The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-10-24
Justice to Society.

have made record for pressing with in
exorable frmness to conviction and merit
ed punishment few friendless men, and
woman too, who have shed the blood of
their fellow men. New York's burglars
have found it hard to escape from the
clutches of Vermont laws. Thieves and
incendiaries, men of low estate and lower
fortunes, at Windsor or Rutland, have
sometimes paid the penalty of their base So
cial and financial condition. If sometimes
it has occurred that criminal of quality
who wrecked bank for his gain or pleas
ure has become entangled in the meshes
of justice beyond his capacity to extri-
cate himself, tenderly and apologetically he
has been consigned to the less opIrobrious
precincts of Rutland and kindly impor.
tuned to make himself entirely at home,
to accept the largest liberty of the insti-
tuition and to avail himself of the free
dom of the public streets for air, exercise
and pleasure. His esthetic tastes have
not been rudely crucifed, his table has
been luxurious and his bedchamber q
place where honest toll might "lie down
to pleasant dreams" The servile wretch
whose meaner instincts impelled him to
the larceny of coat, to keep the cold
from pinching his craven carcass, in the
tell-tale garb of the convict, under the eye
of task-master, bends over the irksome
labor to which the blind-eyed deity con-
demned him. His pleasure and his vision
are bounded by the prison walls, and he has
the rough fare and the hard couch of the
unpampered and unfriended felon. This is
one phase of the late administration of
criminal law in Vermont. If it excites a
suspicion that Justice was not so securely
blindfolded as to be unconscious of the
quality of her victim when she had Waite
in her presence, in some other phases of
her erratic proceedings, she may be said
to have torn the bandage from her eyes
and unblushingly surveyed her sutton. The
glare of his gold has apparently blurred
her vision and in the momentary aberra-
ton the gilded criminal has escaped.
From this species of color blindness the
historic dame seems never to recover.
She never afterward recognizes the artful
illusionist, and he circulates in her pres
ence with impunity. There have been
stock cases of this kind from each side of
the mountains, which have been serving
as examples of "the mockery of Justice
to endless precepts by press and people.
"Superfuous lags the veteran on the
stage" and these ancient and malodorous
cases which have done duty so long, I'M
less indications fail, must give place to
greater luminaries,-to Haven who es-
capped conviction for a great crime
through the incspacity or the obliging
disloyalty of the states prosecuting Off.
Ger, to Brainerd, who invokes the laws
convenient delays or makes sure of its
yielding quiescence while he leisurely
completes his arrangements to Withdraw
beyond the reach of the laws he has out
ragged, the state he has disgraced, the peo-
pie he has wronged or ruined.
In the eye of the law every accused
person is innocent till his guilt is proved.
There is one law, one course of legal pro-
cedure, for the guilty and the innocent.
The legal checks which to-day seem to
protect guilty man, tomorrow may be
the bulwark of an innocent person. If
an honest use were always made of the
safeguards which the law throws around
a man accused of trespass on the law, if
they did not seem to be oftener the asy-
lum of the scoundrel than the refuge of
the innocent, there could be little reason
to complain of delays in bringing men to
trial. Justice deferred, if sure in the end,
is preferable to hasty justice which might
sometimes punish the undeserving. But
the basis of recent criticism upon the
course of justice in this state is not so
much that justice is strained and the PEG.
pies patience taxed by delays in criminal
prosecutions, but that in particular
class of cases, persons of wealth or social
standing, there is either no trial at all or
substantial miscarriage of justice if a
trial has been had. Certain guilt in such
cases is brazen and impudent in the in
sistence upon its illegal rights " and the
demand for delay, and, as the result in the
case of Brainerd shows, is very apt to win
concession to its specious outcries against
haste. The state guarantees to every per-
son right and justice, completely and
without any denial; promptly and with
out delay" Right and justice should not
be one-sided possessions. They should
not be solely on the side of the wrong
doer. Society, also, has claim upon
these attributes. The community has an
imperative right to free, complete and
prompt trial of offenses against public
order and good morals, against the life,
persons or property of its members. But
in certain cases which have become notori-
GUS in this state, society seems to have had
no rights which the officers of justice
hQua falf hnnnI b.