Some person has sent me a marked copy of the New
Orleans Picayune, the marked matter being an editorial
substantially approving the manner of the taking off of
Mr. Brann, the editor of the Iconoclast.
Granted that, as the Picayune declares, Mr. Brann
wantonly attacked spotless reputation, that decency and
purity were not sacred to him--an assumption, by the
way, that is a rank injustice to Mr. Brann's memory--
let us see about this matter of private vengeance which
the Picayune approves.
Are there not laws in all the states against libel? Are
there not laws against publishing obscene and defamatory
matter? If there be, then what justification can there be
for private vengeance? What is the use of laws if men
on any provocation may set aside those laws and set
themselves above them and execute the person who may
have offended, or who may be imagined to have offended
them? If private vengeance is to prevail what is to
prevent any person construing any criticism into a mortal
offense and assassinating the critic, even though the critic
be palpably and undeniably criticizing for the public
good? When the individual is made the judge, jury and
executioner of whomsoever displeases him, what becomes
of law, of order, of civilization? There is not a day in
the year that one could not justify the murder of a
hundred editors, if the rightfulness of the killing were
determinable solely by what the killers thought of the
criticisms against them in the papers controlled by those
one hundred editors.
If we can tolerate a state of society in which any man,
for what seems to him good and sufficient reason, for
anything from biting the thumb at him to jesting about
his whiskers, may take the life of another, why shall we
not tolerate the man who will take another's property
because the taker deems the other has too much or has
unjustly accumulated what he has?
What is the result of this sanction of private vengeance?
It is anarchy. Pursued to the ultimate of its logic it
means that every man is a law unto himself and the justice
of an execution rests upon nothing but the opinion, or
delusion, of the executioner. What one man might call a
trifle might, to another man, call for blood. You could
kill a man because his boots creaked or his eyes squinted or
he wore the wrong shade of your favorite color in his
necktie. Ridiculous? Not at all. Liking or disliking any
of these trifling things is only a matter of personal
preference. They may be as distasteful to one person as the
tone of an editorial is to another. If a man may rightly
kill a writer, like Mr. Brann, why would it not be right for
someone to kill any editor? At one time there was talk
in the south of killing the late Joseph B. McCullagh for
his editorials. How if Senator Hanna were to "go gunning"
for the editorial "roasters" of himself, or for
the malevolent cartoonist? Mr. Brann attacked hypocritic
preachers, snide politicians, shoddy society people,
shyster lawyers. He did it in, to me, an exaggerated
manner, but he felt that such manner was necessary to arouse
the people. Were Brann's blasts against Baylor University
intrinsically worse, more a license of the press than
let us say the assaults of the New York World, the New
York Journal or the Post Dispatch upon Pierpont Morgan
and the trusts? And yet, if any trust magnate, crucified
as a blood-sucker on the poor, were to shoot the editor
of one of these sheets, he would be howled to the hangman's
noose. The trust magnate would be told he should have
had recourse to law. But in the south, no--Mr. Brann
was rightfully assassinated. No law for him! Why?
Because Mr. Brann assailed a few southern "josses." If
Mr. Brann were justly slain then the next person who
may dislike an editorial in the Picayune may kill its editor
on the ground that the editorial--no matter how trifling
in its imputation--is "carrion journalism." This law of
chivalric private vengeance would justify a saturnalia
of murder in every large city where gossip circulates in
society. The chivalry of it! A man has written something
he deems to be true and comments upon it as he
deems it his duty in a quasi public capacity. Everyone
who does not like the article can "take a pop at him."
But, says the chivalrous Picayune, the law of private
vengeance does not apply to anything save grave offenses
in scurrility. Ah! The offensiveness of a criticism is
only a matter of individual capacity for pain or humiliation.
The trifle is only a trifle, because a man thinks
it so. It may become a thing of importance at any time
if you leave the decision of its importance solely to the
judgment of the man who is going to resent it.
