The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays Part 7

II.

By advocating painless removal of incurable idiots and lunatics, incorrigible criminals and irreclaimable drunkards from this vale of tears Dr. W. Duncan McKim provoked many a respectable but otherwise blameless person to throw a catfit of great complexity and power. Yet Dr. McKim seemed only to antic.i.p.ate the trend of public opinion and forecast its crystallization into law. It is rapidly becoming a question of not what we ought to do with these unfortunates, but what we shall be compelled to do. Study of the statistics of the matter shows that in all civilized countries mental and moral diseases are increasing, proportionately to population, at a rate which in the course of a few generations will make it impossible for the healthy to care for the afflicted. To do so will require the entire revenue which it is possible to raise by taxation--will absorb all the profits of all the industries and professions and make deeper and deeper inroads upon the capital from which they are derived. When it comes to that there can be but one result. High and humanizing sentiments are angel visitants, whom we entertain with pride and pleasure, but when _fine_ entertainment becomes too costly to be borne we "speed the parting guest" forthwith. And it may happen that in inviting to his vacant place a less exciting successor--that in replacing Sentiment with Reason--we shall, in this instance, learn to our joy that we do but entertain another angel. For nothing is so heavenly as Reason; nothing is so sweet and compa.s.sionate as her voice--

"Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute,"

Is it cruel, is it heartless, is it barbarous to use something of the same care in breeding men and women as in breeding horses and dogs?

Here is a determining question: Knowing yourself doomed to hopeless idiocy, lunacy, crime or drunkenness, would you, or would you not, welcome a painless death? Let us a.s.sume that you would. Upon what ground, then, would you deny to another a boon that you would desire for yourself?

III.

The good American is, as a rule, pretty hard upon roguery, but he atones for his austerity by an amiable toleration of rogues. His only requirement is that he must personally know the rogues. We all "denounce" thieves loudly enough, if we have not the honor of their acquaintance. If we have, why, that is different--unless they have the actual odor of the prison about them. We may know them guilty, but we meet them, shake hands with them, drink with them, and if they happen to be wealthy or otherwise great invite them to our houses, and deem it an honor to frequent theirs. We do not "approve their methods"--let that be understood; and thereby they are sufficiently punished. The notion that a knave cares a pin what is thought of his ways by one who is civil and friendly to himself appears to have been invented by a humorist. On the vaudeville stage of Mars it would probably have made his fortune.

If warrants of arrest were out for every man in this country who is conscious of having repeatedly shaken hands with persons whom he knew to be knaves there would be no guiltless person to serve them.

I know men standing high in journalism who today will "expose" and bitterly "denounce" a certain rascality and tomorrow will be hobn.o.bbing with the rascals whom they have named. I know legislators of renown who habitually in "the halls of legislation" raise their voices against the dishonest schemes of some "trust magnate," and are habitually seen in familiar conversation with him. Indubitably these be hypocrites all.

Between the head and the heart of such a man is a wall of adamant, and neither organ knows what the other is doing.

If social recognition were denied to rogues they would be fewer by many.

Some would only the more diligently cover their tracks along the devious paths of unrighteousness, but others would do so much violence to their consciences as to renounce the disadvantages of rascality for those of an honest life. An unworthy person dreads nothing so much as the withholding of an honest hand, the slow inevitable stroke of an ignoring eye.

For one having knowledge of Mr. John D. Rockefeller's social life and connections it would be easy to name a dozen men and women who by a conspiracy of conscription could profoundly affect the plans and profits of the Standard Oil Company. I have been asked: "If John D. Rockefeller were introduced to you by a friend, would you refuse to take his hand?"

I certainly should--and if ever thereafter I took the hand of that hardy "friend" it would be after his repentance and promise to reform his ways. We have Rockefellers and Morgans because we have "respectable"

persons who are not ashamed to take them by the hand, to be seen with them, to say that they know them. In such it is treachery to censure them; to cry out when robbed by them is to turn State's evidence.

