The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-06-26

z the discharge of your duty, the General Assembly of Alabama win set aside a pension for your offspring fer the years to come. For what? For doing yoHr duty. Mir. President. 1t is right for the sheriff to stand there and defend the prisoner. and a manly man win do 1t. IL is nothing short of his duty, it Is right without a premium, and right Is right and God Is God. There Is no use for this Convention to set apart here pension for the discharge of duty on these lines. and 1t will, not set well upon the Constitution of the sovereign citizens of Alabama. If you are going to do that say to the solicitor we are going to reward you, here is Biil Joness son over here a prominent man who killed boy the other day. When you come to prosecute him and dis charge your duty take off your gloves and handle him fearlessly before the jury, his brothers are bood-thirsty fel- lows. if they shoot you down in the discharge of your duty while making your speech the General Assembly will provide for your offspring, and we will set apart an amount to see that they are we'll taken care of. Now we will go to one of these little negroes stuck
 
 price of negroes above that before the in the stand point of dollars and dimes than he was away back wonder in the good old days of slavery.
 MT. Burns-May l ask the gentleman a question?
 MT. Hefiin-Certainly.
 Mir. Burns-Do you realize that there is difference between a brother of a fellow who commits a crime, and a mob. This article refers to a mob.
 MT. Hefiin-I will suggest to my friend the fellows brother might be In the mob. or in the courthouse. I don't know where he might be. It has been suggested to me there are no new duties imposed upon the sheriff-none. The duties of the sheriff today under this provision are as they have been in the days that are gone. I want to say in behalf of the men who i'll the office of sheriff in Alabama, they do not need any premium to make them discharge their duty. They are men specimens as a rule of noble, chivalric manhood, you don't have to hold out dollars and dimes to have them dis charge their duty when they are stand ing facing the howling mob, they do not need the clank of dollars and dimes to nerve them to do their duty, they don't need 1t. they don't ask 1t, have heard no clamor for that. I am op- posed to reconsideration, am opposed to telling the General Assembly to set apart from time to time pensions for Sheriffs and their posses in the dis charge of their duty.
 Mir. Burns-Have we ever required the Solicitors to give up their lives?
 Mir. Hefiin-No.
 MT. Burns-We have as to the Sher- ifs.
 MT. Solicit comes about that in the latter part of this article I am in to the committee in we'll nigh all its contentious. Again I op- posed the reconsideration, the purpose of 1t being that expressed by the cEeir- man of the committee. I was opposed to the provisions of that Section. I thought 1t unwise at that time and so expressed myself to the Convention. I think the amendment contemplated to follow this suspension of the rules well illustrates the unwisdom of the origin al section. It is like a proposition in ge- ometry, you lay down a false principle In mathematics and put 1t to working as you would turn a. crank and it grlnds out false and erroneous results aIways or if you lay down 8 proposition Tn logic with either of the premises false or fallacious wherever you seek to draw a conclusion from 1t that conclus- ion Is always wrong. My contention before the Convention was that 1t was wrong, for this Convention to get out of the sphere of constitution mak- ing and get after the Sheriffs of Ala bama with stringent and far-reaching laws such as appear in that section. Now let us see what follows that law. We have provision proposed before the Convention which when the moral of 1t Is applied certainly smacks Of pa- ternalism. Let us see what is involved in all this. First, the Shertff's family are to be provided for and then the posses families are to be provided for. The Chairman of the Committee gave as an instance illustrating why those families ought to be provided for, khe instance of certain policemen and his mother and sister.
 Mir. Jones-Was a member Of the State troops.
 Mir. Sollie-I misunderstood the gen. tleman. The mother and sister of this trooper rose up between him and his duty. Therefore 1t is contended that the maintenance of the mother and sis ter should be provided for by the State that they may stand aside from his pathway. The gentleman is unfortun- ate in his illustration. It shows how far the word family may go. We have a law requiring a man to support those collateral members of his kin that are near to him; we have cer- tain criminal punishments and penal ties following a failure to support them. The family of the Sheriff is expressed in broad language and the family may be prolific, he may be one of fifteen children, and he may have fif- teenl and perhaps has father and mother. and here is turned loose almost a brigade of persons for the State of Alabama to support. Per- haps he has called in posse of 100 persons, and twenty of them may be wounded, and they each bring in as many other persons for the State of Alabama to support, all included in the language of this amendment. Mir. President, there is no provision that the families of police men who die in the discharge of their duties shall be looked after; and they outnunber by far the Sheriffs of Ala bama. If it is fair to protect the sher- ifs 1t is fair to protect policemen and it cannot change the question of moral right involved in the proposition that in one case you put the Sheriffs into a straight jacket and in the other
 Mir. Burns-Is there any ordinance saying anything about policemen?
 MT. Sollie-There is not, and l was coming to that very proposition and at to explain it. The law says that the Sheriff must discharge his duty: he does it, and dies, and his family are to be protected. The law requires that the policeman shall do so that the marshals