EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.

TWO KINDS OF LAWLESSNESS.

A mob in Cincinnati, involving the loss of many lives and much property in a three days’ reign of terror, has added another to a long list of warnings that the criminal administration of this country needs a thorough-going reform. The popular indignation which expressed itself at Cincinnati has been growing slowly into steady strength for thirty years and more. About 1845, gangs of horse thieves in northern Illinois were broken up—the law having failed—by regulators composed of the best citizens, who summarily hanged the thieves. About ten years later this history was repeated in Cedar and Linn counties, Iowa. These are two incidents among many of like type. Most readers know the history of the vigilance committee in San Francisco. The criminal administration having utterly failed, the best citizens organized themselves outside of the law and by vigorous and summary punishment restored the supremacy of the law. The mobbing of the “Dukes jury” at Uniontown is a still fresh event. In New York City, a few years ago, a citizen was brutally murdered in a public place, and the murderer, when arrested, said: “Hanging is played out.” The remark roused public feeling and refreshed the courage of the courts so that for some time hanging became the certain punishment of wilful murder. But in New York City, it is the press which really administers criminal law—by compelling the courts to do their duty. In the Cincinnati case, the last of a series of miscarriages of justice was the convicting of manslaughter in a case where wilful and mean-motived murder had been proved. The judge commented harshly upon the verdict. A public meeting listened to appropriately animated addresses, and passed strong resolutions of condemnation of the jury in that case, and of the criminal administration of the city. The excitable elements of the audience broke up there to reorganize in an assault on the jail. They were joined by a baser element, and a reign of terror followed.

The criminal system of the entire country is defective. It is not a terror to evil-doers. It tortures the conscience and the self respect of honest men. It has rendered human life much more insecure than private property. It is on the average safer to kill a man after robbing him than to rob him only. The match that lighted the Cincinnati conflagration was a murder done for the sake of robbery, and punished as if it had been robbery.

Our evils in this branch of justice are several distinct fungus growths of demoralized customs. A murder trial seldom ends within a year of the discovery of the criminal; it often ends twice as long after the arrest of the murderer. In England, three months suffices for the same work. There is no civilized country except our own where these long delays are tolerated. This is the safest country in the world for a murderer to carry on his profession. He is less likely to be arrested; he is not tried until the general public has forgotten his crime. When he comes to the dock, if he has money, or friends possessed of money, he can buy out the law by employing some member of a class of lawyers who make a profitable industry of defeating the aims of public justice. In the Cincinnati case, the judge said, courageously, that the murderer had been cleared of that crime because his friends had six or seven thousand dollars to fee criminal lawyers with. It is almost a rule that if the murderer has money, his cunning lawyers will delay trial, destroy testimony, and confuse the jury, or bribe the jury. If these fail, and there is money left, motions for new trials will be pressed upon judges, and perhaps secured by fictitious testimony. The motto of a murderer may well be: “While there is money there is hope.” It is plain to all intelligent persons that the law’s delay, under the influence of money, has become intolerable. We do hang the poor; we seldom hang the men who can command money. There ought to be a more summary procedure. There ought to be more pure discretion—unhampered by precedent—vested in judges. These interminable delays ought to be impossible without the connivance of the judges.

The power of money in criminal trials is a feature of the jury system as we manage it. In some states a man who knows what is going on in the world about him can not be admitted to serve on a jury. He has heard of the case and formed an opinion. Every intelligent man does that in a case of murder. This leaves jury duty to professional jurors, and to the least intelligent citizens. Worse still, on the plea of business duties intelligent men evade service on juries. In New York City, last year, a ring of “jury fixers” was discovered. They had hundreds, probably thousands, of customers—consisting of business men—who paid from ten to fifty dollars a year to have “things fixed” so that they should not be called on jury service. The men who thus bought themselves off from a civil duty were so numerous that even the press evaded the duty of vigorously exposing the crime. The men who are left, in large cities, to serve on juries, are men whose judgments can be involved in confusion by an artful plea; often, too, their verdicts can be bought with money. The city demoralization is gradually extending to the country. We must reform. We are nearing the end of popular patience. People begin to demand that they shall not be murdered with impunity. Get better juries; or amend the constitution and abolish juries. Give judges more power over the criminal lawyers, and more real discretion in refusing delays that defeat the ends of justice. Give judges to understand that we want more speedy trials and more direct methods of trial. Ask for reform—imperatively, emphatically—and reform will come. The lawlessness of court proceedings keeps within the forms of law; but it has become an ally of that other lawlessness which murders men, women and children—and gives its ally comparative impunity.