One may smile upon a rascal (most of us do so many times a day) if one does not know him to be a rascal, and has not said he is; but knowing him to be, or having said he is, to smile upon him is to be a hypocrite--just a plain hypocrite or a sycophantic hypocrite, according to the station in life of the rascal smiled upon. There are more plain hypocrites than sycophantic ones, for there are more rascals of no consequence than rich and distinguished ones, though they get fewer smiles each. The American people will be plundered as long as the American character is what it is; as long as it is tolerant of successful knavery; as long as American ingenuity draws an imaginary distinction between a man's public character and his private--his commercial and his personal In brief, the American people will be plundered as long as they deserve to be plundered. No human law can stop it, none ought to stop it, for that would abrogate a higher and more salutary law: "As ye sow ye shall reap."

In a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst is the following: "The story of all our Lord's dealings with sinners leaves upon the mind the invariable impression, if only the story be read sympathetically and earnestly, that He always felt kindly towards the transgressor, but could have no tenderness of regard toward the transgression. There is no safe and successful dealing with sin of any kind save as that distinction is appreciated and made a continual factor in our feelings and efforts."

With all due respect for Dr. Parkhurst, that is nonsense. If he will read his New Testament more understandingly he will observe that Christ's kindly feeling to transgressors was not to be counted on by sinners of every kind, and it was not always in evidence; for example, when he flogged the money-changers out of the temple. Nor is Dr.

Parkhurst himself any too amiably disposed toward the children of darkness. It is not by mild words and gentle means that he has hurled the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. Such revolutions as he set afoot are not made with spiritual rose-water; there must be the contagion of a n.o.ble indignation fueled with harder wood than abstractions. The people can not be collected and incited to take sides by the spectacle of a man fighting something that does not fight back. It is men that Dr. Parkhurst is trouncing--not their crimes--not Crime. He may fancy himself "dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn," but in reality he does not hate hate but hates the hateful, and scorns, not scorn, but the scornworthy.

It is singular with what tenacity that amusing though mischievous superst.i.tion keeps its hold upon the human mind--that grave _bona fide_ personification of abstractions and the funny delusion that it is possible to hate or love them. Sin is not a thing; there is no existing object corresponding to any of the mere counter-words that are properly named abstract nouns. One can no more hate sin or love virtue than one can hate a vacuum (which Nature--itself imaginary--was once by the scientists of the period solemnly held to do) or love one of the three dimensions. We may think that while loving a sinner we hate the sin, but that is not so; if anything is hated it is other sinners of the same kind, who are not quite so close to us.

"But," says Citizen Goodheart, who thinks with difficulty, "shall I throw over my friend when he is in trouble?" Yes, when you are convinced that he deserves to be in trouble; throw him all the harder and the further because he is your friend. In addition to his particular offense against society he has disgraced _you_. If there are to be lenity and charity let them go to the criminal who has foreborne to involve you in his shame. It were a pretty state of affairs if an undetected scamp, fearing exposure, could make you a co-defendant by so easy a precaution as securing your acquaintance and regard. Don't throw the first stone, of course, but when convinced that your friend is a proper target, heave away with a right hearty good-will, and let the stone be of serviceable dimensions, scabrous, textured flintwise and delivered with a good aim.

The French have a saying to the effect that to know all is to pardon all; and doubtless with an omniscient insight into the causes of character we should find the field of moral responsibility pretty thickly strewn with extenuating circ.u.mstances very suitable indeed for consideration by a G.o.d who has had a hand in besetting "with pitfall and with gin" the road we are to wander in. But I submit that universal forgiveness would hardly do as a working principle. Even those who are most apt and facile with the incident of the woman taken in adultery commonly cherish a secret respect for the doctrine of eternal d.a.m.nation; and some of them are known to pin their faith to the penal code of their state. Moreover there is some reason to believe that the sinning woman, being "taken," was penitent--they usually are when found out.

