Repudiating the Unwritten Law.
It is refreshing to know that justice takes its course sometimes against a so-called unwritten law. It is often customary to justify murder in cases where the husband takes vengeance upon the man who he thinks is guilty of despoiling his home. In the Captain Hains case lately the twelve men to whom this appeal on behalf of the unwritten law was made by intimation if not by explicit statement in the course of the trial have disregarded this doctrine of anarchy. The jury gave the prisoner the benefit of the doubt, and brought in their verdict of homicide. He was thus convicted of manslaughter. By this verdict the jury repudiated the doctrine of the “Unwritten Law,” and have therefore rendered to society a larger service than is involved in the mere punishment of a criminal. Society has fundamental rights which the criminal is bound to respect.