We shall probably see in the near future some remarkable changes in the
Criminal Law which, particularly in England, is a peculiar blend of
barbaric violence, medieval prejudices, and modern fallacies. To-day
its sanctions are still largely theological. For instance, suicide
is a crime in Great Britain mainly because it is a sin against God;
but there is a growing tendency to determinism and to regard crimes
and punishments purely in relation to social welfare. Thus murder
is punished by hanging because it is a deadly sin; but the public
are beginning to distinguish between murder by poison and murder by
violence in so far as premeditation enters into the question.
There is also a disposition to avoid unnecessary cruelty or insults.
If a man can be sterilized by a surgeon or standardized by a
psycho-analyst, this solution of the problem will be preferred to
indefinite loss of liberty, and where indefinite loss of liberty
appears inevitable there is a new sentiment in favour of painless
extinction. The modern criminal is either to be reformed by prison or
else shut up for life and given such amenities as beer and tobacco to
console him for loss of liberty. He used to be looked upon as possessed
by the devil. To-day he is regarded as an imperfectly constructed
creature who cannot safely be left at large if his defects cannot be
set right.
This scientific point of view is in some respects not so human as
the Christian attitude; but it makes for politeness to the criminal.
The younger judges (_e.g._, Mr. Justice Finlay) are courteous and
sympathetic even when pronouncing sentence of death. The scolding
manner of the old type of judge will probably disappear in the next
twenty years, and perhaps we shall one day escape even the intolerable
inquisitiveness and pharisaical insolence displayed by the less
gentlemanly type of coroner, who presumes on the anomalous privileges
of his venerable Court to ransack irrelevant details and censure
long-forgotten irregularities in the lives and careers of persons
sufficiently unfortunate to be united by kinship or friendship to
suicides and murderers. Sir Hall Caine recently made an useful protest
on this point.
The famous narrative of the execution of Socrates by voluntarily taking
hemlock is not very creditable to our modern civilization. Socrates is
surrounded by his friends and his executioner is civil and amiable.
Socrates feels that this death is due to a certain blindness on the
part of his fellow-citizens to the importance of what he has to tell
them; but this collective stupidity does not diminish his respect for
the laws of his country. He is perfectly willing to suffer death in
order to vindicate laws which, taken as a whole, are essential to the
public safety. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”
are words which would have fitted quite naturally into Plato’s account
of the famous scene. The last utterances of many criminals have often
implied an acquiescence in the public necessity of laws which pinch the
individual hardly at certain crises of life.
A man is found guilty of rape if by persistent effort he has tired the
woman out or weakened her impulse to resist him. That may seem harsh
but is it any less harsh than to hang a man who has been mercilessly
nagged for an hour by an uncongenial wife after years of matrimonial
misery aggravated by the irritant of chronic semi-starvation? On the
other hand, this condemned criminal may feel that by his death he is
providing a better security for human life in time to come, just as,
according to William James, the vivisected dog might (if properly
instructed) know that he was helping to save both dog and man from the
ravages of incurable disease.
It may be hoped that crime may be reduced by legal reforms. The
reform of marriage and divorce laws should reduce conjugal murder,
legitimation by subsequent marriage should reduce infanticide, the
abolition of really grinding poverty should reduce all crimes of
violence, and the reform or repeal of certain laws relating to offences
which concern only adult individuals and not society at large should
reduce blackmail.
V