Intemperance the Great Source of Crime

Front matter

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DIAGRAMS OT THE STOMACH IN VARIOUS CONDITIONS.

Table Of Contents

Chapter. Page.

I. — Thirty Years at the Bar. A Summary. 2

II. — A Prodigal Son — In the Felon's Cell and in the Halls of Congress 6

Chapter I. Thirty Years At The Bar.— A Summary

Thou sparkling bowl ! thou sparkling bowl !

Though lips of bards thy brim may press,

And eyes of beauty o’er thee roll,

And song and dance thy power confess,

I will not touch thee ; for there clings A scorpion to thy side, that stings.

— John Pierpont.

The laws that license the sale of intoxicating liquor are different in different states, and to the credit of some of the states of our Union it can be said that they do not grant any license to the nefarious traffic. Yet where it is licensed, no matter what are the special provisions of the law, the consequences incident thereto are the same, and are as certain to follow as the ripening ear follows the planted seed. And as men in this world do not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles, neither do they gather a harvest of moral advancement and social prosperity where they have sown the seeds of sin and crime.

In the following pages I propose to relate to the reader a few incidents from the Diary of an Old Criminal Lawyer, to narrate a few of the many scenes I have witnessed in our Courts and in our prisons, and to seek to draw a moral therefrom pertinent to the subject of this little volume as it is announced on its title page.

I do not expect to narrate even a tithe of the crime and suffering I have seen, whose cause may be traced directly to the license system of our Courts. Had I the pen of a ready writer, I could write volumes in relating incidents of crime and horror whose details I have heard either in our Courts or in the cells of our jails ; and when my hand was weary and my memory failed me, I could yet say that even the half had not been told.

My experience at the bar has satisfied me that intemperance is the direct cause of nearly all the crime that is committed in our country. I have been at the bar over thirty years, have been engaged in nearly four thousand criminal cases, and on mature reflection I am satisfied that over three thousand of those cases have originated from drunkenness alone, and I believe that a great proportion of the remainder could be traced either directly or indirectly to this great source of crime. In fifty-one cases of homicide forty-three have been caused by

SOURCE OF CRIME.

the maddening influence of strong drink. I have seen upon the counsel table of our court-room the skull of an aged father, who was killed by a drunken son. My brother and myself sat by his side as his counsel, and I never shall forget the look of that son when the ghastly evidence of his guilt was laid upon the stand before him. That silent yet eloquent witness ! It was but an arch of bone, and was handled carelessly by the jury in their investigation, yet it had once been covered by a father’s gray hairs ; beneath it had throbbed a brain full of pride and affection for the son who was now on his trial for murder, and as it passed from hand to hand the fearful expression on the face of the accused plainly told the terrible feeling of remorse that filled his soul. It was a wicked and most unnatural crime, and begot feelings of loathing and horror in the breasts of all who witnessed the trial. Yet it was not in reality the son who had committed the crime, but the demon that lurks in every cup of strong drink. And that cup had been filled and placed to the lips of that son by the hand of a most respectable member of society,- — a man who had a license from that very Court to sell that which maddened the brain and prompted the hand to murder..

I saw upon that table the skull of young B ,

who was killed by his most intimate friend in a.

drunken brawl at Hartstown, and the respectable proprietor at whose hotel the murder was perpetrated, and who sold the maddening spirit that prompted the deed, was a witness at the trial. He said he had a license from that respectable Court to sell liquor ; yes, from the very Court then sitting in judgment on that act, which was but the natural sequence of the license it had sold and granted.

I have seen upon that table the skull of a little child with the evidence upon it of a murderous blow, inflicted by the hand of a drunken mother. Yet it was not the mother who had committed that most unnatural crime. All our knowledge of the promptings of the human heart deny the charge. Who that remembers his own mother and her maternal love, could believe it? No! a demoniacal spirit had violated the sanctuary of the mother’s heart and cast out the tender, loving tenant that once resided there, and that was the spirit of strong drink, sold to the woman by a man who held a license to sell under the seal and sanction of that very Court.

I have seen upon that table the blood-stained skull of a wife, cleft from top to base by an axe in the hand of a brutal, drunken husband, who came home from a neighboring licensed beer shop, reeling, drunken and maddened by drink there sold by a most respectable dealer, by a man who had a legal right to sell that poison whose effects are more terrible than the plagues confined within the fabled box of Pandora, and under whose baleful influence

“ The hand that should shield the wife from ill,

In drunken wrath is raised to kill.”

