Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-03-01

a more wholesome and moral sentiment,
and it adds:
"In these enlightened days, when men
and women stand practically on the came
footing, they should be held equally respon-
sible for the faults they commit. Bad men
are no worse than bad women, and rice
oersa. Women in the nineteenth century
understand themselves as well as men, and
they have more restraints thrown around
them than men, which should help to keep
them straight. If they fall, they fall be-
cause they are perfectly willing to do so.
They are generally as guilty as the man
who falls with them. The days when gay
Lotharios went around betraying innocent
msidens are past When innocent maidens
get themselves into trouble nowadays they
are not often guiltless. Our morals will be
in a much more wholesome state when
these facts come to be generally recog
nized."
That is all well enough, but we take
some special exceptions. 1t is putting the
case too strongly to say that the same
severity of Judgment should be visited
upon all women who fall. As to the class
typifed by those the Hour names, we con-
cur with our contemporary, but 1t passes
reason when it would place all bad women
in the pillory. Woman is the weaker yes.
sci by nature and civilization she is
largely dependent upon man for projections
and her fall is more chargeable to her de-
ceiver than to her trustful nature. There
is no warrant for the harshness Of the
latter sentences of the critical journals
criticism, and we pass them in the belief
that they contain their own antidote.
That young women fall who are practically
guiltless compared to the men who circum.
vent their ruin, is too well known to more
than be recalled to rebuke the Hours
severity. But we will go beyond the
declaration of the New York periodical in
all it can do to bring about that ideal state
of society wherein men will be held to the
same accountability with women for like
crimes. That we will early reach such an
elevated plane of justice we very well
know there is no reason to expect, yet the
time must come, unless the world turns
backward in its march.
However, the general remarks OF the
Hour furnish food for much thought, and
are full of suggestions. That sickly
sentimentality concerning the vicious is
enlarging in this country is undeniable, but
let our contemporary reflect upon the fact
that it is extended to bad men twenty
times where the recipient of it once is a
proceeds. The most despicable OF muir.
derers, the Thugs, the gross and brutal
human butchers, are those who are the
objects of this sentimental expenditure of
femininity. 1t is an abnormal manifestation
of one of the best qualities in woman's ma
ture; perversion of that which makes
her what she is, the solace OF mans woes.
But whatever its genesis and whatever the
object of its effusion it is none the less to
be repressed and condemned.
1t is charitable to write it down species
of feminine insanity when pure woman
whose sensitive nature should revolt from
even the sight of such thug as Wheeler,
the San Francisco brute, for instance, is
the victim of such perversion of the SYM
pathetic in her nature as to fawn upon the
stranger and condole with him. Vice in
all it's infamy must be kept abhorrent, and
it is the duty of men constantly to guard
womankind from the singular and deplor-
able sympathy some of the sex expend upon
every great rascal upon whom the law
fastens its just hold.