The Law Is Slacked by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 5, 1885

"The Law Is Slacked."

By Editor

ON Thursday, Jan. 29, in New York City, three criminals were sentenced, as follows: One who had made a ferocious assault upon his wife and plunged a shoemaker's awl into each of her eyes, and who was shown on the trial to be a ruffian of the worst sort, yet was sentenced to only nine months' imprisonment. Another, a young man, who had stolen a penknife worth twenty-five cents, was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment. And the third, who had armed himself with a loaded revolver, and had gone to a man's shop, where he found him at work and unarmed, had shot him five times, and had left him dead on the floor, for all this received a sentence of only seven years' imprisonment.

Surely "judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off." Certainly "the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth." These inequalities have been widely commented upon by the newspapers and the public generally. How could it be otherwise, while there are any who have remaining any idea of justice? But how long can the courts retain the respect of men, when their decisions are an outrage upon every principle of equity? And when the courts have thus incurred the disrespect, not to say the contempt, of men, what is there to hinder men from taking the law into their own hands, and then whose life is safe anywhere?

There is a practice, moreover, which is becoming too common, and which has the same tendency, but upon which we do not remember to have seen any comments; and this concerns our highest courts, the courts of last resort. We mean the practice of getting decisions of Supreme Courts reversed, by simply changing the political complexion of said courts. When the decisions of our highest courts are rendered according to the political opinions of the members thereof, rather than according to the law and justice of the case, they have gone a long way toward forfeiting the respect of all fair-minded men. "Justice, justice shalt thou follow." Deut. 16:20.