FOUR BARBARISMS OF CIVILIZATION
In every civilization there will always be found, sheltering under its
wall, evil things not yet brought to book--not yet revealed in their true
nature, but still dragging back the wheel of true progress and the
betterment of humanity. Yet though they come "in such a questionable
shape," it is often not until someone ahead of his or her age, pulls them
into the open glare of another point of view, and thus shows up all their
hidden moral leprosy, that the arrow of condemnation is driven full-tilt
at them from the stretched bow of a Higher Criticism.
In Francis Newman's _Miscellanies_, Vol. III, four of these evil things
are dragged by him into the open daylight of a mind far ahead of its age,
and these four are: Cruelty to Animals; Degradation of Man, as brought
about by the drink traffic; War, as the great throw-back to Civilization;
Punishment as understood in England, and our own methods of reform as
regards the treatment of misdemeanants.
To take the first of these--Cruelty to Animals. Of course there are three
kinds: Legalized cruelty, cruelty caused by thoughtlessness, and cruelty
caused in order to give pleasure to men and women. Of the first--well, of
course this has to do with vivisection, said to be carried on for the
advancement of science and for the sake of alleviating the sufferings of
humanity.
As regards the first reason, men who know what they are talking about are
pretty generally agreed that science has _not_ largely benefited by
vivisection. As regards the second, it is by no means sure that anything
can be proved of direct use to mankind from discoveries made by doctors
and scientists after operating on animals. "What sort of tenderness for
man can we expect from surgeons who can thus teach by torture, or from
students who can endure to listen?" Here Francis Newman puts his finger on
a very significant factor in the case--that of the barbarizing, the
deteriorating of the mind that cannot touch the black pitch of torture and
not be defiled.
Everyone will remember the words of Lord Shaftesbury, one of the greatest
men of his day: "I would rather be, before God, the poor victim in the
torture-trough than the vivisector beside him." And it is this point also
which is of importance in the vivisection question--not the point of view
alone of the animal tortured, but as well the inevitable effect on the
vivisector. For there are some things undeniably which, when done, do not
leave the man who does them where he was before in the moral scale.
As Archdeacon Wilberforce says: "If all that is claimed by vivisectors
were true--and I absolutely disbelieve it--the noblest attitude would be
to refuse physical benefit obtained at the cost of secrets stolen from
other lives by hideous torture." These words exactly express the attitude
of all thoughtful men and women who feel the impossibility of accepting
help at the cost of such torture to the lower creation by what the
Archdeacon very aptly calls the "barbarities of science."
Well may Francis Newman say: "When we ask by what _right_ a man tortures
these innocent creatures, the only reply that can be given is, because we
are more intelligent. If in the eye of God this is justifiable, then a
just God might permit a devil to torture us in the cause of diabolic
science.... To cut up a living horse day after day in order to practise
students in dissection is a crime and abomination hardly less monstrous
from his not having an immortal soul. An inevitable logic would in a
couple of generations unteach all tenderness towards human suffering if
such horrors are endured, and carry us back into greater heartlessness
than that of the worst barbarians." The bill in 1876, of which the chief
aim was to amend the law, to regulate better the doings of vivisectors,
insisted on the fact that a licence from the Home Secretary was to be a
_sine quâ non_ in the case of all who practised these experiments upon
animals. But experience of the way in which this law works shows quite
clearly that very inadequate inspection takes place, because in so many
cases inspectors and vivisectors play into each other's hands.
Of the other kinds of cruelty, those caused by thoughtlessness and in
order to minister to the pleasure of men and women are very many and very
present to us. I use the word "thoughtlessness," but perhaps it would be
nearer the truth to say lack of power to realize, for thoughtlessness can
no longer be pleaded by those women who persist in wearing aigrettes, and
other plumage of birds. The barbarous method has been too often described
to them by which these aigrettes are procured: how the plumes are torn
from the males of the small white heron; how, this appalling cruelty
perpetrated, the birds are left to die on the shore. Women of fashion
cannot but be aware how wholesale this savage slaughter of the innocents
is; that each bird only contributes one-sixth of an ounce of aigrette
plumes; that we are told that thousands of ounces of plumes are sold by
one firm during the course of one season alone. It is not too much to say
that each woman's bonnet in which these plumes (so barbarously procured)
figure, is a veritable juggernaut car. It is not alone for fashion's sake
that we perpetrate these barbarisms, however, for what can be said in
defence of cruelties practised upon animals for the sake of man's stomach?
