The Prevention of Crime.
By W. Penniman
“THE extraordinary prevalence of crime in this country is a thing that must appeal to the most serious attention of statesmen, public guardians, and thoughtful people of every class. Not a newspaper but brings news of some rape, highway robbery, or terrible murder. This is becoming the age of crime, and that, too, of unpunished crime. The most horrid outrages known to man are committed; the criminals often escape detection, and go for years, and sometimes forever, unknown. A dozen murders have been committed in the last two years, the perpetrators of which are still unknown; a hundred outrages on females, and the scoundrels undetected; a thousand robberies, and the stolen property unrecovered. “Nor is this all. When the malefactors are arrested and brought into the halls of justice, the chances are even that, by some legal quibble, they will escape the punishment due them. The case may be so plain that even the friends of the criminal admit his guilt, but he is by no means condemned on that account. A clerk may neglect to dot an ‘i,’ or cross a ‘t,’ a fault in the indictment is found, and the accused, already condemned by public opinion, may, and often does, escape, to repeat his diabolical crimes elsewhere. “Take a notable case. A little boy is playing with his mates. Two men come along, and persuade him to go with them. He does so, and that is the last known of Charlie Ross. If the earth had opened and swallowed him, he would not have been more completely lost. Two men have baffled the utmost efforts of a hundred detectives, and after a year of search they are forced to confess themselves as much in the dark as ever. Take another. An old man, living in a densely peopled part of a large city, is struck down by the hand of an assassin. His murderer opens the front door, goes out, perhaps brushes by the arm of a policeman, walks down the street in the glaring light of the gas lamps, turns a corner, and is gone. That is all; the world knows no more who he is, whence he came, and whither he has gone, than if he had never been born. The Coroner’s jury comes and sits with owl-like gravity; the police come, pry and smell in every corner, go away, investigate, and accomplish nothing. “Take the God’s Hill affair as a type of the other daring railroad robberies lately committed. Five men stop a crowded passenger train, rob the mails, steal the express money, rob the road agents and the passengers, mount their horses and ride off, and that is all. By this act it is clearly demonstrated that five men may, and with impunity do, dare the anger and defy the power of a traveling public, a rich railroad corporation, an express company, a State’s authorities, and the United States government. “Let the kaleidoscope turn again, and another scene comes to view—one that touches the heart of every father, mother and brother in the land. A little child lies silent in her coffin. Flowers are strewed around her, the solemn words of the funeral service are heard, amid the weeping of a disconsolate mother and the sobs of a stricken father; the little, cold body is laid away to everlasting sleep, the clods cover the coffin, the turf is laid over the grave, and the sad act is over. Painful enough it is, if the little one has died in her mother’s arms, if she has peacefully breathed out her last sigh on the loving breast of a father, and whispered her final words of love into his attentive ear. Sad enough when the patient hand of a sister has wiped the death-damp from the innocent brow, closed the eyes that never looked on iniquity, and composed the tiny limbs for their last resting place. “But the little one has met a different fate. She knew no sin, and yet was made the victim of a human devil. She was subjected to the most damnable outrage that can be conceived, and then strangled to prevent its discovery. Every father deserving the name will feel his heart burn and his hands quiver if he thinks how he would feel and act if the case were that of his own innocent child. How long are such things to continue? Is there any efficiency in our police, or any justice in our courts? If so, why are not demons who perpetrate such outrages caught and hanged, as they ought to be? If such occurrences take place often, who can blame the people for taking judgment into their own hands, and administering a swift and terrible justice on such offenders? At this moment, every father who reflects on the circumstances would uphold and defend the action of any set of men who would summarily lynch such an offender, and nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand in the nation would say, ‘Well done!’” The foregoing, from the St. Louis Globe Democrat, of July 24, 1875, does not seem to indicate that we may look for the millennium very soon. It is no wonder that the writer says this is “becoming the age of crime.” It is already the age of crime, because it is the age of selfishness. This age has been called the “age of covetousness,” but covetousness and all the evils of the age can be traced to selfishness as the root. And this is why it is becoming an age of “unpunished crime.” It is ascertained that juries can be bribed, and that gold will set the prisoner and the criminal free. Let those who cry out, “How long are such things to continue?” study the word of God, and they will learn that this wicked age is plainly set forth, and that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived!” 2 Tim. 3:13. It will continue till God can no longer bear with a revolted and Heaven-defying world, and the earth shall be swept with the besom of destruction. Then shall the Prince of peace and righteousness begin his everlasting reign. Let us be thankful that this consummation, so devoutly to be wished, is near at hand.