The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1883-11-21
KILLING JACOB MELTING.

The miserable wretch, Jacob Melting, is
dead. He murdered Ada Atkinson. A
crime in the presence of which exaggeration
sits dumb and civilization bushes crimson.
No wild beast, that ever roamed the forests
of Indiana, was halt as beastly as Jacob
Melting. The awful scene that occurred In
that lone habitation, where Ada Atkinson
thought herself secure, when she was con-
fronted by Jacob Melting, will never be de-
scribed. The sudden appearance of the
fiend, the announcement of his purpose, the
grapple, the struggle, the terror. the over
towering strength of the demon. the prayer
for mercy, the ebbing out of life blood. the
last expiring gasp, dead, and yet that muir
derous beast has been permitted to live, to eat,
sleep, see the sunlight, and enjoy the protec-
ton of the law. The people have brooked
over the internal transaction; good people;
law-abiding people; farmers men with wives
and daughters who must sometimes be left
alone. Gods it is not strange that the peo-
pie became FESTIVE under the delays which
the law created We are told that the mob"
was made up of determined, orderly men,"
that they were the leading farmers of Ben
ton County" yet they are shamefully de-
nounced as "nurderers' vile wretches, no
better than Melting, because it is assumed
they were like him, guilty of murder; and
we are told that because those leading farm
ers" Of Benton County ended the existence
of a damnabe murderer, that they have
made "Hoosier a term of reproach,' and
that the killing of the fend is without
palliation" and "stain upon the State"
Even Governor Porter wants to catch the
Heading farmers of Benton County and
punish them for ending the existence of n
creature for whose deyilish deed no word has
stood that killing is not, necessarily murder
and writer's should be able to distinguish
between the Just exasperatio.s of communi-
ties and the motives which animated such
creatures as Jacob Melting. When such is not
the case people treat all criticisms upon such
acts as Jacob Melting and the leading farm
ers of Benton County committed as insipid,
cant, peurile gush, the lowest order of flap
doodle. What is wanted is quick justice by
the Courts, under the sanction of the
law. If the law delays it provokes
dangerous situations. All power is inner
ent in the people, and under peculiar
circumstances, such as existed in Benton
County, they will assert it. They will take
the law into their own hands They will
mass their power, and it is supreme folly
in such cases to talk about prosecutions.
Twelve men cannot be found anywhere who
would make the Heading farmers" of Benton
County pay any penalty whatever for Ere
moving Jacob Melting He is dead and he
ought to be dead. 1t would have been better
probably for the law to have strangled the
life out of him, but the law delayed. There
is too much circumlocution in the law in
such cases, and instead of denouncing the
leading farmers of Benton County-men
of families, men of homes devoted
to law and order as rule, as
murderers. it were better to agitate the ques-
OF so changing the laws and the practice OF
the Courts that such fiends as Melting shall
be made 10 leave the world at the shortest
prudent notice In almost every instance
where such "a crime as Melting committed
goes unpublished beyond prudent period,
the people will seek to remedy the defects in
the law by taking it into their own hands.
Civilization has not been set back an inch
by the leading farmers" of Benton County