The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1896-05-07

TUESDAY, MAY Z, 1896.
deprayed and reckless-even paupers
while in the poorhouse and criminals
while in Jail are in every way encour,,
aged. given license and are protected
by the law. No thought is taken Tor
the unfortunate offspring, nor for the
body polite or social, and the irreparaDie
evils that must fall upon all. The
church adds its sanction and its ministers
aid in making these civil contracts by
performing the ceremony with benedic-
ton and prayer.
'If it is wise to prohibit, polygamy'
marriage between near relations, pc
tween the insane and idiotic, because OF
hereditary and transmissions OF eylls, IL
is equally wise to prohibit it in all cases
where like evils may follow. If the
law has the power to prohibit and pun,
ish violations in one case, 1t has equal
right in all others.
+
"There is an endless procession OF
children from all these sources coming
into the mass of population to i've
lives of crime, immortality, want,
suffering, misfortune and degrade
ton, transmitting the faint in con-
stantly ever widening streams, genera
ton after generation, with the ultimate
certainty of the deterioration of the race,
and final irreparable degeneracy.
.
st seems to me that there is moral
obiquity that affects the entire mass of
political, social and religious leaders and
teachers on the subject here being con-
sidered. When we analyze the views
and actions throughout, the glaring in
consistency and unreasonableness that
seems to fill them has no parallel in any
other matter seriously affecting indi-
vidual and the public welfare. Among
the first is false modesty, that is
shocked by any illusions to the most evil
dent and debasing facts that stare every
body in the face on all sides; that rub
every body at every turn.
II
''The church devotes it's time and en-
ergies to prove that every human body
possesses an immortal spiritual body,
that is liable to future torture unless 1t
be made perfect in morals and truth,
and that must be done while it remains
in its mortal shell. 1t pleads and raves
for prohibition of liquors and tobacco,
for forced observance of Sunday, for
forced attendance on schools, for recog-
milton of God Christ, and the Protestant
religion in the civil constitutions, and
for sundry other restraints and COM
mands, with penalties, in order to save
these imperiled souls. Reformers go
about the land devising ways and means
to educate, civilize, provide for and ele-
vate the ignorant, the degraded, the pow
erty-stricken that pervade every plane
of human action, and wander in and out
among the people everywhere. And yet
these, with general society added, hold
up their hands before their faces in nor
ror. if some honest soul who has truth
for a guide, calls to them to look, ana
points them to the source of the evils they
are battling with and tells them they are
responsible for it all, for the law is only
their united will in statutory phraseol-
ogy. That it is the result of their volun-.
tary blindness and false conception OF
civil. moral and religious duties. That
they are seeking to deal with conditions
alone. instead of the causes of them,
and while trying to mitigate the evils IN
the results, are supporting, increasing
and enlarging the causes. That on every
other plane of action they recognize and
deal with the causes; but with men and
women they ignore the causes and battle
with results alone. That they regard
domestic brutes as of more Importance
than they do human beings
Doubtless Macauley had this condition
of society in mind when, forty years ago,
he predicted the disintegration and down
fall of the American republic. Writing
TO Henry S. Randall, in 1857, he said:
81 have long been convinced that instl-
buttons, purely democratic, must. sooner
or later, destroy liberty or civilization,
or both. Your constitution is all sail
and no anchor. Either some Caesar or
NAPOLEON will seize the reins of govern
ment with a strong hand, or your repuD-
lie will be as fearfully plundered and laid
waste by barbarians in the twentieth
century as the Roman empire was i'll the
Fifth. with this difference-that the
Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Ro-
man empire, came from without, and that
your Huns and Nandals will have been
within your own country,
by your own Institutions
IT would seem that Il rational people,
with such facts before them, for in
stance. ms those furnished by Dugdale's
history of the Jukes family, from whom
1900 criminals descended, would proht
by it. and take steps to close the Hood
gates of evil. And the Jukes case is not
an exceptional one, by any means; there
are thousands such; they exist every day,
everywhere.
The magnitude Of the evil and danger
resulting from our criminally lax mar
riage laws is simply appalling. Yet few
ordinary citizens-those who pay taxes
have conception of it, or realize the eX-
tent of the cruel wrong done them by
it.
An intelligent comprehension of the
subject would, therefore, indicate that
the first step in needed reform is state
regulation of marriage with a view to
the arrest of descent of crime by heredi-
tary transmission of the tendency. And,
dealing directly, then, with the crop on
hand. it is suggested that punishment,
rs such, as penalty, should have no
place in n civilized code. 1t is permissi-
BILE only as feature of discipline incl
dental to reform; that as criminals are
liyisable into the two great classes, the
durable or accidental criminal, and the
habitual or incurable criminal of LON
end and object of penal enact
ments should be the cure of the ezra BILE
the reclamation to usefulness OF those
who are amenable to it, and the elimi-
nation of the incurable. To this end,
therefore, a classification of all criml-
nails is necessary.