The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-02-10
EPITHETS AND STATUTES.

Some people seem to imagine that
billingsgate adds force to their remarks
and that coarse investive of the Bow
cry vernacular indicates aggressiveness
and virility. There are those who only
are reputed clever because they Write
like man or woman shrieklng IN an
angry tone of voice, who, if they should
converse upon the street or conduct d
controversy in a public hall in the
same tone, and with similar words and
manner, would be Kissed or hurried on
to Jail for disturbing the peace and Vio-
lating the commonest rules Of decency
and propriety.
There are those who seem to THINK
that the more times they can crowd the
words liar, slave, or idiot into pa
ragraph the more wisdom and strength
of character and refinement 1t shows.
They are mistaken. These are the ar
guments of thugs, wharf rats, street
gamins and broken-down prizefghters.
A quarter of a century ago they might
have been tolerated in frontier locall-
ties, but the world is passing them.
They are away behind the times.
In some states the use of eDithets IS
discouraged by statute. The Texas
legislature is now considering a bill
making the proof that a man has been
called "a liar justifiable defense -
cases of assault and battery. The New
York World has gathered from various
codes the treatment of this habit OF
name-calling in the different states.
Take Virginia, for instance. The
calling of man a liar is crime there.
The legislature of 1896 passed this
law: IF any person shall in the pres-
ence or hearing of another curse or
abuse such person, or use any violently
abusive language to such person con-
corning himself or any of his female
relatives sunder circumstances reason
ably calculated to provoke breach OIL
the peace, he shall be deemed guilty Of
misdemeanor, and on conviction snail
be fined not less than 81 nor mare than
s25."
1t is not a crime to use the liar In
Alabama, but if a man assaults you In
consequence of your application OF the
epithet to him he may give evidence In
justification of any abusive or oppro-
brious language you may have used TO
him. The average jury in that state
holds that the lie is equivalent to the
first blow in a street brawl.
The West Virginia statute declares
that ''all words which, from their usual
construction and common acceptance,
are construed as insults and tend to
violence and breach of the peace, shall
be actionable."
The Kentucky law makes the offens-
i've use of the word a misdemeanor,
punishable by $40 fine. About a year
ago r. H. Thompson, police judge of
Louisville, declared from the bench that
the lie in Kentucky meant a blow, and
honorabiy discharged the man before
him who had knocked down another
who had called him a liar.
To call a man a liar in Georgia is
SANDER at civil law, and on the criminal
side the law regards the man who ap-
plies the epithet to another as bully
and ruffian no less reprehensible than
the blear-eyed bruiser who energies
from a grog shop and strikes the first
man he meets.
The use of such epithets is generally
regarded as coarse and degenerate.
Other states view the practice in
light similar to those already cited.
Instead of being an evidence of virile
aggressiveness they betoken senile
churlishness.