I once defended a man for killing his own brother, by whom in a fit of drunken frenzy he had been attacked with a dangerous weapon, thereby compellinghim in his own defense to strike a blow that had taken, his brother’s life. He was tried’for murder, and in his defense I called the “ landlord ” to prove that the murdered brother was mad from the effects of the liquor he had received at the witness’s bar. He so testified, yet seemed conscious of no wrong. Why should he? He had a license from the Court, and why should that brother’s blood cry to Heaven for vengeance against him ? Oh no ! he was a respectable citizen, possessing a good moral character, for the law grants licenses to none other. He had a legal right to present the maddening cup to his fellow’s lips, and no one should complain of him. He had acted in accordance with the law, and did not one of England’s greatest and best of men say that “ The law was that science whose voice was the harmony of the world, and whose seat was the bosom of God.”

Chapter II

A PRODIGAL SON. - IN A FELON'S CELL AND IN THE HALLS OF CONGRESS .

“ Every inordinate cup Is unblessed, and th’ ingredient is a devil.

Oh thou invisible spirit of wine,

If thou hast no name to be known by, let Us call thee Devil !

It was excess of wine that set him on,

And on his more advice, we pardon him.

About twenty-five years ago T was sent for to see a prisoner in our jail who had just been committed for passing counterfeit money. A large package of this money had been found concealed in his bed in his room at the hotel. He had passed a ten dollar bill, was detected, arrested, and committed to prison for trial. I went to the jail and in a cell I saw a young man not over nineteen or twenty years of age. His face bore the unmistakable evidence of dissipation and drunkenness, while his language showed that he had received the education and culture of a gentleman. He told me his sad story. He was the only son of wealthy parents, petted and spoiled by a fond mother and an indulgent father. Bad company, which he met at the fashionable saloon and bar-room, led him astray. The appetite for strong drink had fastened upon him with a force he could not resist. His father had remonstrated with him in vain, when, in a fit of drunken anger, he struck the old man to the earth, and then fled from his home and friends, becoming a wanderer and an outcast. He soon fell in with some of his old associates of the saloon and bar-room, who induced him to undertake to pass counterfeit money or “ run the flimsy ” to use his language. He was detected in the first offense, and there, friendless and a stranger, without money to assist him in his defense, he was a prisoner in a felon’s cell.

I desired him to write to his friends, but he refused, and would not even tell me his right name. He said it would break his mother’s heart to hear of his crime and shame. “ But oh ! ” said he, “ if you can only save me from the penitentiary I will reform. I will go back to my home, for no one there will know of my crime, and I will never taste liquor again.”

This was before the adoption of our criminal code, and when we practiced under the old common law forms of pleadings, which required great accuracy in indictments. The hour of trial came at last. The District Attorney made a slight mistake in the indictment, in the description of the counterfeit bill, and when it was offered in evidence, on an objection being made, “ that it was not the bill described, and therefore was not evidence,” the Court sustained the objection, ruled in my favor, the fatal testimony was rejected, and my client was safe. Joy was in my heart as well as in that of the poor prisoner. Not so with the noble and generous public, who erect bar-rooms and drinking saloons, and sustain them by law for the ruin of the young. Oh no ! Rome fairly howled with rage and disappointment that so great a criminal had escaped. No one seemed to deprecate the temptations that had beset him, or to feel pity for his youth and friendlessness. The public prints never, said one word about the many pitfalls that are placed by law in the pathway of youth, but I was most heartily abused and berated for my efforts in his behalf. I tried to bear it with what Christian fortitude and resignation I had, and if I remember aright, I believe I rather enjoyed it. I had a verdict of not guilty, at all events, and as some months had elapsed between the time of his arrest and his trial, my poor unfortunate client was entirely sobered. He had conquered the thirst for strong drink ; its fatal craving was no longer upon him.

