Wanted, Conscience!

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jun 26, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 26.

Wanted, Conscience!

Wanted, Conscience!—Mayor Schmitz of San Francisco has been found guilty of “felony—to-wit extortion,” by a jury of his peers. This, it is loudly declared, is a vindication of the law and will have a tremendous influence upon grafters in other large cities. Nothing of the kind. It is exceedingly questionable whether the greater part of San Francisco does not stand with the mayor to the extent of believing that he ought not to be punished. His case will be appealed to higher tribunals, and he may still be acquitted over legal technicalities. It goes without saying that every intelligent man believes him guilty. No one confesses to crime, as did Abraham Ruef and the several supervisors, unless he is guilty. No one can believe that Mayor Schmitz, Mr. Ruef’s bosom friend, is innocent in all these crimes. No one believes that the mayor’s sudden ability to indulge in extravagant expenditure has nothing to do with these graft cases. And yet there are many of the best lawyers who would take his case and the cases of those associated with him and fight for his acquittal by every technicality, twist, and turn which lawyers know to defeat justice and acquit criminals who have proved false to party allegiance and public trust. What is lacking in San Francisco and in all the great cities of America is conscience, principle, instead of policy and expediency. No issue of a trial or series of trials will create conscience or principles. It may make rogues fear for a time, only to plot more cunningly later. God only—the God of the Decalogue—can clean a conscience and supplant by principles of righteousness, expediency, policy, overweening selfishness. But God, the God of the Bible, is forgotten save in name and form.