I care nothing about principles--they are lumber and rubbish. What concerns our happiness and welfare, as affectible by our fellowmen, is conduct "Principles, not men," is a rogue's cry; rascality's counsel to stupidity, the noise of the duper duping on his dupe. He shouts it most loudly and with the keenest sense of its advantage who most desires inattention to his own conduct, or to that forecast of it, his character. As to sin, that has an abundance of expounders and is already universally known to be wicked. What more can be said against it, and why go on repeating that? The thing is a trifle wordworn, whereas the sinner cometh up as a flower every day, fresh, ingenious and inviting.

Sin is not at all dangerous to society; it is the sinner that does all the mischief. Sin has no arms to thrust into the public treasury and the private; no hands with which to cut a throat; no tongue to wreck a reputation withal. I would no more attack it than I would attack an isosceles triangle, a vacuum, or Hume's "phantasm floating in a void."

My chosen enemy must be something that has a skin for my switch, a head for my cudgel--something that can smart and ache and, if so minded, fight back. I have no quarrel with abstractions; so far as I know they are all good citizens.

THE DEATH PENALTY

I.

"DOWN with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle of "a life for a life"--to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of the divine authority," and the rotten rest of it The law making murder punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without provocation. Even the most brainless opponent of "capital punishment"

would do that if he knew enough. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning to abstain from crime. Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us you die," just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in either case must be more than an idle threat.

Even the most unearthly reasoner among the gallows-downing unfortunates would hardly expect to frighten away an a.s.sa.s.sin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course these queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of aggression, and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if as Christians they frankly and consistently took that ground we should be under the miserable necessity of respecting them.

We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in this country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws--that the death penalty is threatened but not inflicted--that the pistol is not loaded. In civilized countries, where there is enough respect for the laws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man still has as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold widiout cracking we shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and a.s.sa.s.sins and persons with a private system of lexicography who define hanging as murder and murder as mischance, and many another disagreeable creation, but in all this welter of crime and stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and punishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the lives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a public good, without reference to the crimes that disclose their deserts. If we could discover them by other signs than their b.l.o.o.d.y deeds they should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death as evidence. The scientists who will tell us how to recognize the potential a.s.sa.s.sin, and persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest benefactor of his century.

What would these enemies of the gibbet have?--these lineal descendants of the drunken mobs that pelted the hangmen at Tyburn Tree; this progeny of criminals, which has so defiled with the mud of its animosity the n.o.ble office of public executioner that even "in this enlightened age" he s.h.i.+rks his high duty, entrusting it to a hidden or unnamed subordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether it's punishment by death be just or not?--n.o.body needs to incur it.

Men are not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather pelted the hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it is somewhat deterrent--it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder is his crime, his second is ours.

The voice of Theosophy has been heard in favor of downing the gallows.

As usual the voice is a trifle vague and it babbles. Clear speech is the outcome of clear thought, and that is something to which Theosophists are not addicted. Considering their infirmity in that way, it would be hardly fair to take them as seriously as they take themselves, but when any considerable number of apparently earnest citizens unite in a pet.i.tion to the Governor of their State, to commute the death sentence of a convicted a.s.sa.s.sin without alleging a doubt of his guilt the phenomenon challenges a certain attention to what they do allege. What these amiable persons hold, it seems, is what was held by Alphonse Karr: the expediency of abolis.h.i.+ng the death penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with him, that the a.s.sa.s.sins should begin. They want the State to begin, believing that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their a.s.sertion that "death penalties have not the deterring influence which imprisonment for life carries." In this they obviously err: death deters at least the person who suffers it--he commits no more murder; whereas the a.s.sa.s.sin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further punishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be able to get at. Even as matters now are, the most incessant vigilance is required to prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants and one another. How would it be if the "life-termer" were a.s.sured against any additional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally, or strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described as a place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed the difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would have to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what these Theosophical gentlemen propose to subst.i.tute for death?

