The Bessemer indicator., 1893-09-02

Man has been called an animal
with the privilege of sclf-destruc-
tion." but the criminal anomalies of
the human mind are by no means
limited to penchant for suicide.
When wolf rends Il flock OF sheep
or mink depopulates Il whole poul-
try farm in u single night their in
spring motive is not gratuitous
cruelty as much as a wish to make
the best of lucky chance and pro-
vide supply of food for the need Of
less propitious times.
In beings OF our species, on tho
other hand, the propensity of de-
structivcncss has often assumed u
form that appears to make the lux
ury of murder its own reward. In
the default of other victims the
buccaneers Of tho seventeenth CEN
tury would attack one another, and
the troops of the Ghcngis khan
howled for carnage like the Roman
rabble for the blood of the arena
victims and the idle pelados of Ma
drid for the boniires of the inquisition.
There have been amateur assassins
who disdained to avail themselves of
chance OF plunder, but stabbed
strangers in the dark for the sole
purpose OF enjoying the consequent
sensations; and the mania of Jesse
Pomeroy is by no means without Il
precedent
About the end of tho sixteenth
century country baron in the neigh
borhood of Auxerre, France was be-
seiged in his own chateau by II mob
of peasants, who, with more and more
emphasis, demanded the return OF
their children, or at least satisfac-
tory explanation of their fate; Men
sicur lie baron, 1t seems, had, under
some pretext or other, enticed at
least twenty youngsters to his castle,
and failed to account for their disap-
pearancc till the feudal submissive
ness of his serfs exhausted it's re-
sources of appeal, and the dis
tractcd relatives of the missing chill
dren were joined by vendetta mob
of several hundred armed rustics.
The magistrates of AuXerre had
postponed the proposed investigation
in Difference to the protests of the
baron's brothcr,a wealthy abbot, who
denounced the whole matter as n
marotte jacquere-a clodhopper's
craze; but the formidable spread of
the revolt had at last obliged the
baron to surrender himself to a res
cuing party of militia, and an impair
ttsl tGi;s lif I'd TIC taci that the
defendant had spent considerable
sum in bribing his domcstics to kid
nap twenty two children and assist
him in torturing them to death with
every refinement of cruelty.
Judge Armstrong, of Leeds, has
made n study of the arson mania,
tending to prove that in three out of
five cases the motive of the firebug
is not revenge, but an unexplained
and apparently irresistible penchant
for mischief The supposed delight
in the pyrotcchnic grandeur of q con
migration is only a secondary factor
of that propensity, for in Northern
Italy numerous individuals-me
boys. some of them have been ar
rested and punished for mischievous
tampering with the dilscs that line
the principal rivers OF Lombardy.
In some cases the offenders pretended
to have resisted the evil impulse for
weeks. in the firm belief that the in
stigator of crime must be il demonio
in person, but were apparently un-
able to resist the temptations of the
fun to inundate whole township by
a few minutes of midnight work
with spade,
There are strong reasons to sus.
pect that the freaks OF Judge Lynch
are occasionally due to similar mo-
tives, and it is n suggestive circum-
stance that the whitc-cap outrages
are less frequent in the lawless and
regulation-needed border lands of
the Southwest than in the states