Human Nature Under An Unfavorable Aspect

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HUMAN NATURE UNDER AN UNFAVORABLE ASPECT.—

We advise any one who questions the dogma of the original total depravity of the human race to frequent the police courts, and he will there be likely to gather ideas which will tally a great deal better with the old Calvinistic theology than with the current literature of the day, which lauds the dignity of human nature. It is positively sickening even to peruse the bare records given in the newspaper police reports, but far more so to attend the courts themselves, and see how much of drunkennness, pugnacity, brutality, ignorance, and filth, goes to make up the lower elements of society. We do not believe that the dwellers in fashionable streets are intrinsically better than those who live in wooden shanties, or that there are not as many evil passions and consequent offences against morality, in brown stone fronts as in wooden shanties. But offenders of the former grade have at least the decency not to wash their dirty linen in the public view, they throw a veil of concealment over their peccabilities which the others are too reckless to employ. Public opinion compels the votaries of fashion and professors of respectability to put on at least the outward semblance of morality, whatever their inclinations, or even their private practice may be. But there is no such public opinion in Red Hook as on the Heights—on the North Side, as on the South. Therefore, what the fear of Mrs. Grundy¹ does for the latter, the Police Court must do for the former. In a dilapidated tenement house, if the occupant of the garret has a spite against the tenant of the third floor, they fight it out vi et armis, the rest of the population of the building grouping around, either to see fair play, or what is more likely to render manual aid to whichever party their sympathies lead them to befriend. Thus a "muss" is created, the neighborhood is disturbed, and the police, hearing the uproar, arrest the belligerents. In a fashionable quarter they would settle such an affair differently, in a way even more culpable, though not one that the police could take cognizance of. Mrs. A. would lose no opportunity of scandalizing Mrs. B., and making depreciatory remarks regarding her among the circles of their mutual acquaintance; but she would not dream of exposing herself to an arrest for assault and battery. It is to the dread of what "the world" would say, and not to any innate moral superiority, that we must attribute the immunity of "respectable" people from acquaintance with the interior of a police court.

The inference from all this is, that if we could only create a feeling of self-respect, or even a fear of public opinion, in the breast of those classes who figure in the police reports, we should accomplish a great deal of good. We do not refer here to the drunkards and prostitutes—the only places for them are Inebriate Asylums² and Magdalen Hospitals³—but to those who figure in the police courts as having been concerned in rows, family squabbles, assaults, and so forth. A radical reformation of their tempers would be impossible—but surely something might be done to suppress the visible display thereof. Neighbors in Fifth avenue often hate each other as cordially as any two families in the Five Points—and this cannot be prevented—but it is surely possible to prevent them from developing their hatred into a breach of the peace. Here is a problem, the solution of which we are content to resign to philanthropists and social reformers—what can be done to render appeals to fisticuffs as unfashionable and unfrequent in "low" neighborhoods as in respectable quarters? Whoever will solve this will deserve the gratitude of the city justices, by easing them of half their present labor.

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