Of the method in vogue now of stuffing capons by means of an instrument
which forces food down their throats relentlessly in order to make them of
great size and of tender flesh? or of calves being slowly bled to death
that their flesh may be white? What of the horrors which precede the
making of _pâté de foie gras_? The name of these atrocities is legion,
however, and it is useless to enumerate them here. Fashion loves to have
it so, and the ordinary diner does not trouble his head about the terrible
ordeal of the animal which has preceded the delicacy for himself. But,
putting his dinner aside, the Englishman's sport is often not far removed
from barbaric.
Look at coursing! What can be the nature that can take _pleasure_ in
seeing an absolutely defenceles animal let out in a confined space, with
no chance of escape, no fair play at all, nothing in front of it but
certain death whichever way it turns? What can be the nature which can
_enjoy_ the death-scream of the agonized hare as the dogs' fangs dig into
the quivering flesh? Coursing is nothing more nor less than an absolutely
degrading sport to the beholders.
There is no _sport_, in the right acceptation of the word, in it at all.
At any rate, there is far more of the element of real sport in fox-hunting
or in stag-hunting, especially in those districts where one is told that
the stag practically enters into the spirit of the game, when, after a
good run, it pauses, and is helped into the cart which is to take it into
"home cover" again! Be that as it may, at least there is some fair play to
the quarry. In coursing that is an unknown quantity.
"The accomplished Englishman shoots for sport. Sport, being a mental
impulse or appetite, is insatiable, and therefore far more deadly than
hunger.... A boast is made that ninety millions of rabbits are reared for
the consumption of our nation. Ninety million rabbits sent out at large to
nibble the young shoots of the growing crops--each of whom destroys and
wastes ten times what a tame rabbit would eat in a hutch--are boasted of
as an increase of our supplies! If twenty million of these reach the town
markets, it is much; how many beside are cruelly massacred with no profit
to man! and how many beside, with unhappy hares, foxes, rats, stoats, and
weasels, are held for days and nights in lingering torture by horrible
steel traps? All this goes on in the midst of refinement, without
prohibition from men or remonstrance from women. It is a fruit of the
modern English system of game preserving;... and the artificial love of
sport which cruel Norman tradition has fostered in the stolid Anglo-Saxon
race." [Footnote: "On Cruelty" (_Miscellanies_, III, by Francis W.
Newman).] It is an unassailable truth that if you look for the last
remains of barbarity in a civilized nation you will find them in their
sports. But I confess that to me it is difficult to justify a _woman's_
love of sport when it is combined--before her very eyes--with the
suffering of an animal. Yet I heard only the other day of a woman who
boasted that she had been among the few "in at the death" one day in fox-
hunting, and that when the brush was given to her, her face was _spattered
with the blood of the fox_.
To turn to another "barbarism of civilization"--the subject of the Drink
Traffic.
Newman's words about this come with startling appositeness to-day, when we
are all eager as regards the pros and cons of the new Licensing Act, and
when all the publicans in the country are watching anxiously in fear of
the ruin it may spell for themselves. Thirty years ago Francis Newman
flung these words broadcast into the country:--
"Parliament ignominiously sits on the beer barrel. The thirty-three
millions a year" (which was the revenue in 1877 derived from "complicity
with distillers and brewers"), "are to every Ministry like the proverbial
wolf which the woodsman holds by the ears. To keep him is difficult, to
let him go is dangerous. Their position is becoming worse than
embarrassing when the best _men_ of every class, and _all the women_ who
see the public miseries, condemn the deadly policy of bartering national
morality for payments to the exchequer.... The mode in which those in
power fight to retain the public immoralities proclaims the quality of
their motives. As one example out of several, see with what tenacity the
Sunday sale of intoxicating drink in Ireland is kept up, after it is
visible that Ireland disapproves, and after the English Parliament has
voted with Ireland. _Trickery_ is here the only right word; but _trickery_
cannot in the long run support any cause. In this matter, as in several
others, national indignation is ripening. Many old ways will have to be
reversed, among which the treatment of the drink traffic has quite a
leading place."
He then goes on to treat in detail of the pros and cons of Sir Wilfrid
Lawson's Bill, and its principle of Popular Local Control; also of those
of Mr. Joseph Cowen's Bill on the same subject, both belonging to the year
in which he wrote his article on "Local Control of the Drink Traffic." And
he proceeds to consider the two alternatives: the Permissive Popular Veto,
and the Popular Control by an unfettered Licensing Board.
Later on Newman propounds his own opinion as to where the true remedy lies
for the shocking state of public morality in connection with the drink
traffic. Almost invariably his remedies for social evils are based on
specialization. In this case he advises Licensing Boards in large towns.