Private vengeance makes for the creation of a caste
of bulldozers. Let it become known in a community that
criticism is an invitation to death, and who profit? Not
the men of spotless reputation. Not the decent and pure
elements of the community. Not at all. The ruffian gang
in politics profits. The sanctimonious crooks profit. The
seducer and betrayer, who is a dead-shot, profits. Every
social and civic iniquity flourishes under this dominance of
the law of private vengeance. All the people who deserve
criticism are ready to shoot. They are the judges of their
own spotless reputations. They will kill the man who spots
it. So it is that in almost every southern city there has
grown up a class of political brahmins absolutely secure
from criticism that counts. Take New Orleans. The
papers feared for years to breathe a breath of attack
against the "spotless reputations" of its leaders. The
story of the corruption that developed is too well known
to require telling. After all, it is not the people of
spotless reputation who are assailed in the papers. Whenever
anyone is assailed the chances are there is ground for the
assault, and there is at least a prima facie evidence that
attack or exposure is necessary in the interest of public
morality. Any reputation would be spotless if no one
dared attack it. If it were high crime to assail people
vigorously how would dishonor, debauchery, fraud and
crime in high places ever be brought to light. If the
right of private vengeance shall prevail in any community
then the ruffians and blackguards may pursue their
nefarious ends unhampered because of the terror they
inspire by threats to shoot their critics. This recognition
of the right of the individual to punish, by the infliction
of death, the person who has injured him, puts the
community at the mercy of the worst elements in it. It is
the extension of the barbarism of lynch law. It makes
every man, who wants to be one, a mob. It develops the
idea of savagery in revenge to such an extent that the
individual executioner of the offender against himself does
not hesitate to wreak his vengeance from behind. It
promotes assassination.
Aspersions upon the virtue of women are certainly
indefensible on any imaginable ground. They demand
often a punishment which the law is inadequate to provide.
They cannot be ignored. They constitute the
exceptions which confirm the rule that it is well to let
the law punish slanderers. And in general men are
expected to protect to the last extremity the reputations of
the women of their family and their acquaintance. The
person who attacks publicly or privately the virtue of a
woman deserves the limit of vengeance, for the publicity
of legal proceedings toward punishment only aggravates
the original wrong. Mr. Brann did not attack the virtue
of girl-students at Baylor University. He attacked the
administration of that institution and the killing of him
was the result of a distorted view of the trend of his
criticisms. If it were believed that he assailed the virtue
of girl-students at Baylor he would not have a single
mourner in the southwest. And no man in any part of
the United States can have a following of respectable
people, if he defames women. The feeling of reverence
for woman is so general that it is often a defense for
personal violence against writers who never dream of
attacking feminine honor. Aside from the fact that death
is too light a punishment for the man who attacks womanly
chastity, the law of private vengeance is not sweepingly
and invariably to be condemned. I am not liberal enough in
recognition of the great fact of human nature to admit
that the objection to private vengeance is mainly an
objection to the recognition of the right of individual execution
of the death penalty for any criticism. Men ought not to
be shot for criticisms of public institutions. It would be
foolish to argue against the fact that men occasionally feel
called upon to resent criticism by an appeal to battle
without weapons. The killing of critics at the whim of the
criticized is the evil against which protest is made. Plain
assault and battery is easily defensible on the ground that
no one can be expected always to have his temper in control.
It makes writers careful, and it is not followed by
the regret which follows killing. Writers are expected to
keep within bounds in their criticisms, and even then they
are certain to generate ill feeling in the criticized and their
friends, but so long as the offense is not murderous of
reputation and mortally malevolent the private execution
of writers is an offense not to be condoned on a mistaken
interpretation of chivalry. For all sins of journalistic
criticism, outside of the diabolism of blasting reputations
for virtue, the law provides adequate remedy, and if it
does not, then it were idle to say that the exasperated
victims of criticism should not have recourse to their fists,
although decent criticism, free from malice, addressed to
people in position semi-public would not seem to call for
violence under pretense of resenting something much worse.
As a rule I should say that the criticism which does not
call for extreme and desperate punishment calls for no
notice at all, or if it does, in the case of men, there are
laws, civil and criminal, that cover the case, with ample
punishment for the offense. This is the practical view of
the remedies against "carrion journalism."
A public sentiment strong enough to support private
vengeance is strong enough to support the law. There
are laws for the punishment of slander. More rigorous
laws could be enforced. If the people hate slanderers
bitterly enough to kill them, then they should hate them
enough to see that the laws against slander are enforced.
The moral sentiment that can sustain the one could sustain
the other. But the individual execution of vengeance
is a turning away from the law. It is the fostering of the
bully and the killer for drunken pastime. It is a bulwark
for boodlers, blackguards, frauds and lechers. It gives
rein to individual passion without limit. Such chivalry is
barbarism.--Pasquin.