We parted ; he, like the prodigal, to return to his father’s house, and I to receive the censure of many in our community for “ clearing a man ” who so richly deserved the penitentiary. Fourteen years after that I met my client in Washington, a Representative in Congress from his native city ; an able and influential member of the House, and a Christian gentleman. But for the pernicious influences of those licensed saloons and bar-rooms, those connecting links between virtue and crime, he would never thus have sinned. But for the nets spread by law for the unwary feet of the young and inexperienced, this bitter lesson in crime and remorse would have been spared him, and had not the District Attorney omitted that one little word in the indictment, he would have been convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary for a period of five years. He might have survived the sentence. To a man like him the punishment consists not in the imprisonment alone, but in the fact that even when the term of punishment has expired and the prison doors have been thrown open, he would go forth into the world ruined and dishonored, with the felon’s brand on his forehead. No one would have remembered his temptations ; no one would have forgotten his crime ; the stain of the penitentiary would have followed his footsteps, though he had gone to the uttermost parts of the earth, and the taint of that terrible punishment would have clung to him through life like the poisoned garment of Nessus.

Why is it that an enlightened and a Christian people cannot see the terrible consequences that arise from those gilded allurements and temptations to sin and crime with which the law besets the path of youth and innocence ? Under the influence of the present advanced state of medical science, as a people, we pay great attention to the sanitary condition of our country. We hear a rumor that a pestilence is approaching us from some distant land, and straightway all the public prints sound the alarm. In all our towns and cities, health committees are appointed to examine the streets and alleys, to see that every cause of disease is abated. The sewers are examined, all the cess-pools where lie hidden the seeds of pestilence are removed, and long before the dusky wings of the Angel of Death are seen approaching our land from the plague-stricken countries of the east, we are prepared to arrest his flight, and we wonder that other countries do not do the same. We read with astonishment the accounts that travelers give of the filth and cor-

SOURCE OF CRIME.

I ruption that fester in the public thoroughfares of the cities of the Orient. We are amazed that a people should be so ignorant and careless as not to remove, as far as possible, the cause of the “ Pestilence that walketh in darkness and that wasteth at noon-day.”

And yet in our midst are hundreds and thousands of plague infected spots, licensed by our courts, and protected by law, from whence are scattered the germs of disease and death more terrible and certain in their affects than all the plagues that have swept over the earth, decimating its people. The pestilence poisons only the body, and though it brings physical death, it effects not the morals of society, while intemperance not only destroys the body but sows the seeds of immorality and crime broadcast as the snow flakes are scattered by the winter’s wind.

“ Take one more example, to our purpose quite.”

But a few months ago the public prints recorded

the suicide in T of poor “Joe Morgan.” A

short time before her death she had been arrested for stealing a solitaire diamond ring, valued at sixteen hundred dollars. She sent for me. I visited her in her cell, in prison, and there saw a young and once beautiful woman, well educated, showing the evidence of former cultivation and refinement, and a mind more than ordinarily intellectual. She told me her sad story. Married when very young to the object of her first love, she lived happily with him for a number of years. His business prospered and everything seemed to promise a life of happiness and love. But in an evil hour the tempter came to him in the wine-cup. The opportunity for indulgence was ever present in the licensed saloon and drinking resort so common in our large cities. He followed the footsteps of the tempter. He trod the path so many had trodden before; financial ruin came upon him, and he became a besotted drunkard, loathsome and disgusting to all who *knew him. Poor Joe clung to him in his degradation, and made every effort to reclaim him. She was an orphan and had no other home to go to, and was compelled to live with a drunken and brutal husband and submit to his curses and blows until life became burdensome. All this time hope told a flattering tale. She thought her husband might yet reform, until at last he, her husband, tried to persuade and even to compel her to live a life of shame that he might spend the wages of her sin in strong drink. Then she fled from his hated presence a homeless wanderer, a waif on the sea of humanity.

For some time she tried to support herself with her needle, but raised and educated as she had been

SOURCE OF CRIME.

in a fashionable boarding-school, she could do nothing that would even supply herself with bread. She struggled with famine for a number of months. Then the tempter came to her. She could exchange want, penury and starvation, for luxury and ease — and she fell !

“Fell, like the snow-flake, from heaven to hell:

Fell, to be tramped as the filth of the street :

Fell, to be scoffed at, to be spit on and beat.

Pleading,

Cursing,

Dreading to die.

Selling her soul to whoever would buy,

Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,

Hating the living and fearing the dead,

Merciful God ! had she fallen so low !

And yet once she was pure as the beautiful snow !”

The sequel of her fate is generally known. Although I succeeded in obtaining a verdict of acquittal, yet, distracted and heart-broken she went from prison to die by her own hand, a victim of the accursed traffic in rum. But she died protesting her innocence of the theft, and now in a lone grave in a desolate burying ground in the country sleep the remains of poor Josephine Morgan, although that I believe was not her real name. Let us be charitable to her memory.