THE REWARDS OF PUBLIC SERVICE.

There is a large amount of well-founded distrust of the tendencies of our public life. It is not a distrust of Republican principles, or of universal suffrage, or of popular influence on government. It centers in our public service, and relates exclusively to the political paths to office, the uncertain or inadequate rewards for service, and the speculative element in the tenure of office. Are we not on a road which leads to demoralization in the civil service? The civil service law applies only to a small part of the public field. Cabinet officers, heads of departments, custom house and internal revenue officers, and all judicial officers, are outside of that law, not to forget the entire body of law makers. If we ask ourselves what first-class ability is worth, we find the railroads, banks and other corporations paying an average of twice (or more) as much as the government pays legislators, judges, cabinet officers, and heads of departments. If we compare what is needed by corporations with what is needed by the government, we shall be slow to admit that the public service can be satisfied with inferior ability. If we look at the cost of holding an office, we discover that a bank president may live where and in such style as he pleases, but a cabinet officer must live in Washington, and ought to spend more than we pay him in acquitting himself of social obligations.

The editor of The Chautauquan recently attended a party in the house of Secretary Chandler, the cost of which could not have been less than a thousand dollars; and there was no ostentation; only the reasonable social demand was met. Of course Secretary Chandler can not give such parties out of his salary, and could not meet the social demand upon his official position, if he had not a private fortune. The incident points to the suspicion that we are rapidly advancing to a condition of things under which poor men can not hold high offices. Everywhere the public officers of the classes which we have named are under special social obligations which exceed in money-cost the amount of their salaries. There is a double tendency—on two parallel lines—to exclude honest poor men, and to take in an inferior class of men who are either rich or unscrupulous. There is no reasonable doubt that the United States Senate has seriously deteriorated through the tendencies just mentioned. Every one knows that so many members of the other House are habitually absent, that a political battle has to be advertised to collect the members of the majority for the time being. The men in this case may or may not be inferior, but they are certainly rendering an inferior service—doing their own work while in the pay of the people. The other work is a growing factor. Senators live by their practice in the Supreme Court or by their services to corporations in which they hold office; this private work too often coming into collision with public interests.

The subject is so large that we can barely hint at points. Here is a man climbing to public place through a political combination which taxes him at every step. He must have money, or borrow or steal money, to make the ascent. When he reaches the place, he is paid a salary so far below the demands of his office that if he is to meet his social obligations he must have an income beyond his salary, and this income he must earn as he can if he is not wealthy. And the real evil is still farther on: if he wishes to stay in public life he must pay tribute to political sponges; for the tenure of his office is so short that he must begin to provide for the next election as soon as the first is over. If he wishes to rise, he must pay, and keep on paying to the invisible army of political tax-collectors which lines, many ranks deep, every road that leads to an office. Rare and favored men escape these evils; but the majority of public men encounter them. To crown the edifice of bad policy, partisan rules are set up which limit time of service. Two terms, for example, is the limit for service in the lower House of Congress, in many districts. That is to say, your Congressman is advised at the outset that he must retire in four years. What motive has he for qualifying himself to be a good legislator? He naturally seeks an office under the government, and gives his brain power to that pursuit. But wherever he is—unless he hold a judicial office—he is menaced by the rule of rotation in office. We have been remarkably fortunate in the judicial service through the fact that, though the salaries are niggardly, the terms of service are long, and safe from partisan influences.

