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
