p. 84 | The Era of Blood

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 25, 1873

The Era of Blood.

AN era is a period of time so noted for some remarkable characteristics or some unusual events, that it is considered worthy of forming a new basis for chronological periods, or is set apart by itself as an object of wonder and amazement for all ages. The present time is called an era; but it is an era of blood. So it is named by the Methodist of N. Y. city, in an article from which we take the following significant paragraph:—

“The public mind has become alarmed. These columns have from time to time given warning that a crisis is at hand, caused by the insecurity of life. There has been a madness for killing; the slightest pretext—an old grudge, jealousy, greed, drink—any of these sufficed. A pistol-shot, a knife, or bludgeon, a soul was hurried out of time, a family plunged into mourning, and a new cause of unrest given to the community. There might be arrest, perhaps trial, possibly conviction, but seldom more. At this point, legal acumen came in play, ‘stay of proceedings’ became mighty to stay justice, and violence went muttering through its polluted lips, ‘Hanging is played out.’”

“Positively, there must come an end of this. The law must be made efficient, both to convict and punish, or the sense of insecurity will drive the people into measures for self-protection.”

Dr. J. G. Holland, in Scribner for March, speaks as follows in reference to the terrible condition of affairs in N. Y. city, in a criminal point of view:—

“Neither human life nor property can be any safer than they are at present, until it becomes less safe to make depredations upon them. So long as it is legal to sell unlimited rum, so long as theft, and swindling, and burglary, and murder, go unpunished, so long as flagrant crime is sure of sympathy and determined effort to free those who are guilty of it, so long as influential names are easily procurable in the attempt to shield the criminal from the legal consequences of his misdeeds, so long will crime go on unchecked. We feed the flames of anger and lust and malice with poisoned liquors, and hold up our heads in horror over the results. We keep men in power who will not do their duty, and walk the streets at night with bludgeons in our hands and revolvers in our pockets. We shut up criminals, and then submit to any mockery of justice by which they are released. And then, when the crime and the criminal are too outrageous to permit them to be ignored, we sign papers begging for commutation of punishment or for pardon. Let it be understood, then, that every man, high or low, who seeks for the release of the criminal from the legal consequences of his crime, unites himself to the dangerous classes, and becomes an accomplice in their deeds. Crime will cease, or greatly diminish, just as soon as official and popular justice cuts off its complicity with it; and it will not cease or diminish until that event occurs. Crime thrives because the officers of the law do not do their duty, and because the popular voice does not demand those safeguards of social and political order that are essential to its maintenance. The ignorant brute, maddened by alcohol and degraded by the example of those whom he helped to place in power, can be reached by no motive but fear; and so long as that motive does not exist, we may expect to see in every newspaper we take up the record of a new crime, and to bow our heads in shame for our city, while we examine anew the defences we have spread around our goods and our lives.”