We might profitably reflect on foreign comparisons. In Italy men receiving from $300 to $600 in bureaus serve for life, and have certain promotion. It is not a perfect method, but under it the government service is honorable to an extent which amazes an American. The honor is the largest item of the pay. We pay a less and less measure of honor. The path to our service grows more filthy, and the man who has reached the goal is often soiled with the filth through which he has waded—often enough to discredit, insensibly but surely, the class which he has joined. We pay too little in money; we pay too little in honor; we cheat ourselves and demoralize our public servants by befouling the ladders on which they climb, and by making their ascent as uncertain, and their hold on any round of the ladder as precarious, as possible. A large moral lies in the contrast that a bank cashier is discriminatingly chosen for ability, has no election expenses, is secure in his office, owes no social duties to the bank, and may rise to the presidency of it. It is the same in other corporations. As employers, the corporations have more soul and more sense than the people of the United States.

DOCTOR NEWMAN’S NEW IDEA.

The disturbance of Christian peace which has for some months affected the Madison Avenue Congregational Church, New York, has impressed us as disclosing a new phase of inter-church life. To an onlooker the case—the very heart of the case—is a struggle of a pastor to maintain himself in full membership with two denominations, against a struggle of men in both denominations to shut him out of one or the other denomination. This is the novelty in this New York “church quarrel.” For our part we are disposed to ask what general principle of morals, equity or discipline is violated by the Rev. Dr. John P. Newman’s position? He claims to be the permanent pastor of a Congregational church while retaining his membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Why not? It surely is not an axiom that a man can not belong to two denominations. Dialectic theologians may invent a score of arguments, but they will find their best one in the fact that the practice has been to confine a Christian’s membership to one branch of the church. But in the advance to Christian unity we have rapidly changed the practice at several points; and it is quite possible that Dr. Newman’s “new departure” may be another march on the general line of our progress.

A few words respecting the Madison Avenue Church and its pastor will help our readers to understand the case. The church was founded a dozen or more years ago by Dr. Hepworth, who up to about that time had been a Unitarian clergyman. It was a very expensive enterprise, and Dr. Hepworth became satisfied, after a few years, that he could neither fill the church with an audience nor pay its debt. Dr. W. R. Davis, who had been a Methodist clergyman, and is now a Dutch Reformed pastor in Albany, N. Y., succeeded Dr. Hepworth, and, after a few years of experience like that of his predecessor, hunted up a successor in the person of Dr. Newman, and resigned. There were two distinct difficulties in both these pastorates. One was the large debt; the other was the failure to secure adequate audiences. The last difficulty suggests no fault in either of the pastors. Both were gifted and popular. But the church is surrounded by other churches, and only an extraordinary man can secure a large body of hearers in it. The church was not at fault for not paying its debt; the burden was beyond its strength. When it asked Dr. Newman to become its pastor, it asked him for two reasons: He had friends who could pay the debt, and he would bring these friends into the church and congregation; and it was well understood that he could fill the large house with hearers.

