Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/386

 The Green’ Bag

364

Many pathetic instances have occurred

in the Supreme Court of the United States, where judges have died leaving

their families practically penniless or even insolvent. A judgeship, in a large proportion of cases, in both federal and state courts, is virtually a life tenure; it is oﬁered with the expecta tion that the recipient will not ﬁnd it necessary to retire to some more lucra

social order.

An attentat is not justi

ﬁable homicide merely because the assassin belongs to a revolutionary party. The laws and institutions of this country do not grant immunity to

those in our own midst who perpetrate political assassination. Political crimes are merely one particular form of crime, and are not the less heinous because

tive pursuit after a short period. Under

they are due to an inﬂamed condition of opinion on the part of certain irrecon

such conditions, the government owes

cilable groups.

it to the life incumbent so to provide

The deﬁnition of political crime needs

for his temporal wants that his family will not be left in poverty. Salaries that impoverish work harm not only

to be narrowed, so as to include only

to the judges individually, but imperil the state itself by diminishing popular

respect for an efficient administration of the law.

those crimes which are in truth of a class by themselves and have charac— teristics distinguishing them from or dinary crimes. Any other justification for such crimes but a real upheaval of

A

THE

UNHOLY FETICH OF "POLITICAL CRIME” SSASSINATIONS not long ago re reported from India, Russia and

Corea emphasize

the need of

such

restriction of immigration as shall keep from our shores the scum of Europe. A remarkable ruling of the Treasury Department admits of the entrance into this country, at all American ports, of

society and the turmoil and violence induced by an actual state of internal rebellion is repugnant to the spirit of American institutions. Until our im migration laws are so modiﬁed that we can exclude undesirables, and until our

extradition policy is so modiﬁed that we can return to Europe those found, after

their residence in this country, to be fugitives from justice from foreign countries, we are actively promoting the

self-confessed murderers from the anar

growth of a cancer in the body-politic of the American people. We are not

chistFgroups, on the ground that such

encouraging but endangering the cause

murders are merely “political offenses.” Surely we need a more satisfactory deﬁnition of "political oﬁenses." Are the most despicable and deliberately treacheous crimes of which men are capable to be condoned merely on the ground that they spring from political passion? While political passion can

of liberty by sentimentalizing about political grievances which can never incite downtrodden innocence to acts of dastardly and cold-blooded brutality.

account for many departures from the

following stories :—

strict

letter

of

an

upright

TWO MISSOURI STORIES R. EDGAR WHITE, of Macon, Mo., furnishes us with the two

ethical A FAIR LAWYER

code, and can excuse many irregulari ties of speech and action, it cannot

justify ﬂagrant deﬁance of the most rudimentary commands of morality and

Witnesses who have been dragged many miles over the country to testify before jus' tices and notarles will appreciate the vigorous kick registered by Farmer Hiram Watterson