The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-09-16

law is the same, but let anybody try
pushing as hard to secure the convic-
ton of an apple-thief as he might with
the hearty approval of the whole com
munity push for the conviction of
horse-thief, and he will be made to
understand that the two acts are very
differently regarded. Too many good
citizens" are fearful that their own
boys will be caught in that net. They
don't expect them to be guilty of horse
stealing, and so they feel at ease in
reprobating that crime, but they cannot
feel at ease when they hear that fruit
growing neighbor is enforcing the law
against the robbers of his orchard.
1t is just about the same in regard to
the fence law. Hundreds of otherwise
respectable citizens will turn out their
stock to run the roads spring and fall,
regardless of the damage that stock is
sure to inhct on those whose confidence
in the power of laws to enforce them
selves has tempted them to remove
their road fences. The law can be en-
forced, just as the law against fruit
stealing can be enforced, but only at
the cost of offending lot of neighbors
who will make you feel their resent
ment in many very unpleasant ways.
Public morality is far below the Bible
f,l, IL,
nifty a conventional standard of morals,
much more accommodating than the
Scriptural one. Man-stealing and baby
selling were not disreputable acts in the
South before the war. Even clergymen
of the highest ability and learning were
ready to defend and justify these vii
lainies. Few nations engage in aggress-
i've wars without general popular APP
proval, and the theft of province, or
the overthrow of weak opponent,
hardly finds voice raised against the
act. Who in our great, glorious and
free republic have cared how much the
Indians are maltreated and robbed ? All
through the far West they look upon
man who favors decent treatment of
the Indians with the same cold disap-
proval that bans man in Vermont who
is so unwise as to arrest an apple-thief,
or impound trespassing cattle and de-
mand the payment of damages. The
most one is allowed to do is to privately
speak to the thief's friends, and en-
deavor to secure their influence for
your protection in the one case, and in
the other to put up the cattle and feed
them well, and then 90 and notify the
owner, with apologies for troubling
him, and the prompt refusal to take any
pay for your trouble or the damage
you have suffered.
Now while this continues to be the
level of average public opinion, the folly
and costliness of the old style of fencing
may, and should indeed, be preached on
all favorable occasions, in the hope of
gradually modifying and remoulding
public opinion on the subject; but no
wise farmer, and certainly no wise gar
dener, will take down his fences. When
this missionary work, in years to come,
has effected thorough change of mind
and heart on the fence question, so that
the man who turns his cattle out, and
not the man who takes them up, feels
the pressure of public reprobation, then
it will be time to take down the fences.
Some now living may hope to see that
time-though it will be far along in the
twenty-second century before apple
stealing Cor perhaps even rum-selling)
will be looked upon as really wicked,
like horse-stealing.