Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1859 — MOCK MORALITY. [ARTICLE]

MOCK MORALITY.

That the proceedings of the Sickles trial are not fit to be published, we think there cannot be much doubt, and a person can scarcely be found who will say that the morals of the country have not been injured by this disgraceful and licentious affair; yet we have a very low estimate of the morals or discretion of those editors who, while they refuse to publish the particulars of the trial, at the same time speak in the strongest terms of condemnation of the papers that have published the proceedings. While they appear to even abhor the idea of any decent man or woman reading such things, they contrive, by speaking mysteriously and in riddles, throwin’g out hints here and there, of unutterable depravity, to raise the curiosity of their readers to the highest pitch of ex citernent. So great do such editors raise curiosity by their fault-finding course, that we have no doubt but that their readers, both male and female, and at that, often seriously jeopardize their heads and heels by running at break-neck speed to their nearest neighbors, to borrow papers that contain the full particulars, instead of self-riget-eons and moral lectures. If the Sickles case is too indecent to be published, it is also too indecent to be made the foundation of crossgrained lectures and vulgar epithets from moral-reform rakes. The editor who pretends to be too refined to publish such things, and yet at the same time does all in his power to excite the curiosity of his readers to make them hunt in other papers for what they find not in his, in our opinion has mistaken his calling. If the proceedings are too vulgar, the proper course is to leave them alone and say nothin" about them. We despise hypocracy—especially fault-finding hypocracy.