The Crime of Caste in Our CountryDavenport, Benjamin Rush
History
The Crime of Caste in Our Country
Davenport, Benjamin Rush
Social problems; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
The people have had enough, a surfeit, of this cry of immunity from the
consequences of crime because the criminal happens to possess wealth.
We are weary, tired of it. And the people have made up their minds that
the wealthy criminals shall be brought to the bar of justice along with
the poorest, pilfering thief of a penny loaf. There shall not be in our
land one law for the rich and another for the poor. If these wealthy
criminals perjure themselves with regard to their incomes, they must
be punished, and the people will expect the punishment and penalty to
be inflicted by and through the administration of Grover Cleveland.
To cry out, with the New York _Sun_, that “If you pass a law requiring
the citizens of the American Union to swear to the truth and record
their incomes, it is but offering an inducement to perjury, and,
therefore, is undesirable,” is to admit that our Government is a
failure, that a Republic is a failure, that the will of the majority
shall not rule, that the American Constitution is a farce and a fraud,
all of which the “Common People” will not believe to be the case.
They demand the law! The enforcement of it rests with the Executive
of the nation. The punishment rests upon the integrity and honor of
the judiciary of the Federal courts. And there has been no evidence
yet of a lack of honesty in the members of the Federal judiciary. The
perjurers can and should be punished. If the Legislature of the nation,
the Congress of the United States, will pass a graded income tax, as
the people desire that they should do, the people believe that the
law will be executed under the wise and honest administration of that
Executive chosen by them November 8, 1892--Grover Cleveland. The people
believe that, should any be accused of perjury and false return of
their incomes, they will be prosecuted by the officers of the Federal
courts, who will be honest, being appointed by Grover Cleveland, the
representative of the people; that, when so charged, perjurers brought
to trial will be prosecuted fairly and ably by the representatives of
the executive department, selected by the people November last, and,
when so tried, the people, by twelve of their number, the jury, will
decide whether the accused be guilty or innocent, and, if guilty, the
people believe that the wealth and position of the accused will not
enter into the consideration of the Magistrate representing the Federal
Government, but that he will sentence a guilty man, even though he be
worth a million or a hundred million, in the same manner as he would
the commonest counterfeiter or petty larceny thief in the land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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