The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-07-07

| nary thing that in the arguments made
for setting them at liberty their adj
vocates seem to find no middle ground
between their own weak sentimentalism
| and a vindictive personal desire that
the Youngers should suffer. They are
either unable or unwilling to look at
the matter in it's larger light of the
relation of law to the community. The
personal element does not enter into
our view of this question at all. The
G 10 e can understand the severity
Of the punishment which the Youngers
have undergone. If there We're
nothing to be considered but
the personal fortune and personal
future of these men, resting upon
guarantees and pledges of those who
know them best, the plea for their re-
lease might appeal to judgment as it
now does to feeling. But the point
which these crusaders overlook alto
gether is what must be the effect of
such a pardon upon popular regard for
law
We are told, and it is true, that
the purpose of a legal penalty is less
to give the criminal pain than it is to
give the community a Salutary lesson
and uphold the regulations on which its
self-preservation is founded, as we'll
as to attempt the reformation of the
offender himself. In a notorious
case like this, where the name
of the Younger brothers has
stood for so many years as the repre-
sentative Of hideous crime, what else
can their release teach than that any
evil doer, no matter how black and
horrible his deed, may hope for ultimate
release? If the Youngers can secure
a pardon, then there is nothing which
a man can do that will bolt the prison
doors upon him securely. There is no
of1ense against society, against-law
which may not ultimately be condoned.
The whole system of legal penalties is
changed into a sliding scale of i'm
prisonment, graduated according to the
brought to bear upon the pardoning
power. We believe that the natural
and necessary effect of that will be,
in Minnesota as it has been in every
other community, to teach disregard
for law, to foster the worst side of
those criminally disposed, and to sub
stitute private vengeance for the calm
and inf1exibIe operation of public JUS
tice.
If there were nothing but the per-
sOnal side of this question, which has
been forced into undue prominence, to
be considered, if it were merely the
fate of these individuals for the rest
of their lives that had to be decided, we
could yield cheerfully to the humane
others, and say that an opportunity
should be offered to these men to go
and sin no more. Knowing that this
is only a part, and lesser part, of
what is to be considered; having seen
the vicious and demoralizing effect of
such sentimentalism everywhere; be-
lieving that to grant the prayer of
the friends of these vioIators of the
law would be to weaken all the re-
straints of law, and to plant in the
state of Minnesota angry Indifference
or a positive contempt for the laws
themselves, we believe that the agita-
ton for pardon is a serious offense
against public order.
Upon the heads of those who may
wish to be responsible for it rests the
burden of a vast responsibility They
may be safe in letting the Youngers
loose, as far as their future is con-
cerned. They may never again outrage
a law whose hand has fallen upon
them so heavily; but the men whose
hands shall open to them the way
to freedom will have upon their
conscience hereafter the weight of a
series of crimes traceable directly to
this notice to the public that there is
no offense so heinous that it may not
be condOned, and no law which can
be enforced against a growing ten
dency to sentimentalism. In the in
terest of the state itself, of the perpet-
uation of law and order, which de-
ponds, not upon the severity Of it's
punishments, but upon their certainty,
and in the name of the law-abiding
people of Minnesota, we declare that
their pardon cannot be anything less
than a crime against the state.