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Show Liberty and Consistency BH rE sentiment of the good people or- the 91 United States is shocked at the contempla- jH tion of a prize-fight, but pious mothers bring jH up their sons nursing all the time a secret hope ! that they will sometime reach a university and jl when there will not only take the prizes for their l literary and scientific superiority, but likewise as lH the best oarsmen and foremost football players H in the school. But it happens that last year lour 11 times as many men were killed at football 11 as in prize fights. And the difference was this. 11 Those killed in the football games, might, had fjl they lived, all filled honorable and distinguished 11 places on the roll of the nation's great men. On 11 the other hand, when a prize-fighter is killed it il means merely that another thug is gone, one al- " together worthless living or dead. The question f naturally arises, "Where is the consistency of kM people who condemn a prize-fight, but applaud a ,M football game? M Chicken fighting Is also condemned on the ,M score that It Is cruel. But the chickens never M made that complaint. If there is one thing more 'E than all else that they enjoy, it is a boxing M match. True, one is occasionally killed, but then, M a million are killed every morning to supply the iM people who think chicken-fighting cruel, with jH breakfasts. Again, where is the consistency of M people? But someone says: "Prize-fighting and ,M chicken-fighting are demoralizing spectacles to M the lookers on." But those same people attend 'M theatres constantly where the interesting fea-" M tures are those which are brazenly suggestive of M the gratification of the worst passions of poor M humanity. In this, too, consistency seems to have M lost most of her jewelry. In the same way peo- H pie are shocked when they read of the brutalities M of a bull-fight but we can easily believe the story M that came from the east a few days ago of the M Mexican who refused to attend a second foot-ball M game and in explanation said the first one had M so shocked him by its cruelty that he recoiled M from seeing another. M Now the writer of this would not go to see a .J prize-fight if one was held across the street every JA day in the year, and the admission was froo. M But we have no faith in trying to make men M good by statute. Thia conclusion was reached in M England many, many years ago, and prize-fights M and horse-racing are both national institutions M there, and England has lost no prestige by them. M A great many states have shut off horse-iucing, H but the men who have done that, see twenty H horses daily hauling wagons about the streets of ,H 'their cities who are so poorly fed and are so 'H crippled that death would be a relief to them, H but they never enter a protest agamst the abom- !H nable cruelty. Compare one of these poor crea- iH tures with a blood-horse pawing in the valley and 'H smelling the race afar off. Which one needs our H pity most? fl The theory of our government is that every H citizen has a right to do any legitimate thing H m gkll I )l 1 1 W. i. i .in , . Ji.. jt.n.Wim.. t.T -, .. ., - m lt-18" I -"V-'jM Z-. LjiLli - , .t j1 . k -J"WHm..li.i ..iii-. ...j. &gy. B H that does not wrong his neighbor! Our belief is H that no legislature has the right, under any plea, to H, deprive any citizen of this right. When in one H breath men declare that ours is a free country, H the freeest under under the sun, and in the next H' permit a little body of men, most of whom are H; chumps, to declare what shall constitute liberty and H; what limitations shall be put upon men's acts, H1 though those acts infringe upon the liberties of H the needful restraints of society, they make a B grave mistake. |