CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
'Overcome anger by kindness, evil by good.'
_Dammapada._
Not very many years ago an officer in Rangoon lost some currency notes.
He had placed them upon his table overnight, and in the morning they
were gone. The amount was not large. It was, if I remember rightly,
thirty rupees; but the loss annoyed him, and as all search and inquiry
proved futile, he put the matter in the hands of the police.
Before long--the very next day--the possession of the notes was traced
to the officer's Burman servant, who looked after his clothes and
attended on him at table. The boy was caught in the act of trying to
change one of the notes. He was arrested, and he confessed. He was very
hard up, he said, and his sister had written asking him to help her. He
could not do so, and he was troubling himself about the matter early
that morning while tidying the room, and he saw the notes on the table,
and so he took them. It was a sudden temptation, and he fell. When the
officer learnt all this, he would, I think, have withdrawn from the
prosecution and forgiven the boy; but it was too late. In our English
law theft is not compoundable. A complaint of theft once made must be
proved or disproved; the accused must be tried before a magistrate.
There is no alternative. So the lad--he was only a lad--was sent up
before the magistrate, and he again pleaded guilty, and his master asked
that the punishment might be light. The boy, he said, was an honest boy,
and had yielded to a sudden temptation. He, the master, had no desire to
press the charge, but the reverse. He would never have come to court at
all if he could have withdrawn from the charge. Therefore he asked that
the magistrate would consider all this, and be lenient.
But the magistrate did not see matters in the same light at all. He
would consider his judgment, and deliver it later on.
When he came into court again and read the judgment he had prepared, he
said that he was unable to treat the case leniently. There were many
such cases, he said. It was becoming quite common for servants to steal
their employers' things, and they generally escaped. It was a serious
matter, and he felt himself obliged to make an example of such as were
convicted, to be a warning to others. So the boy was sentenced to six
months' rigorous imprisonment; and his master went home, and before
long had forgotten all about it.
But one day, as he was sitting in his veranda reading before breakfast,
a lad came quickly up the stairs and into the veranda, and knelt down
before him. It was the servant. As soon as he was released from gaol, he
went straight to his old master, straight to the veranda where he was
sure he would be sitting at that hour, and begged to be taken back again
into his service. He was quite pleased, and sure that his master would
be equally pleased, at seeing him again, and he took it almost as a
matter of course that he would be reinstated.
But the master doubted.
'How can I take you back again?' he said. 'You have been in gaol.'
'But,' said the boy, 'I did very well in gaol. I became a warder with a
cap white on one side and yellow on the other. Let the thakin ask.'
Still the officer doubted.
'I cannot take you back,' he repeated. 'You stole my money, and you have
been in prison. I could not have you as a servant again.'
'Yes,' admitted the boy, 'I stole the thakin's money, but I have been in
prison for it a long time--six months. Surely that is all forgotten now.
I stole; I have been in gaol--that is the end of it.'
'No,' answered the master, 'unfortunately, your having been in gaol
only makes matters much worse. I could forgive the theft, but the being
in gaol--how can I forgive that?'
And the boy could not understand.
'If I have stolen, I have been in gaol for it. That is wiped out now,'
he said again and again, till at last he went away in sore trouble of
mind, for he could not understand his master, nor could his master
understand him.
You see, each had his own idea of what was law, and what was justice,
and what was punishment. To the Burman all these words had one set of
meanings; to the Englishman they had another, a very different one. And
each of them took his ideas from his religion. To all men the law here
on earth is but a reflection of the heavenly law; the judge is the
representative of his god. The justice of the court should be as the
justice of heaven. Many nations have imagined their law to be
heaven-given, to be inspired with the very breath of the Creator of the
world. Other nations have derived their laws elsewhere. But this is of
little account, for to the one, as to the other, the laws are a
reflection of the religion.
And therefore on a man's religion depends all his views of law and
justice, his understanding of the word 'punishment,' his idea of how sin
should be treated. And it was because of their different religions,
because their religions differed so greatly on these points as to be
almost opposed, that the English officer and his Burman servant failed
to understand each other.
For to the Englishman punishment was a degradation. It seemed to him far
more disgraceful that his servant should have been in gaol than that he
should have committed theft. The theft he was ready to forgive, the
punishment he could not. Punishment to him meant revenge. It is the
revenge of an outraged and injured morality. The sinner had insulted the
law, and therefore the law was to make him suffer. He was to be
frightened into not doing it again. That is the idea. He was to be
afraid of receiving punishment. And again his punishment was to be
useful as a warning to others. Indeed, the magistrate had especially
increased it with that object in view. He was to suffer that others
might be saved. The idea of punishment being an atonement hardly enters
into our minds at all. To us it is practically a revenge. We do not
expect people to be the better for it. We are sure they are the worse.
It is a deterrent for others, not a healing process for the man himself.
