Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1908 — WHERE ENGLISH JUSTICE ERRS. [ARTICLE]

WHERE ENGLISH JUSTICE ERRS.

American Variety Not Quite 8o Bad in Bome Directions. It Is only a century since the death penalty was Inflicted in England for theft not exceeding the value of a sheep. Now some of the London journals are making a merciless exposure of magistrates throughout the kingdom who keep up the tradition by sentencing petty thieves to Jail, while inflicting only trifling fines upon wife beaters and even more brutal offenders. In one police court one defendant was fined $2.60 for knocking his wife down in the street because she refused to give him money for drink, and another was sentenced to 60 days' imprisonment for damaging growing potatoes and stealing two footballs. For cruelty to a horse, beating his wife, who was 111, with fist and hammer and leaving her with nothing to eat, one man was fined two dollars, while another, charged with stealing a pair of socks valued at 12 cents, got 14 days’ hard labor. It would not be difficult to make up a list of similar cases from American police courts, yet the tendency in America is rather toward a higher estimate of the value of human life.—Van Norden Magazine.