He urges that each Board should have full power to frame its own
restrictions, that "no Board should be numerous: _five_ or _seven_ persons
may be a full maximum"; that each Board should be elective, "without power
to bind their successors in the next year." "What shadow of reason," he
asks, "is there for doubting that such sales as are necessary and
inevitable will be far more sagaciously managed by a Local Board, which
the ratepayers elect _for this sole purpose_, than either by magistrates
who are irresponsible and do not suffer sensibly from the public vice, or
by an _irresponsible_ or _multitudinous_ Committee of Parliament? Finally,
a Board elected for this one duty is immeasurably better than the Town
Councils, who are distracted by an immensity of other business."
It is not difficult to see that his suggestion for a local Licensing Board
has a great deal that might be said for it. His idea as regards a Ward-
Mote to settle difficulties in local self-government in the same way would
deal first hand with difficulties. In both cases these local boards would
obviate the necessity for the despatching of endless little Private Bills
to a Parliament which really has not time to deal effectually with them.
Francis Newman certainly taught a truth which only gets more insistent as
year succeeds year, that specialization is indeed the word of all others
which holds within its letters in great measure "the healing of the
nations," the simplifying of their puzzles.
As regards the rights and wrongs of making war, Newman asks, "Why does
one murder make a villain, but the murder of thousands a hero?" And again,
"Why do princes and statesmen, who would scorn to steal a shilling, make
no difficulty in stealing a kingdom?"
Before calling this, as many an Englishman would not hesitate to do, a
topsy-turvy morality, let us realize that sayings such as these really
give us the true values of things as nothing else could. For there are
more sins "in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in a nation's
classified immoralities. Stealing a shilling is a recognized immorality,
and as such the law of the land punishes the thief. Stealing a kingdom,
however, is one of those national achievements which men justify to
themselves as a patriotic feat, or, it may be, a necessity of empire, and
it is not classified among punishable offences at all. And then it is
necessary to remember that many things that are indefensible when only a
few do them, seem to become, by an extraordinary method of reasoning,
regarded as allowable when so many people do them that a spurious public
opinion and a decadent fashion is born, which shelters them and prevents
the light of an unbiassed judgment from showing up their shortcomings in
morality. One has only to read up old records of the eighteenth century to
see how slavery flourished in England among otherwise honourable men, and
how public opinion condoned, nay, justified it to realize that public
opinion regarded as _vox populi_, is often many spiritual leagues away
from being _vox Dei_.
Newman's point of view regarding war and extension of territory was not
the popular one:--
"There are many who believe that the time will come when no weapons of war
shall be forged, and universal peace shall reign.... We also believe that
a time will come when men will look back in wonder and pity on our present
barbarism; a time at which to begin a war--unless previously justified by
the verdict of an impartial tribunal, bound in honour to overlook what is
partially expedient to their own nation or party--will be esteemed a high
and dreadful crime.
"The 'Governments' will never initiate such institutions until compelled
by public opinion and by the inevitable pressure of circumstances, nor is
any nation in the world yet ripe to put forth such pressure; otherwise it
would not be difficult to devise a supreme court, or rather jury, which
would put a totally new moral aspect on war." [Footnote: _Ethics of War_,
Francis W. Newman.]
He goes on to say that a great many wars might have been avoided by us if
we had been willing, which we are not, to submit to arbitration; and he
urges that war should be "declared _in the Capital... with the formal
assent of Lords and Commons_."
Under the present system, as he points out, when war is declared against
any country, it is not a necessity, as it was in the fourteenth century,
that Parliament should be applied to for consent and approval when the
King of England wished to make war. Later, Henry V asked Parliament what
it would advise in "matters of foreign embroilment"; and when the King of
France wanted to make peace with him, he would do nothing in the matter
until his _Parliament_ had told him "what will be most profitable and
honourable to do in the matter."
But to-day, in arranging to make war or to make peace, it is the Cabinet--
the two or three in the inner Chamber--who take all responsibility upon
themselves. As often as not their decision is largely influenced by party
questions--and the questions do _not_ depend on the morality of the war,
whether the reason for it is a just one or no. "It is the singular
disgrace of modern England, [Footnote: _Deliberations before War_, Francis
Newman, 1859.] to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be
tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers; ... the
nation permits war to be made, lives by the twenty thousand or fifty
thousand to be sacrificed, provinces to be confiscated, and permanent
empire over foreign subjects established, at the secret advice of a
Cabinet, _all of one party, acting collectively for party objects_, no one
outside knowing how each has voted." Yet "the whole nation is implicated
in a war, when once it is undertaken, inasmuch as we all have the same
national disgrace, if it is unjust; the same suffering, if it is tedious;
the same loss, if it is expensive"; and all the time, "according to the
current morality of Christendom, two nations may be engaged in deadly
struggle, and _neither be in the wrong_."
