I
For thousands of years—doubtless for hundreds of thousands—an
incessant civil war has been going on in every country that has even
a rudimentary civilization, and the prospect of peace is no brighter
to-day than it was at the beginning of hostilities. This war, with its
dreadful mortality and suffering, loses none of its violence in times
of peace; indeed, a condition of national tranquillity appears to be
most favorable to its relentless prosecution: when the people are not
fighting foreigners they have more time for fighting one another.
This never-ending internal strife is between the law-breaking and the
law-abiding classes. The latter is the larger force—at least it is
the stronger and is constantly victorious, yet never takes the full
benefit of its victory. The commander of an army who should so neglect
his opportunities would be recalled in disgrace, for it is a rule of
warfare to take the utmost possible advantage of success.
There should be no such person as an habitual criminal, and there
would be none if criminals were not permitted to breed. There are
several ways to prevent them—some, like perpetual imprisonment, too
expensive; others impossible of discussion here. The best practical
and discussible way is to kill them. And in this is no injustice. The
man who will not live at peace with his countrymen has no inherent
right to live at all. The community against which he wages private war
has as clear a right to deprive him of his life as of his liberty by
imprisonment, or his property by fines.
We grade crimes and punishments only for expediency, not because there
are degrees of guilt, for it is as easy to obey the law against theft
as the law against murder, and the true criminality of an offense
against the state lies in its infraction of the law, not in the damage
to its victim. The venerable dictum that, whereas
It is a sin to steal a pin,
It is a greater to steal a potater,
is brilliant, but erroneous. Logically there are no degrees of crime;
a misdemeanor is as hardy a defiance of the community as a felony.
The distinction is an administrative fiction to facilitate punishment.
It is thought that rather than condemn a misdemeanant to perpetual
restraint in prison or death on the gallows jurors would acquit him;
and indubitably they would. The purpose of these feeble remarks is to
lead public opinion upward through flowery paths of reason to a higher
philosophy and a broader conception of duty.
My notion is that a great saving of life and property could be effected
by extermination of habitual criminals. Some crime would remain. Under
the stress of want, men would occasionally take the property of others;
crazed by sudden rage, they would sometimes slay; and so forth. But
crimes of premeditation would disappear and the enormously expensive
machinery of justice could be abolished. One small prison might
suffice for an entire nation. A few courts of criminal jurisdiction,
an insignificant constabulary, would preserve the peace and punishment
could be made truly reformatory—it would not need to be deterrent. In
short, the dream of the reformer, with his everlastingly futile methods
of deterrence by mental and moral education, could be made to come to
pass in a generation or two by the forthright and merciful plan of
effacing the criminal class.
Of course I do not mean to advocate the death penalty for every
premeditated infraction of the law, nor do I know how many convictions
should be considered as proving the offender an habitual criminal;
but certainly I think that, having exceeded the number allowed him,
his right to life should be held to have lapsed and he should be
removed from this vale of tears forthwith. The fact that a man who
habitually breaks the law may be better than another who habitually
obeys it, or the fact that he who is convicted may be less guilty than
he who escapes conviction, has nothing to do with the matter. If we
can not remove all the irreclaimable the greater is the expediency of
removing all that we can catch and convict. The law’s inadequacy and
inconsistency are patent, but they constitute the silliest plea for
“mercy” that stupidity has ever invented.