Baltimore Evening Sun (10 January 1913): 6.

The Hon. John Walter Smith, if he does not hump himself, will soon find the cards stacked against him. The Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus has already hired the spear of the Hon. Satan Anderson, by long odds the best politician in Maryland, and the Hon. the super-Mahon is getting ready to organize a “league of Maryland municipalities,” the inevitable effect of which, of course, must be to bring his merits before every village Mahon and Kelly in the State. But John Walter lags behind, trusting fatuously, I suppose, to the powerful effect of his Senate record upon the enlightened understanding. Incidentaly, can it be that the Hon. Eugene O’Dunne is nursing a Senatorial yearning, secretly and in the style of Nicola Machiavelli? If so, he has already achieved the shrewd trick of stealing two-thirds of the super-Mahon’s supply of tin-can thunder.

The Hon. Tom Jones, the Elkridge Wegg, gives me a well-merited rebuke in today’s Letter Column for the crime of calling names. I admit the crime, accept the rebuke and promise to sin no more--but with only slight hope of being able to carry out the promise. The emergencies of controversy must needs lead even the mildest man into occasional violence. I lament such excesses as much as the Hon. Mr. Jones himself, for all his virtue, and in extenuation of my yielding I beg to point out that the militant moralists yield even more. In the art of calling names, indeed, these holy hoodlums are plainly my masters, as they are in the allied art of bearing false witness.

Meanwhile, let the Hon. Mr. Jones go to the dictionary and learn something about the word “rogue.” Does its use necessarily convey a concept of moral turpitude? I doubt it. In one sense, according to the Century Dictionary, it means nothing worse than “a mischievous or playful person,” and thus it is “applied in slight endearment to children or women.” In another sense it means “a sly fellow, a wag”--for example, Bishop Wegg. In yet another sense it means “a dishonest person” or “a sturdy beggar.” In this last sense, I suppose, it might be reasonably applied to those bogus reformers who base their cases upon manufactured evidence, and devote their chief energies to shaking down the pious. But I do not so apply it. What I actually do is to apply it in its worst sense to those legislators who put into law the evil balderdash of such frauds. In brief, I argue that the average American legislator is not only an ass, but also an oblique, sinister, depraved and knavish fellow, and to that thesis I pledge my life, my millions and my so-called honor.

However, this to not the point. What the Hon. Mr. Jones chiefly tries to show is that a man may commit a crime against me and still be worthy of more pity than blame. There is a difference, he says, between a kleptomaniac and a plain thief, and by the same token there is a difference between an honest fool and a deliberate oppressor. Granted. I have never argued to the contrary. But what I have argued is that civilized society owes me protection from the one as well as from the other. The laws of Christendom, while admitting the irresponsibility of the kleptomaniac, do not thereby authorize her to steal. On the contrary, they plainly forbid her to steal, and when she violates that prohibition she is locked up in a lunatic asylum a dangerous person.

In exactly the same way, it seems to protect decent and peaceable folks against the extravagance and blood-lust of howling dervishes. In many cases, I haven’t the slightest doubt, the violence of such persons has a pathological basis; in brief, they are morally sick, and so it would be absurd to hold them criminally responsible for their excesses. But whatever the mode of approaching them and the theory underlying it, it must be manifest that they should be restrained. If all their proposals were put into law, life would become impossible to the vast majority of honest men, and certainly no sane person maintains that a scheme of things which makes life impossible is worthy the name of civilization.

The moral hoodlum is a bad citizen, and for exactly the same reason that the highwayman is a bad citizen. That is to say, he essays to take from his neighbor, without excuse or compensation, something that his neighbor values and wants to keep. A good citizen steers clear of every such enterprise. On the one hand, he does not molest his neighbor’s property, and on the other hand he does not invade his neighbor’s liberty and peace. It seems to me that it is the highest duty of a civilized government to give this good citizen protection. Once he is exposed to the raids and tyrannies of tools and fanatics all true civilization disappears and he is face to face with Mohammedan barbarism.

The German Journal on the sorrows of the Hon. Augustus Cæsar Binswanger, LL. B::

In the First Branch of the City Council of Baltimore has it in the latest times stood facing the only Republican representative in that body, the City Council menber Binswanger, of the Fourteenth ward, a singular rule of procedure, that we cannot but understand, on this regulation often to the pillory to be placed and branded. Everything, also including original proposals of this municipal representative, that he wishes before the higher authorities to lay, or that he wishes to set free from all political coloring, only the most solid motives springing out of, to put before the First Branch of the Baltimore City Council and no more, because the Democratic representatives don’t hold it worth the trouble themselves any attention, regarding it to give, under the aegis of a City Council member, who has therein a hobby chosen, with the stereotyped motion of laying on the table of the house, a motion that not discussable is, and thereby always no further debate by the City Councilman permitted is.

This translation, unluckily, is not guaranteed under the Pure Food and Drugs Act. I perspired over the last sentence from 3.30 o’clock yesterday afternoon until 2.45 this morning, but for the life of me I couldn’t find the verb. I am morally certain that there is a verb in the original, but the deeper I plunged into that morass of parts of speech, the farther I seemed to wander from its trail. Finally I had to give it up, and so the translation, as it stands, is imperfect.

Sapient remark of the Democratic Telegram, the super-Mahon’s false whiskers:

Some people believe that the opposition of certain newspaper publishers helps the Mayor rather than injures him.

Undoubtedly. For instance, in his battle for the Vice-Presidency. For instance, in his battle for the Light Street bridge scheme. For instance, in his battle for Paving Bob.

The last message to the Job Hounds was devoted to the Crime of July 2. Let the next one deal with the massacre of the Light street bridge scheme.