A Dark Picture | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 13, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 18.

A Dark Picture.

MR. HENRY GEORGE, describing the growing demoralization of our cities, says: "In theory, the law protects to-day the lowest as completely as the highest; yet a man who has enough money can go into one of our great centers of population, and murder whomsoever he pleases, surrender himself to justice, with the chance as a hundred to one that he will suffer no greater penalty than a temporary imprisonment, and the loss of a sum proportioned partly to his own wealth and partly to the wealth and standing of the man he kills." His money will not, however, be paid to the family of his victim, nor to the State, but to the lawyers who are expert in securing delays, finding convenient witnesses, and corruptly procuring the disagreement of juries. Again, "If a man steal enough," says Mr. George, "he may be sure that his punishment will practically amount but to the loss of a part of the proceeds of his theft. And if he steal enough to get off with a fortune, he will be greeted by his acquaintances as a viking might have been greeted after a successful cruise. Even though he robbed those who trusted him; even though he robbed the widow and the fatherless, he has only to get enough and he may safely flaunt his wealth in the eyes of day."

Mr. George in all this sees cumulative proof of the decay of civilization. The people are growing used to corruption, and ceasing to resent it. There is even now a public sentiment that doubts the existence of an honest man in office, and looks rather contemptuously upon one who claims to be such. The people themselves are therefore becoming corrupted. If such corruption becomes chronic, public spirit will be lost, and law brought into contempt. When the burdens become unbearable, strong and unscrupulous men will make themselves the exponents of popular desires and passions, and become leaders in demonstrations of brute force and destruction. Thenceforward the descent to the modern form of barbarism that alternates between anarchy and temporary imperial despotism, is swift. The new barbarians, who shall destroy our modern civilization as the barbarians of old destroyed those of Greece and Rome, will not come from a distance. "Go through the squalid quarter of great cities," says Mr. George, "and you may see their gathering hordes."—Sel.