The integrity and delicacy of the moral sense, whether in
individuals or communities, form a most important subject of the care of
all public writers and speakers, in all transactions by which, or the
history or treatment of which, the public, judgment and feelings may
be affected. Hence, when mail robbers or murderers are to be tried or
executed, we should be disposed to avoid all extraordinary bustle, or
concern, or voluminous details about their fate; we should deem it the
true policy of practical ethics to abstain from everything calculated to
produce adventitious interest or consequence for the culprits. It is not
with pleasure that we hear of the crowds that besiege the door of the
court-room, or see in the newspapers the many columns of evidence, with
an endless repetition of trifling circumstances, any more than we
can rejoice for the cause of moral and social order when convicted
highwaymen or murderers are carried to the gallows as _saints_, and hung
amidst vast assemblages, either merely indulging a callous curiosity,
or losing all the horror of their offences in emotions of compassion or
admiration, awakened by the dramatic nature of the whole scene.
* * * * *
=_Thomas S. Grimke,[47] 1786-1834.
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