Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1913-08-22
CIRCUIT COURT.
Crowd Present Monday
to Hear Charge.

The August term of the circuit court
opened formally Monday morning with
all the officers present, namely: Judge
Carroll, District Attorney Brooks,
County Attorney Allgood, Clerk Scales.
All the county officers, including the
justices of the peace, were present to
hear the judges charge to the grand
jury, as is required by law.
Judge CAROLS charge to the grand
Jury, as are all his utterances, was
marked with common-sense, clearness
AMI force, and was listened to with
attention:
1t was peculiar, said Judge Carroll, in
opening his charge. that the law re-
quired a judge to charge the jury only
on petit crimes, as minor offenses were
first committed by those who are Grim
inally inclihed. First the infant before
the child, the child before the man, and
so it was with crime. A shovel full of
dirt at the fountain head is worth more
than a carload later on. Court is held
every six months and the county cleaned
up but it is no more to be expected to
stay clean than should a farmer who
cuts the grass out of his crop and ex-
poets it to remain clean. 1t is the ever
lastingly keeping at it that keeps down
both the criminal and the grass. And
it is the certainty and not the severity
of punishment that keeps the criminally
inclined in check. A century ago there
were a large number of crimes punish
able by death. yet such severity did not
diminish crime. In the five years that
he had been on the bench there had
been only a few cases where the max
imum sentence had been passed on the
offender.
The crime of gambling was touched
on and the judge said that in sight of
the law there was no difference be-
tween crap shooting and dealing in flu
lures, or upon those who played poker
for amusement with a penny ante and a
ten cent limit, and those who went the
limit for the money there is in it, as
do the professionals.
Pistol toting goes hand in hand with
the crimes of gambling and whiskey-
selling and few are guilty of one with
out the other. The pistol carrying
habit was the more serious because one
whose brain was excited by liquor or
who had become incensed in a gambling
game, was liable to become a murderer
at any moment.
The Judge stated that he had heard
there had been some trouble in regard
to the tick law, which a large majority
of the people of the county had ex-
pressed themselves as being in favor of,
No man is wiser than the law and none
should be obstructionists. The county
had spent thousands of dollars in the
work of eradication and the more lax
the law was enforced the greater the
cost will be. Tick inspectors should be
brought before the grand jury and q
toned as to who the violators are.
In regard to the illicit sale of liquor
the judge stated that since his arrival
in Macon he had been informed that
while the big and notorious tigers had
been put out of business, that the num-
Der of illicit sellers had increased, and
it was due to the fact that a ready sale
was found among the laborers who
were working the pubic road and who
received their pay regularly every
week.
The judge paid a high compliment to
the citizenship of the county in general
and the colored population in particular
when he stated that though there were
25, 900 negroes in Noxubee county, more
than in any county his district, there
was less crime, either of a trivial or
serious nature, than In any county i'm