Rev. Dr. John P. Newman has a national reputation as a pulpit orator. He always has full houses where he statedly preaches. Among his friends he numbers General Grant, whose pastor he was in Washington in the days of Grant’s presidency. The ex-president is one of the men whom Dr. Newman took into the Madison Avenue congregation and made a trustee of the church property. Dr. Newman is one of the last of the classical pulpit orators. His style is stately, his presence majestic. Pure taste and high ideals characterize his thought. His noble person, his rich, smooth voice, and the elevation of his thought conspire to make him admired and reverenced in the pulpit. His ardent friends have called him “the Chrysostom of his age.” Not unnaturally, he has expected the highest places in Methodism. Neither Webster nor Clay became President of the United States—and John P. Newman did not become a bishop. Some difficulties arose respecting a place for him in New York three years ago, he having then finished his term as pastor of the Central Methodist Church. After a year of decorous waiting, he accepted the call to the Madison Avenue Church. There are controversies about sundry minor matters; but after painfully laboring through the documents, we find two clear facts: 1st. From the start Dr. Newman has clung to the idea of remaining a Methodist while becoming a Congregationalist; 2d, there is an abundant lack of proof that in this policy he has deceived any one or done any other act which is inconsistent with the character which he displays in the pulpit. A single sentence in his address before the council was out of place; but, even it, from his point of view, had great provocation. To the onlooking public, perhaps to Dr. Newman also, it was a surprise to see the editor of the Christian Advocate furnishing material for use against Dr. Newman. This new party to the controversy presents the Methodists as semi-officially engaged in the effort to crowd Dr. Newman from his attitude as holding positions in two denominations. The justification of the editor of the Christian Advocate can not rest on any special pleading; it must rest on the ground that Dr. Newman’s claim is a bad one in church moralities. If this be true, then his Methodist antagonist has discharged a disagreeable duty and “meddled” for a dignified purpose.

The church quarrel did not originate in the new position of Dr. Newman, but the conflict having begun, this new position was made the point of attack by what is called the “Anti-Newman party.” It was the weak place because Dr. Newman had taken a new departure. The quarrel came out of the incompatibility of temper and interest developed between the old and the new elements in the church and congregation. Some of the old men left; the new were then more numerous and powerful than the old. The latter saw themselves gradually retiring to back seats, while the new men filled the front seats. They precipitated a conflict to secure themselves against the consequences of Dr. Newman’s abundant success. In the wisdom of this world, the new element put off paying the large debt; but they preferred to be certain that they would be left in peaceable possession after paying the debt.

The council has “advised” that Dr. Newman is in an untenable position—is not the permanent pastor. The advice is probably according to precedent. But it was not according to precedent that Dr. Hepworth left the Unitarians, and Dr. Davis the Methodists, to become pastor of that church. And for forty years there has been an increasing interflow between denominations. Half a score of ex-Methodists, including some of the ablest pastors in the city, are preaching in churches of other denominations. Ministers and members pass and repass between denominations. All this would have looked strange forty years ago. Perhaps Dr. Newman’s new idea may not look strange forty years hence. The advice of the council has probably only changed the form of the conflict which does not depend on Dr. Newman, but on the antagonism of the old and new elements in the congregation. We should like to see Dr. Newman’s theory thoroughly tested, and Congregationalism is liberal enough to afford the desired test. Methodism, as a whole, has no reason for jealousy of Dr. Newman’s success in the Madison Avenue Church. His success and good fame reflect honor on all Methodist preachers. We may come to realize that if a man is “worthy of confidence and fellowship by virtue of his responsible connection with some other body of Christian churches”—words quoted by the late council—he may safely “be counted a minister of the Congregational,” or any other “order.”

SUPERFLUOUS KNOWLEDGE.

A writer in Cornhill Magazine, some years ago, facetiously suggested that, while societies for the acquisition of useful knowledge abounded, each, doubtless, in its way, proving of eminent service to mankind, another society, not so much as a direct opponent, but rather as a proper, and even necessary, corrective of its rivals, should be organized, the object of which should be to sift out and to suppress the vast and ever increasing accumulations of knowledge that are not only really worthless but which are an unmitigated nuisance, a useless burden, a confused and baffling heap.

The suggestion above referred to, made perhaps in jest, is one, we venture to suggest, which might well be made in earnest. Useless knowledge! Has it never occurred to the reader what areas, and even continents, not to say oceans of valueless, of absolutely superfluous knowledge there are in the world? Observe we are not now writing of literature, or books, merely; we say knowledge.

Useless knowledge! For everything that may, with any kind of propriety, be comprehended under this honored term, knowledge, we usually cherish a profound and reverent respect. The highest conception of scholarship, on the part of many, consists in being possessed of encyclopedic information concerning the details of almost every conceivable matter.

