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e J Another View of the Cnie.a‘•There will be no punishment of s , Henry Athey or either of the Critcs t . boys for helping to haul the body to the creek. And there ought not to be. We would have done the same had it been our wife or our sister, and so would you.’*The above is taken from the* Iron Valley Reporter of July 10th. Assuming that there is no statute In OhioV | providing for the punishment of par-11 ties helping to conceal a murder after 1 j the deed, is it not a flagrant misconcep-s tion of right to assume that such per-*» sons are innocent ? Date we take the- j ground that the absence of a published e statute makes all conduct innocent* that is uot specified iu the statute e books, as a crime ? If so, we may ' | soon have deeds as revolting us mur-1 der itself regarded as harmless moral- * idiosyncrasies, or even as acts of piety !V Again, is it uot an insult to the mor* e al sense of community to assume that ~ J every person in it, if placed in the y circumstances ot two per-ous now in e the county jail, would have done just y a* they did with the body of a mur-* J dared victim *r Again, is it not an In* 51 suit to community to ask its people to* put themselves in the place of a mur-i derer, and the would be concealers of H her crime / And is it not a bad ex-14 ample for a newspaper, professing to* be a conservator of public morals, to 1 use its editorial We in approval of 9 1 the act of throwing the body of poor 8 Mary SenefT iuto a filthy stream, by 1 saying in extenuation of such a heart-- j less act, lt;;we would have done the* ; same had it been our wife or sister?”1 I Conceive a parullell case, and apply r the rule that the Iron Valley Reporter 1 does for his conduct in this. A member of a family steals a sum of money, and to that extent, wrongs some one. The rest of the family are all innocent, but after a while, the thief makes known the crime to other members of the family. Naturally, they are all* i tempted to keep the matter a profound0 secret, and that is right according to the Iron Valley Reporter! Away with such sickly sentimentalism. True, in the case of murder, the victim cannot be restored. But is the object of punishment nothing more than restitu-s j tion? Is it not also to terrify evil t * doers/ Is it not also to protect society? ^ , By assisting to conceal a murder, we •; assi-t in turning murderers loose upon1 | society, and to that extent, lend our- | influeuee against the saiety of society f from their crimes. By concealing oneV murder, we may contribute our influ-e ence to the perpetration of a dozenmurders. By concealing one murder, we may in addition, awaken the suspicion that somebody else than the guilty one committed the deed, and
Newspaper Details
Canal Dover Dover Weekly Argus
Canal Dover, Ohio, US
Fri, Jul 23, 1880
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 18 Dec 2023
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Canal Dover Dover Weekly Argus
