why no legislation ever has
or ever can prevent suicide is that no one
contemplates that act until he has made up
his mind that anything is preferable to con-
tlnued existence in the conditions which
surround him. And no matter what a
mans belief may be as to the future, self.
slaughter must be equally repugnant to all
but those whose misery is so great that
perhaps their best friends, if the whole
case were laid before them, would find it
impossible to quarrel with their resolve.
For whether the wretched man contem-
plates life Beyond the grave, or expects
only humiliation, the burdens must indeed
be insupportable which impel him to de-
liberately extiDguish every chance OF re.
trieval in this world, or to face the tire.
mendous possibilities OF hereafter. To
say to one who has reached that fearful
resolution that if he tries TO kill himself
he will be guilty of felony, must be per-
fectly useless. He knows full well that he
is about to be guilty of the most fearful
crime which man can commit against
himself, and he has decided that even this
deed cannot make his condition worse than
it is. What hope eau there be of intimi.
dating any one in such frame of mind, by
penal enactmeats? He is far beyond the
reach of that kind of prohibition. He has
reached the point of readiness to face his
Maker with his own blood upon his hands
How then can he care for the DEGREES or
the penalties OF human tribunals?
No doubt it is true that all suicides are
not the outcome of elaboration. Many
are committed on impulse. Some are the
result OF morbid sentimentality. Not
few are the direct consequence of brain
disease. But whatever the impelling mo-
tive it is necessarily and invariably stronger
than any social obligations or any reverence
for law. There have been epidemics of
suicide. There are, strange as it may ap-
pear, fashions in suicide. And Buckle
has pointed out that the percentage of sui.
cides is constant quantity, cspableof being
calculated with an approximation to exact
ness. For centuries lawmakers have been
experimenting or this tendency, but with
out the slightest effect. New York, too, will
find that her new code is complete failure
in this regard. When men hare become