I write with great diffidence, but it seems to me that there is no
unfairness in punishing people for their misfortunes, or rewarding them
for their sheer good luck: it is the normal condition of human life that
this should be done, and no right-minded person will complain at being
subjected to the common treatment. There is no alternative open to us.
It is idle to say that men are not responsible for their misfortunes.
What is responsibility? Surely to be responsible means to be liable to
have to give an answer should it be demanded, and all things which live
are responsible for their lives and actions should society see fit to
question them through the mouth of its authorised agent.
What is the offence of a lamb that we should rear it, and tend it, and
lull it into security, for the express purpose of killing it? Its
offence is the misfortune of being something which society wants to eat,
and which cannot defend itself. This is ample. Who shall limit the
right of society except society itself? And what consideration for the
individual is tolerable unless society be the gainer thereby? Wherefore
should a man be so richly rewarded for having been son to a millionaire,
were it not clearly provable that the common welfare is thus better
furthered? We cannot seriously detract from a man's merit in having been
the son of a rich father without imperilling our own tenure of things
which we do not wish to jeopardise; if this were otherwise we should not
let him keep his money for a single hour; we would have it ourselves at
once. For property _is_ robbery, but then we are all robbers or would-be
robbers together, and have found it expedient to organise our thieving,
as we have found it to organise our lust and our revenge. Property,
marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the
instinct.
But to return. Even in England a man on board a ship with yellow fever
is held responsible for his mischance, no matter what his being kept in
quarantine may cost him. He may catch the fever and die; we cannot help
it; he must take his chance as other people do; but surely it would be
desperate unkindness to add contumely to our self-protection, unless,
indeed, we believe that contumely is one of our best means of
self-protection. Again, take the case of maniacs. We say that they are
irresponsible for their actions, but we take good care, or ought to take
good care, that they shall answer to us for their insanity, and we
imprison them in what we call an asylum (that modern sanctuary!) if we do
not like their answers. This is a strange kind of irresponsibility. What
we ought to say is that we can afford to be satisfied with a less
satisfactory answer from a lunatic than from one who is not mad, because
lunacy is less infectious than crime.
We kill a serpent if we go in danger by it, simply for being such and
such a serpent in such and such a place; but we never say that the
serpent has only itself to blame for not having been a harmless creature.
Its crime is that of being the thing which it is: but this is a capital
offence, and we are right in killing it out of the way, unless we think
it more dangerous to do so than to let it escape; nevertheless we pity
the creature, even though we kill it.
But in the case of him whose trial I have described above, it was
impossible that any one in the court should not have known that it was
but by an accident of birth and circumstances that he was not himself
also in a consumption; and yet none thought that it disgraced them to
hear the judge give vent to the most cruel truisms about him. The judge
himself was a kind and thoughtful person. He was a man of magnificent
and benign presence. He was evidently of an iron constitution, and his
face wore an expression of the maturest wisdom and experience; yet for
all this, old and learned as he was, he could not see things which one
would have thought would have been apparent even to a child. He could
not emancipate himself from, nay, it did not even occur to him to feel,
the bondage of the ideas in which he had been born and bred. So was it
with the jury and bystanders; and--most wonderful of all--so was it even
with the prisoner. Throughout he seemed fully impressed with the notion
that he was being dealt with justly: he saw nothing wanton in his being
told by the judge that he was to be punished, not so much as a necessary
protection to society (although this was not entirely lost sight of), as
because he had not been better born and bred than he was. But this led
me to hope that he suffered less than he would have done if he had seen
the matter in the same light that I did. And, after all, justice is
relative.
I may here mention that only a few years before my arrival in the
country, the treatment of all convicted invalids had been much more
barbarous than now; for no physical remedy was provided, and prisoners
were put to the severest labour in all sorts of weather, so that most of
them soon succumbed to the extreme hardships which they suffered; this
was supposed to be beneficial in some ways, inasmuch as it put the
country to less expense for the maintenance of its criminal class; but
the growth of luxury had induced a relaxation of the old severity, and a
sensitive age would no longer tolerate what appeared to be an excess of
rigour, even towards the most guilty; moreover, it was found that juries
were less willing to convict, and justice was often cheated because there
was no alternative between virtually condemning a man to death and
letting him go free; it was also held that the country paid in
recommittals for its overseverity; for those who had been imprisoned even
for trifling ailments were often permanently disabled by their
imprisonment; and when a man has been once convicted, it was probable he
would never afterwards be long off the hands of the country.
These evils had long been apparent and recognised; yet people were too
indolent, and too indifferent to suffering not their own, to bestir
themselves about putting an end to them, until at last a benevolent
reformer devoted his whole life to effecting the necessary changes. He
divided illnesses into three classes--those affecting the head, the
trunk, and the lower limbs--and obtained an enactment that all diseases
of the head, whether internal or external, should be treated with
laudanum, those of the body with castor-oil, and those of the lower limbs
with an embrocation of strong sulphuric acid and water. It may be said
that the classification was not sufficiently careful, and that the
remedies were ill chosen; but it is a hard thing to initiate any reform,
and it was necessary to familiarise the public mind with the principle,
by inserting the thin end of the wedge first: it is not therefore to be
wondered at that among so practical a people there should still be some
room for improvement. The mass of the nation are well pleased with
existing arrangements, and believe that their treatment of criminals
leaves little or nothing to be desired; but there is an energetic
minority who hold what are considered to be extreme opinions, and who are
not at all disposed to rest contented until the principle lately admitted
has been carried further.