Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/89

Rh and vice versa as it had pleased Providence to place substance.

This was a high conception of human justice; since it passed by the trivial controversy of the litigants, and placed the burden of legal procedure upon the one best able to support It. First Class Crawley maintained further that it was the part of wisdom in a government promptly to release the criminal who “shelled out,” since the revenues of the State arose largely from the fines imposed upon the evildoer, and it was certainly quite useless to retain the criminal at public expense after having squeezed him thoroughly, when he could be returned to society and squeezed again later on.

Crawley might have been the father of a school, had he not found the school in Ohio established to his uses. Consequently his fame was local, and his methods being of ancient origin in this Commonwealth, provoked no comment, and indeed he might have passed on, with the usual career of such ambitious spirits, to a seat in the legislature, had he not unwittingly crossed into a neighboring State in order to attend a reunion of the Grand Army