We punish A. that B. may be afraid, and not do likewise. Our thoughts
are bent on B., not really on A. at all. As far as he is concerned, the
process is very similar to pouring boiling lead into a wound. We do not
wish or intend to improve him, but simply and purely to make him suffer.
After we have dealt with him, he is never fit again for human society.
That was in the officer's thought when he refused to take back his
Burmese servant.
Now see the boy's idea.
Punishment is an atonement, a purifying of the soul from the stain of
sin. That is the only justification for, and meaning of, suffering. If a
man breaks the everlasting laws of righteousness and stains his soul
with the stain of sin, he must be purified, and the only method of
purification is by suffering. Each sin is followed by suffering, lasting
just so long as to cleanse the soul--not a moment less, or the soul
would not be white; not a moment more, or it would be useless and cruel.
That is the law of righteousness, the eternal inevitable sequence that
leads us in the end to wisdom and peace. And as it is with the greater
laws, so it should, the Buddhist thinks, be with the lesser laws.
If a man steals, he should have such punishment and for such a time as
will wean his soul from theft, as will atone for his sin. Just so much.
You see, to him mercy is a falling short of what is necessary, a leaving
of work half done, as if you were to leave a garment half washed. Excess
of punishment is mere useless brutality. He recognizes no vicarious
punishment. He cannot understand that A. should be damned in order to
save B. This does not agree with his scheme of righteousness at all. It
seems as futile to him as the action of washing one garment twice that
another might be clean. Each man should atone for his own sin, _must_
atone for his own sin, in order to be freed from it. No one can help
him, or suffer for him. If I have a sore throat, it would be useless to
blister you for it: that is his idea.
Consider this Burman. He had committed theft. That he admitted. He was
prepared to atone for it. The magistrate was not content with that, but
made him also atone for other men's sins. He was twice punished, because
other men who escaped did ill. That was the first thing he could not
understand. And then, when he had atoned both for his own sin and for
that of others, when he came out of prison, he was looked upon as in a
worse state than if he had never atoned at all. If he had never been in
prison, his master would have forgiven his theft and taken him back, but
now he would not. The boy was proud of having atoned in full, very full,
measure for his sin; the master looked upon the punishment as
inconceivably worse than the crime.
So the officer went about and told the story of his boy coming back, and
expecting to be taken on again, as a curious instance of the mysterious
working of the Oriental mind, as another example of the extraordinary
way Easterns argue. 'Just to think,' said the officer, 'he was not
ashamed of having been in prison!' And the boy? Well, he probably said
nothing, but went away and did not understand, and kept the matter to
himself, for they are very dumb, these people, very long-suffering,
very charitable. You may be sure that he never railed at the law, or
condemned his old master for harshness.
He would wonder why he was punished because other people had sinned and
escaped. He could not understand that. It would not occur to him that
sending him to herd with other criminals, that cutting him off from all
the gentle influences of life, from the green trees and the winds of
heaven, from the society of women, from the example of noble men, from
the teachings of religion, was a curious way to render him a better man.
He would suppose it was intended to make him better, that he should
leave gaol a better man than when he entered, and he would take the
intention for the deed. Under his own king things were not much better.
It is true that very few men were imprisoned, fine being the usual
punishment, but still, imprisonment there was, and so that would not
seem to him strange; and as to the conduct of his master, he would be
content to leave that unexplained. The Buddhist is content to leave many
things unexplained until he can see the meaning. He is not fond of
theories. If he does not know, he says so. 'It is beyond me,' he will
say; 'I do not understand.' He has no theory of an occidental mind to
explain acts of ours of which he cannot grasp the meaning; he would only
not understand.
But the pity of it--think of the pity of it all! Surely there is
nothing more pathetic than this: that a sinner should not understand the
wherefore of his sentence, that the justice administered to him should
be such as he cannot see the meaning of.
Certain forms of crime are very rife in Burma. The villages are so
scattered, the roads so lonely, the amount of money habitually carried
about so large, the people so habitually careless, the difficulty of
detection so great, that robbery and kindred crimes are very common; and
it is more common in the districts of the delta, long under our rule,
than in the newly-annexed province in the north. Under like conditions
the Burman is probably no more criminal and no less criminal than other
people in the same state of civilization. Crime is a condition caused by
opportunity, not by an inherent state of mind, except with the very,
very few, the exceptional individuals; and in Upper Burma there is, now
that the turmoil of the annexation is past, very little crime
comparatively. There is less money there, and the village system--the
control of the community over the individual--the restraining influence
of public opinion is greater. But even during the years of trouble, the
years from 1885 till 1890, when, in the words of the Burmese proverb,
'the forest was on fire and the wild-cat slapped his arm,' there were
certain peculiarities about the criminals that differentiated them from
those of Europe. You would hear of a terrible crime, a village attacked
at night by brigands, a large robbery of property, one or two villagers
killed, and an old woman tortured for her treasure, and you would
picture the perpetrators as hardened, brutal criminals, lost to all
sense of humanity, tigers in human shape; and when you came to arrest
them--if by good luck you did so--you would find yourself quite
mistaken. One, perhaps, or two of the ringleaders might be such as I
have described, but the others would be far different. They would be
boys or young men led away by the idea of a frolic, allured by the
romance of being a free-lance for a night, very sorry now, and ready to
confess and do all in their power to atone for their misdeeds.
