The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1890-11-13
Public Morals.

Public Morals.
The study of the morals of a people is
simply an inquiry into what the public
knows or cares about duty. BY public NOR
ais is meant the average Righteousness OF
the whole people. Society is so full of Local
and individual forces that in the most de-
praved epOchs in history we find some good
men-sOme great characters. The Pagan
times could always point to a Job, or a
Socrates, or Zeno. Like mountain peaks
the great, upright souls of earth can be dis
cerned from afar. But the average morality
of all age or nation is not so easily found.
Everyone can see that AntOnne the Pous
was better man than Nero, but whether
old Rome was more depraved than modern
Paris, or Carthage more or less civilized
than Minneapolis are questions more diff
cult to answer. 1t is safe assumption,
however. that the morality of America is at
least higher than that Of old Rome or
AthenS-that the average public sentiment
is higher than it was two thousand years
ago. OF this. then. we are assured that,
bad as the world still is, there has been a
steady moral progress, and that vice has de
clined along with the decline of barbarism
otherwise the modern statesman, philan-
thrOpst and Christian might we'll lie down
in despair. In contemplating the past we
see only its splendid temples, its pyramids,
its colossal ruins and triumphal arches
those old lands come down to us wreathed
in garlands of art or letters, and not in the
rags of their vices; and yet we know the
vices were there. We know that crime.
and human passion, and selfshness. and the
cruelest tyranny ravaged the world. Who
ever looks behind the drapery of literature
and the arts which hide the awful vices and
brutal passions of classic nations will be-
hold the sky Of Rome and Athens and An
cent Egypt darken, while the heavens that
overarch our own land and all modern ma
tiOnS are aglOw with the light of public
virtue.
And yet our public morality is low
enough. Compared with what men once
were our condition m1y seem tolerable,
compared with what we should be, it is dis
graceful. 1t is the more disgraceful that
our moral development has not kept pace
with our intellectual conquests. Every
child knows that integrity is the law of life
but hardly one man in thousand illustrates
the truth in his daily conduct We are a
nation of learned minds, and weakened
cOnsciences. 1t is only single specimen
fact in our history that New York CITY
owes $3.50, 900, 600, more than half of which
was stolen by its own municipal officers
Over railways and banks. and customs. and
life insurance and public contracts, and de-
Scending over most private business inter
eSts hangs cloud of suspicion. Money is
borrowed. not by character. but by an ex-
animation Of the books of the recorder.
a "a nj a 1ict ic
clOuded title. The land is full of open, and
half disguised frauds. and the same moral
weakness that engenders such sin permits
it to go unpunIshed.
One cause of this diSgraceful condition is
the neglect of courts and juries to enforce
the law against offenders, and the haste of
executives to pardon criminals. Law is the
first great support of any land. People
having the intellectual light to enact good
laws ought to have the virtue and moral
courage to enforce them. A state cannot
wait for religion to make men good. or for
culture to make them moral, for religion
and culture demand time: whereas the state
cannot wait one minute for reform. Moses
made the Hebrew nation by means of law.
Law precedes the gospel. The law is the
schOOlmaster to bring the pOpulace up to-
ward civilization. Criminals never learn
duty from any abstract study of philosophy
A Tweed or Mike Mcdonald or Johnson
never sits down like Spencer or Mills or
a Northrop to study methods in the light of
moral obligation. Their only instructor is
the statute book; and when the law is mad,
equate. or not in the least liable to be en-
forced. there is no schO.master to teach
such men honesty. Our local Tweeds and
Turpins care nothing for public opinion
they have no sense of shame. Hence to