Nobody to Blame by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 15, 1883

Nobody to Blame.

By Editor

The press reports contain the following:—

"Atlanta (Ga.), March 10.—A drunken father in Hall County, named Herring, poured a shovel of hot coals on his infant child and burned it to death."

In a legal point of view there was no crime committed in the above case, for it is evident that there can be no crime where there is no criminal. It has been held from time immemorial that a man is not responsible for what he does when he is drunk; and the man who furnished the murderous fluid that made him drunk held a government license to follow that business. In the eye of the law the burning of little children by drunken fathers is only an "innocent pastime."

AN editorial article—Questions Answered—may be found on the preceding page.