Points of Friction
have been done with a murderess of such tender years; but the New York authorities should see to it that Solomon Kramer is the last baby whom Frances Sulinski kills. She poisoned this one with the single purpose of implicating in the crime a woman of seventy with whom she had quarrelled. The poor infant lingered in pain twenty-four hours before released by death. It is not easy to throw a kindly light upon the deed; and while a baby's life is of small value to the State ("as well be drowned as grow up a tinker," said Sir Walter Scott), civilization means that it has a right to protection. The law exists, not for the punishment of the offender, and not for his reformation, but that the public may be safe from his hands.
A robust sense of humour might help to straighten out the tangles which have deranged the simple processes of jurisdiction. When the court rendered a decision freeing the prison authorities
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