The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1915-06-30
R|NG0 CALLS FOR
LAW AND ORDER
Throughout All Sections
Ohio County.
HIS ADDRESS TO GRAND JURY
Was a Mastery Effort In
Behalf Of Peace and Good
Government.
AN APPEAL FOR RIGHT LIVING


At the recent term of the Ohio
Circuit Court, Commonwealth At
torney Ben d. Ringo, in his instruc-
lions to the grand jury, made one
of the greatest speeches of his Off
cial career. We wish we had space
TO print it all, but our crowded col
umns forbid this. After referring
TO various crimes, the gist of Mr..
Ringo's magnificent address was as
follows:
IL am going to put before you
twelve gentlemen some important
matters. | am going to do it first,
because | am under oath of office,
and am going to do it in the next
place because it is my pleasure to
do it. if it is necessary to be done.
] have uniformly believed that the
conditions which existed west of us
could not exist in Ohio county; |
have never believed it was posi-
BILE. If the reports that come to me
are true-and l have no reason to
doubt What H. have beard-at a.
place in your county, and at a point
where we would least expect 1t,
there were some men and women
sleeping in a negro cabin; they were
negroes, it is true. but they were
human beings, and you are pledged
and the State is pledged as | am
pledged to see that their lives are
protected by law. A band of men
got together and went to that quiet
cabin and took these people out of
it and marched them up street in
one of your villages, and a boy-a
harmless negro boy. who never did
any harm in his life as am told
was murdered like a dog in the
streets, and his bones are rotting in
your soil to-day You wouldn't
have thought that was possible,
would you? | wouldn't have thought
so, either. You don't know the pos
s.bilities of the human heart until
you test them out-until you take
away all restraint the law imposes
and turn loose all vicious passions
TO do their worst. You do not
know how crazy men can get.
Il give you my word that when a
man once gets to struggling away
from the old land marks that he
learned at his fathers fireside and
at his mothers knee; when a man
once gets it in his head that the
rules of life which bound his faith
er and you and me, do not bind
him; when he once concludes that
he and a few other men can get to-
gether and can determine what the
law IS, and how it should be enforc-
ed, that is the beginning of hell for
all hands-here and hereafter. and
that beginning has already occurred
in YOUR county.
81 would like Cor them to know
and you to know, who may not
know. the conditions which have
arisen in counties that have tried
that process, when men were as
wise and just as you are to start
with. There are spots in less than
one days ride of where you sit,
where the land is as fertile as your
own and where the grass is Just as
green, and the crops are as bounti-
full, where you could not get dol
lar an acre for land that is there,
II your buyer knew the conditions.
There are spots in less than a days
ride of this court house where men
and women with their boys and girls
would not go at any price to make
a home. That results from a mania
or kind OF insanity that | can not
account for-except such mob psy-
ohology as gets hold of the people.
1T started away back yonder
with certain walking delegates-ag-
itators-who came from nobody
knew where and went hellward, no
body knew where, who have gone on
in their poisonous way They taught
good men to believe that there was
a better way to run the country
than to run II according to the law
of the land. They taught men to
throw off all the ties that bound
them; and led men TO think that
they had rights which the law could
not and would not enforce. and
which could not be enforced in any
way except in the ways they had
pointed out-with clubs and torches.
AS result Of that. good men-well-
meaning men, honorable men-real-