The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-07-01
THE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATES
STRANGE IRRITATION AT
THE DEMAND FOR LAW
ENFORCEMENT

ciety and against the common tenetS
of decency and manhood, the Raleigh
Christian Advocate contains in the
same issue another editorial on the
subject of Saturdays shooting which
has in it food for a great deal of
thought.
After deploring the tragedy and the
fact that houses of the sort involved
are permitted in the city. DR.. Ivey goes
on to say that the Advocate has in
the past lifted it's voice against this
evil and then remarks: yet we are
not willing either to throw all the
blame on the city officials or to hold
up the city of Raleigh to be "a stencil
in the nostrils of men. We are in no
mood to deal in hysterial senseless
denunciation of individuals or city
government The truth of the matter
is the whole sad shocking event of
last Saturday emphasizes the fact that
the only sure preventive is the
effective employment of those aSen-
cies which reach and work upon the
human heart
While admitting that it is necessary
to apply the civil statutes, the Ad-
vocate states that the law can do COM
paratively little beside the influence or
the home, the churches, Sunday
schools and the preached word .
And in diagnosing" Saturdays affair,
DIR. Ivey states that it would be a
io.ta Iyo tn rI1o rn Legal
and municipal aspects at the expense
of considerations touching the human
heart.
While the above indicates gooo
moral theory, we yet fail to see in what
way insistence upon the doing of their
plain duty by the city authorities
could in any wise prejudice the moral
suasion upon which DIR. Ivey seems
so strongly to rely. And we fail to
grasp his reason in apparently wishing
to apply only the civil and not the
criminal remedies of the law. The
real hurt is done before an action for
damages may be started in court,
and at the best money is but poor
redress. Surely the Advocate on pc
half of the preachers is not jealous
lest some other agency than the pulpit'
according to its lights, should seek to
help TO put down evil when the law
has provided the remedy and it is only
demanded that the men who are
sworn to execute the laws should
Ierform the functions for which
81 a hnI nav
that the whole matter of deal
ing with vice should be left to the
preachers, is by a not strained anaiy-
sis. equivalent to saying that there
should Se no Las and al shoul
labor in brotherly love towards the
perpetuation OF goodness and light.
That is Uptopian, but scarcely prac-
teal and even the Advocate does not
follow its own gospel in that respect.
1t cries out against saloons. 1t would
literally enforce every law against
them and it fights for new laws, Yet
it would be as wise to leave the mat
ter of persuading men not to drink
to the influences of the home and OF
the pulpit, as to trust the even greater
and worse than licensed pitfalls of the
immoral houses to those influences
alone. We had thought it was gener-
ally agreed that laws were necessary
evils for the fact that many people
will obey nothing else and them only
when they are caught in violation and
forcibly restrained from continued evil
a
sion have on that class?
But one thing we grant DR.. Ivey
that he is in no mood to indulge in
violent denunciation of individuals or
anyone else.
Saturdays case has we'll nigh caused
the jury tampering cases to be forgot
ten, yet they created considerable stii
at the time. Yet in a previous issue,
the Advocate, after giving the result
of the Catfish ilgo case, referring to
the plaintiff as being the prosecution
has a squib about interference with
juries in which it fails entirely to state
for which side the men who were
put in Jail were working, but DELHI
erately creates the impression that
both sides had been endeavoring to
influence the jury. 1T has gotten to
the point, says the Advocate, that
when an important case is to be tried,
there seems to be general expectation
that both sides will work the jury for
all it is worth. The thing is done SO
frequently, If We can credit reports as
to- warrant the assumption that such
an act Is regarded as justifiable.". The
remedy, continues the editorial, is not
in spotting particular jury tamperers
| but by creating a public sentiment
| that will demand that only the most
| moral and intelligent men may form
our juries.' And the Advocate de
clares with emphasis that it is going
| to create the sentiment.
When 1t is remembered that DIR.
| Ivey assumes that the act is regarded
as 'justifiable" and that the jury is to
be worked in every instance by both
sides-when he is the first except those
convicted for trying to hurt Gattis fol
KiIgo's profit to reach such an assump