Montgomery County sentinel., 1889-01-04
THE PASSION FOR MURDER.

sincere wish.
THE PASSION FOR MURDER.
The desire to destroy seems to be one of
the strongest and most deeply implanted
passions of human nature. Its manifesto
tions are among the most striking charac-
teristics of savage life, while they are but
partially restrained by the most conserva-
tive influences Of civilization. The history
of races and nations is simply record of
bloody wars and of the burning and de-
populalng of cities and inhabited countries,
while the entire complex systems of gov
ernments and codes is little more than an
attempt To prevent one sort of violent and
destructive acts known as crimes by means
of another sort of violent and destructive
acts called punishment.
The love of destroying is so rooted in the
savage that he never builds. His object is
to wreak this passion as much as possible
upon others, and to provide as little as pos
sibe of his own to be destroyed by others.
One of the most remarkable facts in the his
tory of human nature is the difficulty of
maintaining treaties and leagues among
nations because these would tend to re-
strain their desire to work destruction upon
each other. This is the most prominent
fact in the history of the American abo.
rigines, the numerous tribes being from
time immemorial at war one with another,
and because of their unwillingness to be
deprived of the privilege of slaughterlng
each other, they were unable, save in a very
few instances and in limited way, to COM
bne against their common enemy, the white
invaders.
Let us, however, pass over the wars, the
religious prosecutions and all the organized
slaughter which history recounts. 1t was
all done through patriotism, through reli-
gious zeal, to uphold the state or the law or
from some motive of public benefit and per.
sonal sense of duty sufficiently authoritative
to justify every act and to quiet every con-
science No general of an army surveying
his bloody battle field, no religious zealot
throwing Christian virgins to the lions, no
crusader riding forth to war on the infides,
no law officer dragging the condemned to
the block or the halter, no person actuated
by high public motives and sense of duty
ever experienced remorse for his acts of
slaughter. Remorse is largely product of
the imagination and education. 1t only
visits those who have no consciousness of
duty done to uphold their hearts, and only
those of them who have been educated out
OF their national selfishness. The extreme
egotist, the man who can see only his own
aggrandizement to the exclusion of the in
terest OF others, never feels qualm OF con-
science. He is destitute of any sentiment
of pity or generosity and only perceves
justice as an intellectual impression but not
AS principle.
A man then may kill in the line of duty,
and he often kills because it gratifies and
satisfies strong desire There would be
much more bloody violence if people were
not restrained by fear of punishment or
appropriate revenge. Lynch law may be
excused in scattered settlements where there
are no courts or those are held at long in.
tervals, OF in places where the courts per-
sistently refuse or neglect to punish crimi-
hals-or in cases of dastardy and brutal out.
rage, but such systematized illegal killing
offers SO many opportunities for wreaking
private hates, and is so often used for the
worst purposes, that popular justice is To be
resorted to with great caution to say the
least.
The person who deliberately kills to re.
move u rival, or to crafty private revenge,
or for the purpose of robbery would be con
sidered u murderer Of the most wicked type !;
nevertheless he would at least have def.
nite object and logical reason for his act,
but the man who kills with no such reason,
simply from the pleasure he takes in Staying,
is in every respect far more atrocious and
dangerous character. His murders are all
the more heinous and terrible because they
are committed without shadow of reason
Of these are the men who shoot down
strangers with whom they have had no nc.
quaintance and no relations of any sort.
They will often approach their Intended
victim and by deliberate insults and most
wary person SO that there may be at least
the pretence Of a quarrel and an apparent
cause for the killing, OF such cases are
those where man deliberately plans to
wreck train or sink ship filled with
innocent passengers whom he does not
know aud against whom he has never had
a grudge, or occasion for one. OF slch cases
are those where person wantonly fires
into a crowd of people ostensibly to shoot a
particular one, but thoroughly Indifferent
as to the innocent bystanders who may be
killed by his act. These are really the most
truculent and ferocious of the whole class
OF murderers, because they are those who
murder without an object and purely for
the love of slaughter. They are, of all
others, the most dangerous to society be-
cause they nearly always wholly escape
punishment, or at the worst only receive
the slightest forms of it, because the law is
unable to discover in their acts the settled
malice which alone can constitute murder.
The law is extremely conservative 1t has
admitted of no new principles for centuries.
1t has enlarged the number of its rules TO
meet the vastly changed conditions of life
under modern civilization, but it has not
enlarged the scope of its dogmas. The en-
tire consideration of criminal malice turns
largely on the doctrines of psychology, aud
although there have been of late extensive
researches in that science there has been no
provision to alter the purview of the law
to effect an adjustment in the premises.
All the questions arising out Of them are
full Of interest.
Insenh Rather WAS hanged ut Canier