The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-09
THE SHAME OF THE NATION
From the Louisville Courier-Journal
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From the Louisville Courier-Journal.
 A indicative of the urgency of the
 "A need for return to a higher 4 A plane, political and moral, three late examples are striking
 At Oakland, Cal, on December A last, Mrs. Isabella J. Martin was convicted, for the second time, of having used dyna- mite to blow up and assassinate, in the most villainous manner, Judge Ogden and his innocent family in their home. It appears that she was offended by his decision in an insurance case that she had had before him. She forced Baby John Martin, by threats of death, to set the dynamite and to fire the fuse. He so testified at both of her trials; and both times she was convicted. She claimed that Martin was her son. Here was evidently degenerate, dangerous woman; and yet the maudlin jury, in their verdict recommended her to "the extreme mercy of the court" Mercy to her means death to some other vic tim at her hands or at the hands or someone else like her. That jury should recommend mercy to her shows now deeply seated is the canker from which we are suffering.
 l In Ohio. at West Union, and in it's immediate neighborhod, about 1900 indict- ments have been found against all grades and classes of citizens, in town and in I the country, for accepting bribes for their votes. So far over 400 have pleaded guilty and many more are eager to do so in order to escape with a light penalty Here we see how low are our standards of political or civic morality and duty
 The precious privilege of freemen Is l bought and sold os if 1t were only con temptible thing. If no value or dignity ] We are told by late dispatch that the governor of Alabama, who likes poetry" picked up Lord Bryon's works and read .orhe Prisoner of Chillon." He apparent ly had never read Byron before. But. at any rate, this poetical fomantic governor read Byron's poem before he started on his annual tour of the state prison and the convict camp. "The poem," we are told,
 ..so deeply impressed him that, after visit ing the convicts, he exercised wholesale
 clemency, pardoning 100 long-term pris- oners, 40 of them convicted of homicide
 and 20 being life-convicts." The gover-
 nor said to the reporter: T gave the matter careful consideration and could find no good reason for keeping these men who had served so long and so dias-
 trously to their own health and happi- ness,"'
 Mark how tenderlyp the governor re- fers to these murderers '.who had served
 so long and so disastrously to their
 health and happiness What right has state to make murderer serve the state long when the service interferes with his
 "health and happinessg" It is true these murderers interfered with the 'health and happiness of the victims and of the widows and helpless children and the fathers and mothers of the dead; but who bothers about the poor creatures that were only murderdd? Have they lanv votes or influential friends now?
 Bonnivard. the rich and scholarly man
 who sacrificed all his wealth and his free
 dom for Geneva and for the liberty of
 others. who was imprisoned, not for the
 murder of fellow-man, but for his un-
 selfish effort to help his fellowsmen-
 Bonnivard, the noble prisoner of Chiffon,
 gave Byron the theme for his beautiful
 poem; but that beautiful poem was per
 vtrted to base uses when governor pre-
 tended that 1t led him to turn out at one
 stroke 40 common murderers, not because they were innocent or had not had fatr