Edmond About Quotes
It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of indulgence for infanticide. A question of interest, my dear Sir! The jury is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim of infanticide.
Mencken, H. L. A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources. Alfred A. Knopf, 1942, p. 641.
Johnson was sentenced to jail in about 1900 for having a boxing match in Texas where Johnson beat a white boxer. His opponent was jailed with him for the integrated fight. At the same time, Texas was notorious for allowing a man whose wife had committed adultery to the rival man and often the wife as well. The practice gradually was outlawed but many Texas juries refused to convict such a man and murderers often got away unpunished. It was only in the 1970’s that the practice was almost eliminated, but even so, occasionally a murdering husband would be acquitted by a Texas jury acting in the Texas tradition. It is interesting to examine this historical fact in the light of modern “honor killings” of adulterous women in some Muslim societies.
Edmond François Valentin About was a French novelist, publicist and journalist.
