THE WHIPPING-POST. 833 



their father's support ? Should the brute not rather be flogged and 

 made to bear the punishment which is his due, instead of punishing 

 his wife and children by a separation ? These questions, which I have 

 heard asked frequently, I shall endeavor to answer. A separation is 

 a hard remedy. Through no fault on their part, the man's wife and 

 children suffer bitterly. If the whipping-post could obviate all this, 

 that would be an argument strongly in its favor ; but what are the 

 results of lashing the man ? I will detail them. 1. You deprive him 

 of his citizenship ban, and banish him. He can never return to the 

 community in which he lived and face his former acquaintances. 2. 

 All his usefulness as a member of society is destroyed. All the good 

 that was ever in him is driven out. With every lash you sear his 

 soul and instill hatred and bitterness that can never be effaced. He, 

 thenceforth, becomes a hapless wanderer and an outcast, with no ties 

 or aspirations in common with his fellow-men. 3. His wife is divorced, 

 practically, without the benefit of a regular divorce. Why so ? Be- 

 cause the man, after being lashed, will never again return to her. You 

 may assuredly assume this. But that is not all. 4. His children, most 

 innocently and undeservedly of all, will suffer keenly. Not only are 

 they deprived of their father, who will leave home, and friends, and 

 usefulness behind, but they will be spoken of and treated slightingly 

 by their youthful companions as the children of the man who has been 

 flogged, and the stain will cling to them until the grave has closed over 

 their remains. The very things to be deprecated and avoided are thus 

 brought about by the whipping-post. According to a natural though 

 not just impulse of our human nature, the very wife whose husband 

 has been flogged on her account will meet with a degree of scorn, 

 however undeserved. The State has, in no case, the right thus prac- 

 tically to destroy a citizen. 



Apart from all these considerations, the demoralizing effect and 

 brutalizing tendency of a public lashing should alone operate to con- 

 demn such legislation. While wife-beating may be suppressed, such 

 exhibitions as were witnessed in Baltimore recently sow seeds that 

 will crop out in other directions and produce a harvest of crime. This 

 is a natural law, well understood by students of penal science. No 

 exhibition can have a worse tendency than the public treatment of a 

 human being in a manner that ignores his claim to consideration as 

 such. The recent exhibitions, as related in the local newspapers, of a 

 sheriff walking through the streets of Baltimore, "jauntily dressed," in 

 procession with his " staff," and reported as feeling in " elegant trim " 

 for his job, windows being raised all along the route, women and children 

 rushing to pavements and casements, were a sad commentary upon our 

 " improved " laws. The fruits of those exhibitions will outweigh, in 

 their evil, all the possible " reformation " hoped for from such legislation. 



Another consideration is the following : No man, by any act of 

 his, can forfeit or lose his human nature. AVe are all created in one 



VOL. XXVIII. — 53 



