EDITOR’S TABLE.
It often happens that the worst effects of wrong-doing are visited upon neither the criminal nor upon those who have suffered in person or property by his crime. This fact is emphasized by the recent suicide of a convict’s wife, in one of our New England States, after having killed her two children. This incident furnishes a dreadful commentary on the condition of those dependent upon convicted criminals who are paying the penalty of their crimes. For the convict there is abundant sympathy. As the St. Louis Globe Democrat well puts it, societies are organized for the purpose of improving his mind, and cooking-clubs toil and perspire at Christmas and Thanksgiving to the end that his body may not suffer; tract-distributors provide him with reading matter, and sewing-circles warm him with flannel under-wear; doctors look after his health, and legislators vie with each other in seeing that he is not overworked; but, if there is any society organized for the purpose of helping the wife whom he has disgraced, and most likely left penniless at home, its name has not yet been made public; if any sewing-circle has undertaken to clothe his children, the fact has not been heralded to the world. Yet the heaviest part of the punishment falls not on the convict but on his family, the members of which, by one of those unjust society decisions from which there is no appeal, are stigmatized with disgrace on account of an offence in which they had no part. This is grossly unjust, and those who are benevolently inclined should take the matter in hand and see what can be done for the wives and children of convicts.
New England has no representative in the national legislature upon whose career she can look with more of pride and satisfaction than that of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut. A man of sound learning, and many of the highest qualities of statesmanship; he is unpretentious in manner, lives simply, is free from egotism, and full of the generous and manly qualities which inspire confidence and compel friendliness. Few men, of this generation at least,—as will be universally recognized a little later if not now,—have approached nearer to the popular ideal of a representative American in public life. There could be no better evidence of the manly independence which he brings to the discussion of measures of importance than his attitude with reference to the bill intended to provide for the maintenance of an army of such size and efficiency as to provide for all possible contingencies arising from foreign aggression or internal troubles. In recognition of the fact that we have lawless elements in all of our large cities always ready to avail themselves of any pretext for riot and incendiarism, he urged the wisdom of providing such safeguards against these uprisings as would be afforded by disciplined and efficient troops ready for instant service at any point. Some of the demagogues in the Senate, hypocritically posing as friends of the working-men, endeavored to distort this common-sense and patriotic view into an intention to use the army for the crushing of the working-men. There have been few better speeches in the Senate in recent times than Senator Hawley’s temperate but cutting reply to these pseudo-friends of labor. It affords sufficient evidence, if any were wanting, that the true friends of the working-men are those who have the courage of their convictions, even when to utter them may afford opportunity for misrepresentation and abuse.
The report of a recent attempt to wreck a train on the Maine Central Railroad is not so startling as it would be were this species of crime of less frequent occurrence; but it is noteworthy as being the sixth attempt of the kind at the same place within a few years. It is very fortunate that so many of these dastardly efforts to bring innocent people to destruction prove futile. In fact it is comparatively seldom that the boldest attempts at train-wrecking result in loss of life. The awful possibilities, however, which lie within the hands of the train-wrecker suggest most forcibly that this crime should be treated with unusual severity. The person who would indiscriminately bring the passengers of a moving train to death must invariably, if sane, be a criminal of the darkest dye. Murder of an individual, even when coming within the first degree, is not often without some particular aggravation on the part of the victim. But train-wrecking must always be the result of the purest malice,—of diabolism unalloyed. No palliating circumstance ever suggests itself. The villain attempts to kill not one who has involved himself in a quarrel with him, but peaceable, unsuspecting men, women, and children, without distinction. And attempts of this kind have become so frequent, and the crime is at once so cowardly, so insidious, and so dastardly, that no pains to apprehend the villain can ever be too great, nor can any penalty that is allowed for any crime be too severe for this. If capital punishment is to be on our statute books for anything, it should certainly be for the train-wrecker. Let there be a law which shall with certainty bring to the hangman’s noose every person who makes even an attempt to destroy a moving train, and this fiendish crime may be less frequent than it now is.