We must not lose sight of the fact that there is always a certain amount of crime in the world; there is a certain amount of percentage of offenses against property which will continue to exist as long as the world shall endure. It is the object of society to reduce the percentage of offenses against persons and property to the minimum, but it is absolutely impossible to stamp out offenses entirely. It may be that at the present time offenses of a particular character have become glaring, and it may be that those offenses seem to call for a remedy; but certainly we must not lose sight of the experience of past ages and of the conditions of our nature in providing for remedies against those offenses. The gentleman from New York spoke of garroting in London having been stopped by the re-establishment of the whipping-post. Some years ago in the city of New Orleans, garroting became quite rife. A great many cases of garroting took place in the vicinity of a spot called Lee Place, where there is a monument to General Robert E. Lee. Now, that crime was not met by a return to the practices of the middle ages, but by the ordinary execution of the law, by the fact that the police captured a certain number of them, and they were punished according to law. I do not recollect a case now in the last fifteen years. Now, suppose at that time our people had lost their minds in the presence of this new outbreak of garroting and had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to put out the eyes of the garroters, and we had established a place on Lee Circle, the very spot of their offense, and had there caused their eyes to be put out? Would not a thrill of horror have gone through the whole United States? Now, I ask you, gentlemen, have you ever seen a man flogged? Well, I have. I saw a colored man flogged in the Confederacy, and, Confederate soldier that I was, I sickened at my heart and I felt a sense of humiliation and degradation that I was a witness of such a scene.

A member:

What was he flogged for?

W. T. Houston :

He was flogged for deserting. We had a lot of negroes working on fortifications. They were sent to us by their masters. They ran away, and some of them were recaptured and flogged, and I know that the men of my company who witnessed it and they were Missourians-sickened at the very sight, and protested that they would never permit any more flogging done in their presence.

A member:

Have you ever seen a white man flog his wife?
Simon Sterne :

That's the question.
W. T. Houston:

I am glad the question has been asked me, and this is the answer to it: Society must not descend to the same practice that calls for punishment; we must not educate children that brutality is to be met by brutality, and that brutality is the normal state of mankind. The object of all government is to civilize the great mass of the people. Now, no man can deplore wife-beating more than myself; but, gentlemen, the flogging of a wife-beater is not the degradation of the wifebeater, but it is the degradation of the Government or State that inflicts it; it is the degradation of the men who witness the flogging; it is the degradation of the man who wields the whip; it is the degradation of every man, woman, and child that reads in the morning papers an account of the disgraceful, inhuman, and brutal thing that has been committed in the community in the name of law. Gentlemen, we are all familiar with cases of lynching. What is the motive of lynching? Is it respect for the law? No, not in one case out of ten. The resort to lynching is to satisfy the bloodthirsty, cruel feeling lying dormant in the breast of the lynchers. It is that feeling that makes a man beat his wife; it is that feeling that makes a man slungshot his victim. The lyncher is himself a criminal, and he is gratifying criminal desires. He pretends to act for the vindication of the law. Now, in the

same way, if you establish a whipping-post for one offense it will come in for another, and the general result will be a lowering of the moral tone of the whole body of the people and a return to the methods of the middle ages. Why, there was a time when horse-stealing and petty larceny was punished by hanging. Now, all of these things have ceased. Why? Because we have found that they were not necessary. Now, there may be from statistics some increase in the number of crimes committed, but that is attributable to the fact that the number of crimes has been increased by statute. I read recently of a man in New York who was convicted of abduction and sentenced to prison. His offense consisted, not in carrying away the girl, but he took a girl who was under the age of sixteen years to his room. Now, that is an entirely new offense in the State of New York-I mean it is a new statutory offense. That man figures in the list of crime as an additional criminal. Such things were done prior to that time, the world was just as bad, but that particular statutory crime did not exist. As we increase the number of statutory crimes, necessarily the number of criminals will seem to increase; but for all that the world is getting better. I think, therefore, it would be wise for us to act in a way that would indicate that we had not lost all hope of reducing crime to the minimum.

J. R. Johnston, of Ohio:

Mr. President, two arguments only have been adduced in support of this resolution. One is the experiment made in the State of Maryland recently, by which an apparent reduction of the crime of wife-beating has taken place in that State. What other causes may have tended to bring about that result in the State of Maryland is something we ought to know before we must conclude that it is to be attributed to the operation of this statute. There are many things operating in the State of Maryland, and one of them is the progress which they ought to be making to keep pace with the American people in civilized parts of the United States,

but that is not all. The other is that the application of the whip to a criminal has a deterrent effect by making him lose caste even with the criminal classes with whom he associates, that is, it tends to degrade him still more than the crime itself, and drives him further down the scale of crime. Now, I have always observed that the great bulk of our crime is committed by the degraded classes. Therefore, if you increase that class, making that degradation still greater, what will be the result? I ask my friend from New York, who says that that is the best argument he can adduce here. Simon Sterne :

The man who has had the lash applied to his back may be degraded still lower than the condition he was in before he went to the whipping-post, but the class is deterred. That is my answer. We will deter from committing offenses, not only by the moral law, not only by the condition that may be within or upon us, but also by the tone of society around about us.

Adjourned until to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock.

THIRD DAY.

Friday, August 19, 10 A. M.

The President:

The first business this morning is the nomination of officers.

William P. Wells, of Michigan:

For reasons which will presently appear, this report is presented by me instead of by Judge Wright. I am instructed by the General Council to report the following nominations for officers of the American Bar Association for the ensuing year:

(See the List of Officers at the end of the Minutes.) Adopted.

William P. Wells:

The General Council recommend a candidate for membership. He was duly elected.

(See the List of New Members.)

The President:

I wish to submit to the Association now what business they will prefer to proceed with. The situation of business is this: When we adjourned yesterday morning the reading of the report from the Committee on Commercial Law was being proceeded with. In the evening and when we adjourned, that report was made the special order of business this morning after the nomination and election of officers, but last night the resolution, which I now read, was under discussion:

"Resolved, That in the opinion of the Association the interest of society would be promoted by the general use of the whipping-post as a mode of punishment for wife-beating and other assaults on the weak and defenseless, or assaults committed with slung-shots, sand-bags, brass knuckles, or similar weapons."

That discussion was very nearly closed, and I have doubts myself which business is entitled to precedence. Therefore, I propose to submit to the Association which business they will take up first.

Robert D. Benedict:

I move that the discussion of last evening be continued and closed.

George Gray, of Delaware:

I move an amendment to that, viz.: That discussion be continued for fifteen minutes. I think that inasmuch as that was the special order for yesterday, as we have but three days in which our proceedings can be conducted, and there are several matters that may properly come before the Association of quite as much importance as that, I think after the full discussion last evening that fifteen minutes ought to suffice to close it.