"In the next year 9,000 people will be murdered. As I stand here to-day I tell you that 9,000 are doomed to death with all the cruelty of the criminal heart, and with no regard for home and families; and two-thirds will be due to the maudlin sentiment sometimes called mercy.
"I have no sympathy for the criminal. My sympathy is for those who will be murdered; for their families and for their children. This sham humanitarianism has become a stench. The cry now is for righteousness. The past generation has abolished human slavery. It is for the present to deal with the problems of the future, and among them this problem of crime."
Against doctrine of this sort none will protest but the politicians in power, under whose lax administration of a great trust there has arisen one of the saddest spectacles of human history, the decay of the great American principles of liberty and fair play. The criminals
of our city are bold, because they, if not ourselves, know of this decay. They, if not ourselves, know the weakness of that political system to which we have, in carelessness equaling that of the California miners of old—a carelessness based upon a madness of money equal to or surpassing that of the gold stampedes—delegated our sacred personal rights to live freely, to own property, and to protect each for himself his home.
THE END
FOOTNOTES
[A] "The Wilderness Hunters." G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.
[B] "The Story of the Cowboy," by E. Hough. D. Appleton & Co., New York.
[C] "Life and Adventures of Virgil A. Stewart." Harper and Brothers, New York. 1836.
[D] Tuthill: "History of California."