Unwritten Law by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 19, 1883

Unwritten Law.

By Editor

SOME person in Oakland, who does not give us his name, and therefore this notice is a gratuity as far as he is concerned, makes light of our brief note on the case of a drunken man who burned his child, and cites to some laws to the contrary of our conclusion. But the people are far more concerned in the action of the courts than in what may be contained in some musty law book. Practically we get our law from the courts and not from the books.

Some thirty years ago a young woman, who had won the esteem of her associates, shot down her abuser and defamer in the street in Milwaukee, Wis. The law of the books was clearly against her, but the sympathy of the public was with her. The base villain got his desert, but not in a legal way. People in Cleveland, Ohio, where she formerly resided, were so interested in her case that they raised a fund to pay the expenses of lawyers who went from that city to defend her. The wrongs she had suffered were forcibly presented to the jury—wrongs well calculated to unbalance her mind—and she was cleared on the ground of “emotional insanity.” The jury who rendered that verdict had no idea that they were establishing a precedent—in fact, making law—which should govern courts in all the land. But so it was. No plea is now more common, and few are found more effectual.

Any man must have had a very limited experience who does not know that drunkenness has been a standing excuse, and an effectual one, too, for the commission of crime. That it has had its influence on courts and juries is well known. And it was only to be expected that this should be the case as long as government sold the right to make drunkards. Licensing that which is the direct incentive to, and producer of all manner of crimes, is an abomination which ought to cause law-makers to blush.

The plea that he was drunk was recently made in an Iowa court in behalf of a man who murdered his wife, and the remarks of the Judge, who denied the validity of the plea, were published as worthy of remark by numerous papers throughout the land. We wish that this might be the practice in all courts; and not only this, but that all accessories to the crimes might be held responsible. This is just, and is held to be good law where the “liquor interest” is not involved. But law must have special constructions and justice must stand aside when alcohol makes its demands.