ce.) These were
merely individual cases among many others like them. Moreover, we
were just as relentless in dealing with crimes of violence among the
disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of cunning
and fraud of which certain wealthy men and big politicians were guilty.
Mr. Sims in Chicago was particularly efficient in sending to the
penitentiary numbers of the infamous men who batten on the "white
slave" traffic, after July, 1908, when by proclamation I announced
the adherence of our Government to the international agreement for the
suppression of the traffic.

The views I then held and now hold were expressed in a memorandum made
in the case of a Negro convicted of the rape of a young Negro girl,
practically a child. A petition for his pardon had been sent me.

WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 8, 1904.

The application for the commutation of sentence of John W. Burley is
denied. This man committed the most hideous crime known to our laws, and
twice before he has committed crimes of a similar, though less horrible,
character. In my judgment there is no justification whatever for paying
heed to the allegations that he is not of sound mind, allegations made
after the trial and conviction. Nobody would pretend that there has ever
been any such degree of mental unsoundness shown as would make people
even consider sending him to an asylum if he had not committed this
crime. Under such circumstances he should certainly be esteemed sane
enough to suffer the penalty for his monstrous deed. I have scant
sympathy with the plea of insanity advanced to save a man from the
consequences of crime, when unless that crime had been committed it
would have been impossible to persuade any responsible authority to
commit him to an asylum as insane. Among the most dangerous criminals,
and especially among those prone to commit this particular kind of
offense, there are plenty of a temper so fiendish or so brutal as to be
incompatible with any other than a brutish order of intelligence; but
these men are nevertheless responsible for their acts; and nothing more
tends to encourage crime among such men than the belief that through the
plea of insanity or any other method it is possible for them to escape
paying the just penalty of their crimes. The crime in question is one
to the existence of which we largely owe the existence of that spirit
of lawlessness which takes form in lynching. It is a crime so revolting