“ Think gently of the erring---for ye know not of the power With which the dark temptations come in some unguarded hour, Ye know not how earnestly she struggled, nor how well,

Until the hour of darkness came, and struggling thus, she fell.”

Chapter III. Scenes In Jail And Court-prisoners Sentenced

Man with raging drink inflamed Is far more savage and untamed ;

Supplies his loss of wit and sense With barb’ rousness and insolence.

— Hudi7>ras.

He that is drunken Is outlawed by himself ; all kind of ill Did with his liquor slide into his veins.

— George Herbert.

How often have I been called into our jail to listen to a tale of crime from the lips of some poor unfortunate there incarcerated, and awaiting his trial. When I have heard the story of his guilt, and have asked, “ Why did you do the deed ?” how often have I received the answer, “ I was drunk and did not know what I was doing.” Then would I hear the prayer, “ Oh save me from the penitentiary or the gallows, and I will never touch liquor again.”

I have often gone into the Court that granted the license to those who sold the poor, friendless criminal that which prompted him to commit the crime, and availed myself of every rule of law, of every privilege it gave me to accomplish an acquittal, and when successful, have said to him, “go and sin no more.” I have been conscious all the time that many blamed me for my efforts to acquit those the public thought guilty. But seldom have I heard the Court censured for granting licenses to respectable men to make criminals of their fellow men. Oh ! no! the sacred ermine of justice is not soiled or stained by granting licenses to sell that which prompts the heart to crime and the hand to murder, but the humble advocate who defends the victims of this accursed traffic meets with the censure of a most just and righteous public.

After the jury trials are ended at every Court, how often have I heard “ His Honor” say “ Sheriff bring in the prisoners for sentence.” In a few minutes they come; a motley throng files into the court-room, and on almost every pale and haggard countenance is seen the evidence of strong drink. But the frenzy caused by the licensed cup has passed away, leaving remorse of conscience, shame, and contrition on every face. Yet shame and contrition came too late, for it is only since the bars and bolts of yonder prison have protected them from the baleful influences established by the license of the Court, that the voice of reason and conscience has been heard. In their imprisonment I could see one feeble ray of justice, in this, that while it prevented them from committing crime, it also removed them from the temptations established by law and protected by license. And I have often wondered if the Court about to pronounce the sentence ever remembered the words that fell from the lips of Divinity, when on his hallowed mission to earth : “ Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” But the Judges have consulted together, and the sentences have been fixed. The name of one poor prisoner is called by the Court. He is told to “ stand up.” and is then asked if he has anything to say why the sentence of the law should not be passed upon him. With quivering lip and tearful eye he answers : “ I hope your Honors will be merciful to me, for although I am guilty, yet I was drunk when I committed the crime- and did not know what I was doing.” As I have heard this pitiful plea, and I have heard it often, I hoped it would avail, for I remembered the prayer from the cross, “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But, no ! the poor criminal, whose crime is often the legitimate offspring of the license system, is told that his plea can avail

SOURCE OF CRIME.

him nothing, that drunkenness is by law an aggravation of the crime, for it is itself a sin and an offense. He is advised by the Court to patiently suffer the imprisonment imposed by the sentence. He is kindly informed that while he is in prison he will be out of the reach of temptation, will be unable to get liquor, and that when he comes out he will be a sober man. He is advised in the future to let liquor alone, to keep away from the rum shop, and that in the end, if he lives long enough, society will forgive and forget his offenses. When the poor, trembling victim of this accursed traffic has heard the sentence that consigns him to prison for a number of years, and has sunk into his seat, I hear from the audience yonder the stifled scream and cry of anguish from his heart-broken wife, who will tell you as she has often told me, “ John was a good man, a kind father, and an affectionate husband, until he took to visiting the licensed beer shop and bar-room, and then crime came to him, and want and ruin to his family.” Do not, my reader, I beg of you, believe that the criminals that have gone from our court-room to prison are morally of a different genera and species from the common race of mankind, for they are not. I have defended hundreds of men for the commission of crime, when I sincerely believed that the only difference between them and the very respectable jury sitting in their case was that made by ten cents worth of the meanest whisky that ever a Christian Court licensed a man of “good moral character” to present to the lips of his fellow man.

