Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-01-16
RELIC OF BARBAR|SM
Rev. DR.. Bristol Scores the
Whipping Post.
AN ELOQUENT SERMON
TELLS OF MANNER By WHICH Re
+. FORM COULD BE EFFECTED.
Marching Backward is Not Part Of This
Progressive Age He Says
to Congregation. aT

e In the course Of an eloquent sermon yes
terday at the Metropolitan NJ E. Church.
Rev Frank NJ, Bristol D. D., denounced in
strong terms the attempts that are being
made. to restore in this community that
relic OF the cruelty of rbygone times. the
whipping post. DR.. Bristol also showed
that the proposed establishment Of the lash
for wife beaters or any other class OF Of
tenders in the District of Columbia would
be in direct violation of the constitution Of
the United States. He took as his text.
instruments of Torture" Genesis. 1875. He
spoke of the, work of John Hoeard, the
great prison reformer of England. who re-
ouested that a sun dial be placed over his
grave And" he said. there are those
who in this advanced Christian age would
ask Congress to perform the wonderful
miracle of turning backward the shadow
on that sun dial"
! Continuing DIR. Bristol said
Back to the whipping post 1t is
strange, cruel and barbarous cry. 1t
sounds like a voice from the days of tyr
amy and terrorism When Calderon says
all just laws condemn cruelty he must in
clude the cruelty of legal penalties. for the
vicious and wicked element of torture
should be excluded from all forms of pun
ishment In the long and awful history
of cruelty nothing has been more cruel
than the instruments invented by the per-
verted ingenuity of man for the punish
ment of crime Who could have invented
the piIiory, the rack, the thumbScrew, the
cross and the whipping post but cruel
heart? Who could have first suggested
saving a man asunder, cutting out his
tongue, burning him alive or logging him
at post or at the tail of cart, but one
who is animated by cruelty?
HAS not the world outgrown these instru-
ments of torture? One after another they
have been abolished by the advancing in
telIigence and Christian sentiment of the
world. No one of all those barbarous in
struments of cruelty was more cruel or
barbarous than the whipping post. This de-
mand for the restoration of this obsolete
instrument of torture is made in Washing
ton the capital of the most enlightened. hui
name and democratic government in the
world. 1t is either confession of the
weakness. laxity and ineffieiency of our
local government. or is reflection upon
the enlightenment of the community,
which, If carried into effect, would place
stigma upon the good name of Washing
ton and stain upon the eScutcheOn OF
American democracy.
rs not such demand a confession, after
all, that our civilization Is not civilized?
We are asked to return to the government
of fear and terror and to re-enact the lex
talionis, AN eye for an eye, tooth for a
tooth, blood for blood. cruelty for cruelty,
brutality for brutality.
Look Before We Leap.
LET us look before we leap back into
this chasm of barbarism from which we
have been slowly climbing for the past two
thousand years. Torture and cruelty are
not reformatory. Will the whip do what
education cannot do? The severer the PEN
alties needed for crime the lower must be
the intellectual and moral life of a COM
munity We cannot whip man without
admitting that we have neglected his edu-
cation. What we fail to correct in the
school room we can never correct at the
whipping post.
In the name of the splendid public school
system of Washington. l say we have no
use for the whipping post. SCR &
Promote kindness with CATO mine
tails?'' Qperried DR. Bristol mo, promote
kindness by Kindness. All you promote by
cruelty is cruelty. Brutality develops brai-
tally. Montescue well says, The severity
of punishments is filter for despotic gov
ernments. whose principle is terror. than
for republic whose spring is honor ana
virtue - sgsS7
THE genius of our republican institutions
condemns the whipping post as an instTal-
ment of despotic terrorism. The cruel form
OF punishment would defeat the very, ends
OF Justice and reform. 1t would be demon
aiizing and bratalizing- to the victim. 1T