These pet.i.tioners call the death penalty "a relic of barbarism," which is neither conclusive nor true. What is required is not loose a.s.sertion and dogs-eared phrases, but evidence of futility, or, in lack of that, cogent reasoning. It is true that the most barbarous nations inflict the death penalty most frequently and for the greatest number of offenses, but that is because barbarians are more criminal in instinct and less easily controlled by gentle methods than civilized peoples. That is why we call them barbarous. It is not so very long since our English ancestors punished more than forty kinds of crime with death. The fact that the hangman, the boiler-in-oil and the breaker-on-the-wheel had their hands full does not show that the laws were futile; it shows that the dear old boys from whom we are proud to derive ourselves were a bad lot--of which we have abundant corroborative evidence in their brutal pastimes and in their manners and customs generally. To have restrained that crowd by the rose-water methods of modern penology--that is unthinkable.

The death penalty, say the memorialists, "creates blood-thirstiness in the unthinking ma.s.ses and defeats its own ends. It is a cause of murder, not a check." These gentlemen are themselves of "the unthinking ma.s.ses"--they do not know how to think. Let them try to trace and lucidly expound the chain of motives lying between the knowledge that a murderer has been hanged and the wish to commit a murder. How, precisely, does the one beget the other? By what unearthly process of reasoning does a man turning away from the gallows persuade himself that it is expedient to incur the danger of hanging? Let us have pointed out to us the several steps in that remarkable mental progress. Obviously, the thing is absurd; one might as reasonably say that contemplation of a pitted face will make a man go and catch smallpox, or the spectacle of an amputated limb on the sc.r.a.p-heap of a hospital tempt him to cut off his arm.

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," says the Theosophist, "is not justice. It is revenge and unworthy of a Christian civilization." It is exact justice: n.o.body can think of anything more accurately just than such punishments would be, whatever the motive in awarding them.

Unfortunately such a system is not practicable, but he who denies its absolute justice must deny also the justice of a bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, service for service. We can not undertake by such clumsy means as laws and courts to do to the criminal exactly what he has done to his victim, but to demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and (therefore) right.

Here are two of these gentlemen's dicta, between which they inserted the one just considered, though properly they should go together in frank inconsistency:

"6. It [the death penalty] punishes the innocent a thousand times more than the guilty. Death is merciful to the tortures which the living relatives must undergo. And they have committed no crime."

"8. Death penalties have not the deterring influence which imprisonment for life carries. Mere death is not dreaded. See the number of suicides.

Hopeless captivity is much more severe."

Merely noting that the "living relatives" whose sorrows so sympathetically affect these soft-hearted and soft-headed persons are those of the murderer, not those of his victim, let us consider what they really say, not what they think they say: "Death is no very great punishment, for the criminal doesn't mind it much, but hopeless captivity is a very great punishment indeed Therefore, let us spare the a.s.sa.s.sin's family the tortures they will suffer if we inflict the lighter penalty. Let us make it easier for them by inflicting the severer one."

There is sense for you!--sense of the sound old fruity Theosophical sort--the kind of sense that has lifted "The Beautiful Cult" out of the dark domain of reason into the serene alt.i.tudes of inexpressible Thrill!

As to "hopeless captivity," though, there is no such thing.

In legislation, today can not bind tomorrow. By an act of the Legislature--even by a const.i.tutional prohibition, we may do away with the pardoning power; but laws can be repealed, const.i.tutions amended.

The public has a short memory, signatures to pet.i.tions in the line of mercy are had for the asking, and tender-hearted Governors are familiar afflictions. We have life sentences already, and sometimes they are served to the end--if the end comes soon enough! but the average length of "life imprisonment" is, I am told, a little more than seven years.

Hope springs eternal in the human beast, and matters simply can not be so arranged that in entering the penitentiary he will "leave hope behind." Hopeless captivity is a dream.

I quote again:

"9. Life imprisonment is the natural and humane check upon one who has proven his unfitness for freedom by taking life deliberately."

What! it is no longer "much more severe" than the "relic of barbarism?"