The Portland daily press., 1882-05-23
General Dow, Sheriff Sawyer and
the Sheriff A eft.

a
Into the merits of the controversy between
one of our heaviest tax payers and the chief ex-
ecutive officer of the County, it is not my pur-
pose to enter. Those of us who number them
both among our personal friends will be slow to
believe that either would shrink from the per-
Torrance of public duty, as he understands
it, May not each of these prominent citizens
be fairly entitled to the benefit of the Spanish
proyerb "When two good men differ, they
may both be right?"
However this may be, Gen. Dow will certain
ly add to the list of his public services if his re-
peated protests are the means of calling public
attention to the worthlessness of the law whose
administration he condemns.
If it can be shown that this extraordinary
statute is not only unsound in principle, unnec-
essary, impracticable and wasteful, but pernici-
GUS in its tendency, and positive obstruction to
an efficient execution of the laws, the wonder
will be, not that it has proved confessed fail
ure in Cumberland County, but that such a
enlightened legislature, and submitted to for
years by an intelligent constituency.
1. The sheriff act is unsound in principle
and contrary to- the well-settled theory and
practice of our executive criminal law.
While the burden of our criminal courts,
prisons, jails, houses of correction and police
had always rested directly on the people, the
sheriff and his deputies had from time imme-
mortal, been required to preserve order, re-
press crime, and execute all the laws without
other compensation than their fees, which are
directly chargeable to the culprit, and form
part of the bill of costs which he is required to
pay.
In other words, the sheriff and his deputies,
like clerks of courts and many other officers,
were, until 1872, paid by fees and not supported
out of the public purse. But the sheriff act
reversed this salutary and economical pro-
vision of the criminal law and. for the first time
in our legislation added per diem as bonus
to the sheriff. and his deputies for the perform
ance of a duty which his fees were designed
fully to compensate.
Again, the principle is unsound in this, that
it discriminates between offences, for it pays
the sheriff and his deputies each So day,
Sundays included, not for the execution of all
the laws equally, but of three specified laws in
particular.
And worse yet, this singular statute leaves
murder, arson, rape, burglary, highway rob-
berry and other high crimes to the ordinary
course of law, while it lavishes per diem on
force of county officers for the detection and
punishment of three minor offences. That is to
say, passing by felony, it devotes it's energy
to three misdemeanors, exalting petty trans
gressions deserving only of fine or a brief torn
in jail, above capital and State prison crimes
thus discriminating in the wrong direction.
II. This squandering Of per diem upon
the sheriff and his deputies was the more mex.
cusable and absurdly wasteful when it is re-
membered that they had always been entitled
to another per diem for every days attend
ance on the Law courts, and on each ordinary
term of the Supreme and Superior courts, and
yet, incredible as it may seem, it is neverthe-
less true, that for three years, until 1875, the
sheriffs and deputies of the various counties
actually received double per diem of Sc and
So respectively, during court time, Sundays
not excepted,-for attending court and watch
ing misdemeanors at the same time. The
next generation will probably be slow to be-
lieve that such reckless extravaganza could
have been the work of New England legis-
lature.
In this connection, it may not be improper
to add that the sheriffs, during all this period,
in their capacity of jailers, were and still are,
provided with dwelling, warmed, lighted and
supplied with water, &C., at the public ex-
pense, besides receiving the profit from the
board of all their prisoners. No fault is found
with these ancient emoluments and perqui-
ding per diem.
Ill. The sheriff act was unnecessary and
uncalled for. Gen. Dow, Ex-Gov. Dingley
and other authorities assure us that for the
past fifteen years the prohibitory law has been
thoroughly enforced throughout the agricul-
tural parts of the State. 1t is only in cities
that any difficulty has been experienced. Now
cities are provided with salaried police, head
ed by the marshal and commanded by the
mayor, whose special duty it was, until the
enactment of the sheriff law, universally un-
derstood to be, to execute all the laws within
the city, while in the country towns, where it
is conceded that the prohibitory law had been
thoroughly enforced, the sheriff and his depu-
ties were sworn to the enforcement of all the
laws just as fully and effectually as now; SO
that there could never have been any apology
for such an enactment.
But even if there had been such an excuse
prior to 1880, surely the enactment of the con-
stabulary act, approved by Gov. Davis in that
year, removed it.
For the avowed aim and purpose of that act
is to provide county constables by direct ap-
pointment of the Governor and Council, in ev-
cry county where the prohibitory law and the
other two misdemeanors against which the
sheriff act was levelled are not faithfully pros
ecuted, and that, too, at the same per diem
now wasted on sheriffs and deputies.
Now with our city police on the one hand,
and the general sheriff law, which was good
enough to preserve order among our people
from 1920 down to 1872 on the other, and the
constabulary act of Gov. Davis behind them
both, what possible excuse can remain for the
existence of the sheriff act of 1872?
". 1t might have been foreseen that the
sheriff act would prove failure because it is
addressed, not to an appointed, but to an elect
ed officer, who is thus made virtually respo nsi-
BILE, not to the governor of the State, as every
executive officer ought to be, and as the coun-
ty constables are, but to his constituents, the
voters of b is county.
When they are favorable to prohibition their
chief public servant will be likely to enforce
the law to the satisfaction of Gen. Dow, but
where, as in Cumberland, a majority of the
voters do not agree with Gen. Dow, the sheriff
act will never produce such a result.
In other words, so long as we continue to
elect our sheriffs, prohibitory counties will
have the kind of sheriffs and deputies that a
majority of the voters want, without any per
diem pay just as we'll as with, and in counties
of the other kind this public waste will never
secure the kind that zen. Dow wants.
AS plain matter of history the radically pro-
hibitory legislature of 1855 dealt death blow
at the popular independence of sheriffs, and
made uniform and efficient discharge of execu-
tive duty by the sherffs of the different coun-
ties impossible, in submitting to the people the
constitutional amendment which made sheriffs
independent of the governor and dependent on
the people Of their counties by subjecting them
to the ordeal of biennial election.
That error of more than quarter of a CEN
tury cannot be retrieved by such expensive
contrivances and makeshifts as the sheriff
act, but by retracing the laundering step then
taken.
V. The sheriff act is not only unns cessary,
wasteful and worthless, but it has proved pos
tive obstruction by diminishing and dividing re-
soonsiblity. For while no instance can be-
pointed out where it has driven tho sheriff of
an anti-prohibitory county into an execution
of law distasteful to his constituents, at the
hazard of his popularity and reelection, it is
notorious that municipal police officers of cit
les, from mayor down, have repeatedly hesitat-
ed to assume the Gisagreeable duty from
which the sheriff act, under their construc-
ton, seems to relieve them. indeed, this was
the precise reason given by many ardent Re-
publican prohibitionists of Portland for not
supporting the nomination of Mr. Libby last
March. And it must be confessed that so long
as the sheriff act remains on the statute book,
for one Mayor Libby you will find dozen of
the other kind, who will claim that the main
duty of executing law odious to many and
perhaps a majority of their constituents is by
law imposed on the county officers. who are
erao;o liz, vaid for ond nat On tho o;t pol;oo