Newman attributes this present method of deciding war or peace by means of
the Cabinet, rather than the voice of the people as expressed by their
representatives in assembled Parliament, to the "anomaly of the East
Indian Empire." Then, when the Board of Control was formed in 1784, "the
orders to make, or not to make war, went out direct from the Board of
Control; that is, really, from the ministry in Downing Street. Two, or
even one, resolute man had power to make war without check." The fatal war
with Afghanistan in the eighteen-thirties which cost us so dear in the
matter of men and fame, was settled in England by "secret orders of two or
three _executive_ officers of the Queen, without previous debate in
Parliament." It is necessary to remember, when thinking of the barbarisms
which war brought in its train, not a hundred years ago, that what Newman
calls, very justly, "the atrocious system" of paying our soldiers and
sailors _head-money_ for the numbers killed by them, was only done away
with about sixty years ago.
But it is impossible even to touch here upon the unthinkable miseries
which are inevitably suffered by thousands of innocent men, women, and
children whenever that Barbarism of Civilization, War, marches through a
land. Apart from all the devastation that marks its advent, no one can
know how indescribably far the real moral and industrial progress of
civilization is retarded by even what we consider a _small_ war. As Newman
says: "No one can wonder at the rise and progress of an opinion that war
is essentially an immoral state."
In connection with Punishments as understood in England, and Penal
Reformation, [Footnote: _Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation_,
Francis Newman, 1865.] he owns that "it has hitherto been most difficult
to discover what due punishment of felony will not demoralize the felon."
And of course, undoubtedly, that _is_ the crux of the whole matter. But
there is no one in England to-day but will agree that some change in our
prison system is imperatively needed. Only the other day a woman,
thoroughly qualified to judge, declared that the inevitable effect of
prison life on women was to make them lose their self-respect. It was a
degradation and nothing else. Now a punishment practically loses its whole
point if it is simply a lowering, without any building up; while apart
from any other considerations, to herd, without due specialization, a
number of criminals and misdemeanants (for that last is the true
description of very many who are punished by this system of incarceration)
tends, in many instances, to increase, by "evil communications," the
numbers of those who are in for a first offence only, and would not, but
for the enforced bad influence of others in prison, offend again. Newman's
conclusion of the whole matter as regards prisons is irrefragable: "In
order to _prevent_ crime, the institutions which generate crime must be
remodelled." He urges upon the nation's consideration that for a great
many cases which now fill our prisons (thereby adding enormously to the
national expenses) there is a very simple punishment, which has been
condemned from many modern points of view as being degrading to the
sufferers and brutalizing to the inflictors.
"The infliction of flogging," he argues, undeniably answers in these
cases, both as a sharp and effectual punishment, and also as a deterrent
from future misdoing. "To us it appears an obvious certainty, that
whatever punishment is believed to be righteous--whether the whipping of a
child, the shooting of a soldier, the constraint of the treadmill, or
whatever else--is wholly free from the least tendency to brutalize the
officers who inflict it." As to the wisdom of this statement, one would
think, there could be no question. He quotes our old laws as regards the
practising of public floggings, and adds, "We cannot hesitate to believe
that all outrages on women ought to be punished by the severest
whippings.... Dastardly offences against the weak and the weaker sex
eminently call for this punishment; and in such offences may be included
the seduction of a woman." That offences against the body should be
visited by punishment _on_ the body is beyond all doubt just. Had we been
in the past, or were we at the present moment, as eager as we ought to be
for defence, for justice, to be given to the citizeness as equally as to
the citizen, there would not be so many wrongs done to the weaker sex as
now is the case in England. Newman strongly condemns long sentences and
transportation, not so much on account of the prisoner, (though for him
the long term of "doing time" with other criminals exercises in most cases
a distinct low moral tone upon himself) as on account of his wife and
family, if he is married. These people are left without news of him, and
without their legal means of subsistence during his absence. His wife
often indeed, practically becomes a pauper.
"It is vain to talk of the evil of 'degrading' a criminal by flogging him,
if we degrade him by penal labour, subjecting him to a very ignominious
and tedious slavery. It is vain to say that whipping demoralizes, until we
have a system of effective and severe punishment, clearly free from this
danger.... A felon destined to long penal servitude cannot fulfil a
father's duties, and no one is so weak as to imagine that his commands
concerning his children deserve respect.
* * * * *
Legislation must deliberately study this problem, not wink at it."
[Footnote: _Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation_.]
Perhaps when it does, something more stringent will be determined on
concerning our regulations as regards the marriage of criminals: those
with insanity or inherited disease strongly marked on their family
records; and those who have shown the tendency to the latter in their own
persons.