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Show CRIME AS AN EPIDEMIC. EspericDoo almost justifies the opio-ioD opio-ioD that suicidoa and murders are diseases dis-eases rather than crimes, acd often assume the oharacter of epidonncs. Yostorday'fl tragedy in this city ia oue in point, and u terrible illustration illustra-tion of the effect of example, if not contagion. Within three months we have chronicled a half-dozen murders and suicides in this city. A mania to become actors in euch tragedies seems to have overthrown the judgments of that class of our people subject to a morbid sensitiveness. In nono of the instances referred to, was thero a justifiable jus-tifiable cause for the acts perpetrated, and they can only be accounted for upon the supposition that such crimoc, lito th destructive diseases that peri odically ravago the world, are contagious. conta-gious. We havo no sympathy with the sentimentality that shields murder under un-der the pica of insanity,butoannot resist the conviction that tragedies liko that of yesterday are the fruits of dethroned reason. It ia patent that crimes of this oharacter multiply and rage violently vio-lently at stated times, alternated with soasons of quiet in which society is not shocked by their occurrence. Even fires, and disasters on railroads and at sea seem to bo contagious, and follow each other in a succession so fast as to suggest the idea of an unavoidable fatality. fa-tality. But in all of these instances, the infallible rulo of cause and effect prevails, and the cure lor them is in prevention rather than in retribution. |