In this world men are often the mere foot-ball of circumstances over which they have no control, and I have defended scores of men, who, if they had in early youth received the same mental training, been surrounded through life by the same moral atmosphere that surrounded his Honor upon the bench, would have equally well graced the “judicial ermine,” while unfortunate circumstances of birth, accompanied by a vicious education and corrupting influences from infancy to manhood, would have placed many of the ablest and most worthy judges of our land in the criminal dock. It does not follow that all convicted criminals are by nature worse than their fellow men. Victor Hugo once said that the world was divided into but two classes, “ the great detected and the great undetected,” and if this saying is not entirely true, there is enough truth in it to teach us to be charitable towards our fellow men.

Bishop A., one of the most learned and pious of the English clergy, who was celebrated for his eloquence and his charity for sinful humanity, was once walking with another clergyman of the Established Church along the streets of London. On their way a procession from the prison passed them on its road to “Tyburn,” the place where criminals were executed. In the procession was a cart containing two men under sentence of death. The men were dressed in their shrouds and seated upon' their coffins. The good Bishop and his friend paused while the solemn cortege passed. For a moment he looked at the ill-fated men, and then turning to his friend said : “ There brother, but for the grace of God and fortunate circumstances, there go you and Bishop A.” Here was that Christian charity that was kind, and that vaunted not itself ; a charity that could believe that all criminals were not by nature totally depraved, but were many of them the victims of the circumstances that surrounded them from birth.

“ Think gently of the erring;

Oh ! do not thou forget,

However deeply stained by sin He is thy brother yet.

Heir of the self-same heritage,

Child of the self-same God,

He has but stumbled in that path,

Thou hast but feebly trod.”

But while we have been moralizing the Court has not been idle. The sentences have all been passed,, the majesty of the offended law has been vindicated; the Sheriff has retired, and oh! the untold agony of those who follow him to yonder prison’

doors. As I have witnessed those scenes, I have wondered if the prisoners in their cells do not ask these questions of the solitude and gloom that surround them. Why is it wrong to drink that which the law says it is right to sell to be drunk ? Why should drunkenness aggravate a crime, when men are licensed all over the land to sell that which has made me a drunkard and a criminal, and which annually ruins thousands of my fellow men ?

But the sentences have all been passed, and the business of the Court goes on. The attorneys are notified that the Court will now take up for consideration the applications for tavern licenses.

A petition is filed stating that “ A. B., a respectable citizen, desires to keep a hotel ; that he is a man of good moral character.” One wonders why it is necessary to have a good moral character to keep a rum shop. But that is the law. The petition and certificate of good character are signed by twelve respectable (?) citizens who certify also to the necessity (?) of such a hotel. It is considered by the Court, is granted, and straightway this respectable citizen with a good moral character is licensed to sell that which he knows will ruin his neighbor, and prompt him to commit crime. And thus the seed is sown ; and the next Court may expect to gather another such a harvest as but an hour before was gathered into the prison house of the county.

SOURCE OF CRIME.

And so the evil goes on, sanctioned by law and protected by license. At every Court the seed is sown, and at every Court that harvest is gathered whose reaper is death.

It is said “we must not blame the judicial officers of the law for this.” That is true except to hold them to a proper exercise of their discretionary power. “ Bonijudicis est ampliare jurisdictionem!' “A good judge will, when necessary, extend the limits of his jurisdiction,” is an old and time-honored legal maxim. Judges are not mere automatons, created to execute the letter of the law, regardless of its “effects and consequences.” They are supposed to have discretion, and in some instances they have. They are expected to exercise that discretion in such a way as to protect society as far as possible from the effects of a bad law. The liquor law is a blot on our statute book, a disgrace to modern civilization. The evil of intemperance is a putrid sore on the prosperity of our country, and our duty to ourselves and our children demands that we wipe it out by the influence of public opinion at the ballot box.

It is perhaps true that no law would or could wholly prevent the drinking of intoxicating liquor by those who have already acquired a taste for it. But the love of strong drink is not a natural, but an acquired taste, and those who do not have it will certainly take no pains to acquire it. Let us, then, as far as possible, keep it out of the reach of the young and rising generation. Let us by the strong arm of the law blot out of existence the saloon, with its glittering paraphernalia of ruin and death ; let us close the doors that open from our public streets into the dens of debauchery and drunkenness, and future generations will bless us with grateful recollections.