According to this idea learning consists in an intimate acquaintance, at once and quite indiscriminately, with all the results of the latest scientific research, the facts of universal history, the mysteries of theology and subtleties of metaphysics; with all the institutes of law and politics; with all the literature of poetry and art.

To one entertaining such an idea of scholarship as this how positively depressing must be the monstrous and obviously ever-accumulating mass of facts heaping up around him. He quite envies the great men of the olden time who, in consequence of the then comparatively narrow range of knowledge, found it not impracticable to maintain a creditable standing at once as statesmen, soldiers, poets, philosophers, and artists; while he, in his day, can serve, at best, only as an infinitesimal wheel in a machinery of boundless complication.

Even were it desirable to burden the mind with boundless mental acquisitions, one certainly has not long to live to discover the utter futility of even the most capacious memory ever being able to compass any such result—to learn that the human mind, whatever its capabilities, is yet finite; that it is, therefore, the part of wisdom to select some one department of study and devote one’s energies mainly to the mastery of the same; and that, finally, one essential condition of usefulness depends on one’s thus wisely restricting himself to a comparatively narrow and limited field of inquiry and of attainment.

In the meantime it should be distinctly understood that true scholarship does not, by any means, consist in thus knowing absolutely everything. The popular idea that learning consists in being a walking repository of all sorts of curious and of more or less ill-assorted erudition, is a most childish error. Scholarship may, perhaps, be properly defined as knowing something about almost everything; but more especially every thing about some one thing. This is the true university idea. Some one has defined the university as being the school where something could be learned about everything, and everything about some one thing. In other words, true scholarship consists in having just so much learning as one can not only digest and master but effectively use in connection with his own special work, or mission in life; in having the keys, if you please, that shall unlock and open up to one at will all the varied stores of knowledge; and more especially in being the undisputed master of just so much and of just such knowledge as he can himself best utilize. Just as no mechanic cares to encumber himself with more tools, or the soldier with more weapons, than he can advantageously use, so no true scholar, in our judgment, will covet more knowledge than he can render properly, wisely, available for service. Why, indeed, may not too much of a good thing, as well as too little—l’embarrassment de richesse as well as the embarrassment of poverty—prove not a help but a burden, not a source of power but an occasion of weakness and a cause of stumbling?

Let no one, therefore, be tempted to envy the attainments of certain knowing ones in those walks of literature, or of science, to which he is for the most a stranger; and, because of his ignorance comparatively on certain special lines of study and intellectual inquiry, to depreciate himself as a scholar. Rather, on the other hand, while thankful that, in your own chosen sphere, you have been enabled to give a good account of yourself and to render some service, however humble, to your kind, you should also rejoice that others have been called to explore fields of thought and inquiry by your feet as yet untrod.

Who that, a few years ago, at the great Exposition at Philadelphia, walked through those acres of textile fabrics, miles of most ingenious machinery, and thousands of square yards of painting, but must have been profoundly impressed with the narrow limits of his own knowledge and attainments. And yet who, if really a sensible person, instead of feeling mortified and chagrined at all on this account, but was moved rather, at every step, silently to give thanks that here was presented another, and yet another branch of knowledge or industry concerning which it was his privilege to remain in profound and most contented ignorance? Why, indeed, should it be deemed specially important that, in order richly and intelligently to enjoy that marvellous display of the products of all nations, one should be altogether conversant with the Chinese puzzle, or versed in all the arts of sub-soiling, top-dressing, tile-draining, or stock-raising?

Let the dictionaries, therefore, and the encyclopædias, the archives and the libraries, for the most part, serve as the treasure-houses of the materials of knowledge—especially of all more strictly technical and curious lore, properly classified, indexed, assorted, accessible. Let it be the part of scholarship, if you please, exhaustively to explore certain departments of learning as specialties; but to be content, meantime, as a general thing, to know where, and how readily to find, and to be able wisely to appropriate, and effectually to employ, as occasion may require, this accumulated and duly sifted and organized learning of the ages.