Nothing, I think, was more striking than the universal confession of
criminals on their arrest. Even now, despite the spread of lawyers and
notions of law, in country districts accused men always confess,
sometimes even they surrender themselves. I have known many such cases.
Here is one that happened to myself only the other day.
A man was arrested in another jurisdiction for cattle theft; he was
tried there and sentenced to two years' rigorous imprisonment. Shortly
afterwards it was discovered that he was suspected of being concerned in
a robbery in my jurisdiction, committed before his arrest. He was
therefore transferred to the gaol near my court, and I inquired into the
case, and committed him and four others for trial before the sessions
judge for the robbery, which he admitted.
Now, it so happened that immediately after I had passed orders in the
case I went out into camp, leaving the necessary warrants to be signed
in my absence by my junior magistrate, and a mistake occurred by which
the committal-warrant was only made out for the four. The other man
being already under sentence for two years, it was not considered
necessary to make out a remand-warrant for him. But, as it happened, he
had appealed from his former sentence and he was acquitted, so a warrant
of release arrived at the gaol, and, in absence of any other warrant, he
was at once released.
Of course, on the mistake being discovered a fresh warrant was issued,
and mounted police were sent over the country in search of him, without
avail; he could not be found. But some four days afterwards, in the late
afternoon, as I was sitting in my house, just returned from court, my
servant told me a man wanted to see me. He was shown up into the
veranda, and, lo! it was the very man I wanted. He had heard, he
explained, that I wanted him, and had come to see me. I reminded him he
was committed to stand his trial for dacoity, that was why I wanted him.
He said that he thought all that was over, as he was released; but I
explained to him that the release only applied to the theft case. And
then we walked over half a mile to court, I in front and he behind,
across the wide plain, and he surrendered to the guard. He was tried
and acquitted on this charge also. Not, as the sessions judge said
later, that he had any doubt that my friend and the others were the
right men, but because he considered some of the evidence
unsatisfactory, and because the original confession was withdrawn. So he
was released again, and went hence a free man.
But think of him surrendering himself! He knew he had committed the
dacoity with which he was charged: he himself had admitted it to begin
with, and again admitted it freely when he knew he was safe from further
trial. He knew he was liable to very heavy punishment, and yet he
surrendered because he understood that I wanted him. I confess that I do
not understand it at all, for this is no solitary instance. The
circumstances, truly, were curious, but the spirit in which the man
acted was usual enough. I have had dacoit leaders with prices on their
heads walk into my camp. It was a common experience with many officers.
The Burmans often act as children do. Their crimes are the violent,
thoughtless crimes of children; they are as little depraved by crime as
children are. Who are more criminal than English boys? and yet they grow
up decent, law-abiding men. Almost the only confirmed criminals have
been made so by punishment, by that punishment which some consider is
intended to uplift them, but which never does aught but degrade them.
Instead of cleansing the garment, it tears it, and renders it useless
for this life.
It is a very difficult question, this of crime and punishment. I have
not written all this because I have any suggestion to make to improve
it. I have not written it because I think that the laws of Manu, which
obtained under the Burmese kings, and their methods of punishment, were
any improvement on ours. On the contrary, I think they were much worse.
Their laws and their methods of enforcing the law were those of a very
young people. But, notwithstanding this, there was a spirit in their
laws different from and superior to ours.
I have been trying to see into the soul of this people whom I love so
well, and nothing has struck me more than the way they regard crime and
punishment; nothing has seemed to me more worthy of note than their
ideas of the meaning and end of punishment, of its scope and its limits.
It is so very different from ours. As in our religion, so in our laws:
we believe in mercy at one time and in vengeance at another. We believe
in vicarious punishment and vicarious salvation; they believe in
absolute justice--always the same, eternal and unchangeable as the laws
of the stars. We purposely make punishment degrading; they think it
should be elevating, that in its purifying power lies its sole use and
justification. We believe in tearing a soiled garment; they think it
ought to be washed.
Surely these are great differences, surely thoughts like these,
engraven in the hearts of a young people, will lead, in the great and
glorious future that lies before them, to a conception of justice, to a
method of dealing with crime, very different from what we know
ourselves. They are now very much as we were sixteen centuries ago, when
the Romans ruled us. Now we are a greater people, our justice is better,
our prisons are better, our morality is inconceivably better than
Imperial Rome ever dreamt of. And so with these people, when their time
shall come, when they shall have grown out of childhood into manhood,
when they shall have the wisdom and strength and experience to put in
force the convictions that are in their hearts, it seems to me that they
will bring out of these convictions something more wonderful than we
to-day have dreamt of.