Year: 1869




Tho Prevalence Of Crime-Where Il tho


Remsdys


The recent fearful increase of crime has
startled the whole community Almost every
law for the protection of person and pro-
perty has been so frequently violated Of late
that certain parties in this city with more
haste than reflection have determined, 1t is
said, to organize vigilance committees like
those which saved California in its early days.
II is even asserted that in two of the wards
vigilance committees have actually been or
ganized. Some of the journals which an
nounce this extraordinary movement seem in
clined to endorse and encourage it. But they
forget how very dangerous business Lynch
law would prove to be in city where, as In
Sodom and in Gomorrah, the rogues outnum-
wolves than all the sheep and watchdogs
together the wolves themselves might snap at
this idea of organizing and directing vigilance
committees. In that case the astute Dana and
the philanthropic Greeley would be liable to
be the first victims hanged. 1t would then be
too late for them to bleat forth plaintively
their old protests against hanging.


Strangely enough, murders seem to be
more numerous than any other crimes. The
killing of Pollard in Richmond was followed
by swift and terrible succession OF murders,
North and South, ending on the day before
New Years with the fatal stabbing Of Rogers
in open daylight, in front of his own house, in
New York city. Not single day has passed
since the new year began without its record
of murder or of more than one murder. !


The instantaneous and wide publicity given
by newspapers and the telegraph is not what
makes murders appear more numerous than at
another period; murders actually are more
iii;aiainerons than they were during correspond
ing period in the year preceding the war. The
extraordinary increase of crime in general, and
of murder in particular, may be largely ac-
counted for by the storm of violent passions
excited by the war-a storm which swept
over the land and which has not yet spent all
it's fury. Moreover, morbid sympathy
with the worst criminals on the part Of
certain modern reformers, so called, has
generated so great an aversion to inaicting
capital punishment even for murder in the
first degree that juries almost everywhere,
except in New Jersey and in Philadelphia,
fail to convict in any case. The would-be
murderer is thus encouraged to the unrestrained
indulgence of passion by the probability that
he may get off scot free even though he kill his
victim. This possibility becomes a certainty
If the criminal happens to be murderess. In
compassion for the criminal, whether murderer
or murderess, American juries too often lose
not only all pity for the victim, but all sense Of
responsibility for the security of society and
all sense of justice.


The time has surely come when remedy
must be found for the deplorable and alarming
prevalence of crime. To the question, where
shall this remedy be found? there can be but
one answer-in the unflinching execution Of
the laws. If during these six months every
case of clearly proved crime were to be
followed inexorably by the full penalty Of the
law the prospective criminal calendar of the
last half Of 1869 would be surprisingly dimin-
ished.