Los Angeles Daily Herald

Wife Beaters.

Some of our people are blubbering because Senator Roach's bill to punish wife beaters at the public whipping post has become a law. We are sorry to see them take it so hard. There are thirty odd States, however, that they can emigrate to if this law oppresses them. We have no doubt there will be a considerable exodus of wife beaters from this State very soon. We can bear the departure of all such with great Christian fortitude. Of all the crimes that men are guilty of there are none so dastardly and cruel as that of beating an unfortunate woman who has committed her destiny into the hands of such a wretch. The gallows, the whipping post, or the rack is none too good for such brutes.

We have no sympathy with that class of maudlin humanitarians who are forever howling and crying over the just punishment of the poor criminal, which serves no other purpose than to encourage the vicious and evil minded in the commission of crime. What the world needs most is a law to prevent crime and to accomplish this we doubt if there will ever be one made superior to that given to Moses—"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." This law emanated from Heaven, and is the embodiment of wisdom and mercy. There is no law so merciful as one that prevents crime, and there will never be one equal to this to deter evil-doers. But we are told that Christ abrogated this law: Matthew v. xxxviii and xxxix. Not so. Christ was not speaking to legislators, neither did he design to convey the idea that this law was to be repealed. "Ye have heard it said, an eye for an eye, &c. But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him thy left also." It was individual conduct of which he was speaking and not the punishment of crime by a legal process. Men in those days, as they do now, were in the habit of taking the law into their own hands, and if slapped upon the cheek they would smite back again. The foolish idea prevailed then, as now, that a man's honor was at stake if he failed to resent an insult, and it was to abolish this code of honor that the language above was used. This command completely upset the prevailing idea of what was chivalric and honorable. At the first glance we are ready to say He was teaching lessons of cowardice, but the very reverse is true. None but the bravest man can keep this command, for it requires far more courage to turn the other cheek than it does to knock a man down. All his teachings were to keep and not to abrogate or break the law. It seems to be a hobby with nine-tenths of what is called the progressive element in this mushroom growth of the nineteenth century to consider all the former ages barbarians. In their estimation they are so far superior to every race that has gone before that they would not only abrogate old laws, but institute a new code of morals and throw away the old Bible. But we notice that those nations whose God is the Lord, and whose laws are nearest like the Code given to Moses, have the least crime and are the happiest peoples, the howlers to the contrary notwithstanding. These fanatics would make a great show of refinement and mercy in dealing out the penalties of the law. But to whom would he be merciful? Not to the poor helpless women, who are beaten and whipped like so many dogs, until their backs are lacerated and bloody, but to these inhuman brutes that do these things they would be very tender—put them in confinement and feed them at the expense of the hard working civil people. We say, give them stripe for stripe, until they learn what virtue there is in the lash. To those editors, divines, and law-makers, who imagined that Christ abrogated the law of retaliation, we would make this remark: If he intended to abolish the law by the text we have quoted (and there is no other text like it) by a parity of reasoning we must not only turn the other cheek when a man smites us on one, but if a man commits rape we must tell him to go and commit another rape—if he kills one man to go and kill another—if he whips his wife, tell him to whip another woman. The idea is insane, and yet ministers and people have adopted it. It is a sickly sentimentalism, mistaken for genuine piety. Piety is full of love and pity, but it loves the good and helpless more than the vicious and evil.