All nations seem to have had supreme confidence in the deterrent power
of threatened and inflicted pain. They have regarded punishment as the
shortest road to reformation. Imprisonment, torture, death, constituted
a trinity under whose protection society might feel secure.
In addition to these, nations have relied on confiscation and
degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, and exposures to public
ridicule and contempt. Connected with the court of justice was
the chamber of torture. The ingenuity of man was exhausted in the
construction of instruments that would surely reach the most sensitive
nerve. All this was done in the interest of civilization--for the
protection of virtue, and the well-being of states. Curiously it was
found that the penalty of death made little difference. Thieves and
highwaymen, heretics and blasphemers, went on their way. It was then
thought necessary to add to this penalty of death, and consequently, the
convicted were tortured in every conceivable way before execution. They
were broken on the wheel--their joints dislocated on the rack. They were
suspended by their legs and arms, while immense weights were placed upon
their breasts. Their flesh was burned and torn with hot irons. They
were roasted at slow fires. They were buried alive--given to wild
beasts--molten lead was poured in their ears--their eye-lids were cut
off and, the wretches placed with their faces toward the sun--others
were securely bound, so that they could move neither hand nor foot, and
over their stomachs were placed inverted bowls; under these bowls rats
were confined; on top of the bowls were heaped coals of fire, so that
the rats in their efforts to escape would gnaw into the bowels of the
victims. They were staked out on the sands of the sea, to be drowned
by the slowly rising tide--and every means by which human nature can be
overcome slowly, painfully and terribly, was conceived and carried into
execution. And yet the number of so-called criminals increased. Enough,
the fact is that, no matter how severe the punishments were, the crimes
increased.
For petty offences men were degraded--given to the mercy of the rabble.
Their ears were cut off, their nostrils slit, their foreheads branded.
They were tied to the tails of carts and flogged from one town to
another. And yet, in spite of all, the poor wretches obstinately refused
to become good and useful citizens.
Degradation has been thoroughly tried, with its maimings and brandings,
and the result was that those who inflicted the punishments became as
degraded as their victims.
Only a few years ago there were more than two hundred offences in Great
Britain punishable by death. The gallows-tree bore fruit through all the
year, and the hangman was the busiest official in the kingdom--but the
criminals increased.
Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to
prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons,
with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and
racks, with hangmen and headsmen--and yet these frightful means
and instrumentalities and crimes have accomplished little for the
preservation of property or life. It is safe to say that governments
have committed far more crimes than they have prevented.
Why is it that men will suffer and risk so much for the sake of
stealing? Why will they accept degradation and punishment and infamy as
their portion? Some will answer this question by an appeal to the dogma
of original sin; others by saying that millions of men and women are
under the control of fiends--that they are actually possessed by devils;
and others will declare that all these people act from choice--that
they are possessed of free wills, of intelligence--that they know and
appreciate consequences, and that, in spite of all, they deliberately
prefer a life of crime.