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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
IMPOLICY
OF
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
OOZblSTIXEIRzIEID;
DERIVED FROM OBSERVATIONS, SUPPLIED BY RECOLLECTION OK PUBLIC
EXECUTIONS; TO WHICH IS ADDED,
LETTERS ON CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, .
BY THE AUTHORJ ALSO, A
RETURN OF THE NAMES OF THE CRIMINALS WHO
HAVE BEEN EXECUTED AT CHESTER
DURING THE LAST 300 YEARS,
SPECIFYING THE OFFENCES FOR WHICH THEY DIED; WITH MUCH
INTERESTING MATTER ON THE VARIED CAUSES OF CRIME.
BY GEORGE BAKEWELL.
MANCHESTER :
JOHN HEYWOOD, WHOLESALE PUBLISHER, 170, DEANSGATE.
CHESTER:
MR. THOMAS, “ RECORD OFFICE,” PEPPER STREET.
usual allowance to the trade.
��It is upwards of forty years since I was induced to'witness the execution of a
female who had been convicted, at the Stafford assizes, of the crime of murder,
and I must own, although very young at the time, that a more revolting scene
could not be laid open to human observation. All parts of the town, at an early
period of the morning, were crowded with anxious spectators, many of whom, I
am sorry to state, appeared to feel that they had quitted their homes in order to
survey some object of merriment or rejoicing. Indeed, for upwards of two hours '
previous to the frightful tragedy which afterwards happened, drunkenness had
been indulged in to an extent at once disgraceful to a Christian community. I
am happy, however, to state, that the disciples of that good man, the Rev. John
Wesley, attended in great numbers, in order to teach the vulgar masses that the
death of a sinner was not desired by the Almighty; and, moreover, that the agon
ising spectacle about to be enacted was by no means calculated to deter from the
commission of crime; in short, that it was more likely to convert the^sufferer into
an object of commisseration, rather than as one leaving the world amidst universal
indignation. Various addresses were delivered in order to render manifest the
above just and most righteous conclusions; but some portions of the drunken
mob, as was natural from their supreme ignorance, gave vent to their.feelings by
the most disgusting shouts of derision. As the hour of execution drew nigh, a
large number of farmers had assembled exactly in front of the scaffold, and they
appeared deeply impressed at the supreme folly of the Government allowing such
an assemblage to take place; in a word, whilst the depraved were revelling in
views and feelings, at which even savages would revolt, the pious and the wn.c
were all convinced that at no far distant day the hideous scaffold would totally
disappear from amongst us, and verily what followed must, had George III. been
present to have witnessed it, have induced him to resolve never more to put a
fellow creature to death.
At twelve o’clock the Rev, Thomas Whitby, of Creswell, made his.^appearance,
reading, in the deepest tones, the service for the dead. In another instant the
hangman had completed his frightful duties, and the drop had no sooner fallen
than its whole fabric followed, including the beam on which the wretched creature
was suspended in the agonies of deach. The yells and execrations that ensued
defies description: fully an Hour elapsed before the arrangements were completed
�4
to effect the final work of strangulation. Afterwards, large and influential public
meetings were held in order to convince not only the Government, but all persons
possessed of correct feeling, that the Punishment of Death was wholly unjustifiable.
The next execution I witnessed was at Derby, of four persons, named Brown,
•Jackson, Booth, and King-, who had been convicted, upon purely circumstantial
evidence, of setting fire to a corn stack, the property of a gentleman named
Colonel Wingfield Norton. The judge who presided at the trial had told the
jury, which was composed of farmers, that even on the assumption that all, or
one of the prisoners had been on the prosecutor’s premises on the night stated
in the indictment, it was by no means improbable that the fire might have been
occasioned by a tobacco pipe igniting the straw, in which event there ought to be
an acquittal. In those days, it is well known, juries were extremely illiterate, and
the result was, the four unfortunate men, all in the flower and pride of their
youth, were consigned to the scaffold, although great efforts had been made to
save them. When the day arrived which was to remove them from. life into an
unseen eternity, the sun had risen with more than usual splendour, the weather,
up to eleven o’clock, had been beautifully fine, scarcly a cloud was to be seen on
the celestial horizon. As usual, the morbid anxiety of man was brought into its
rull requisition : nearly the whole rural population came forth to witness the
disgusting scene; the voice of mirth had issued from most of the common ale
houses whilst the preparations of death were being completed. At length the
fatal moment was drawing nigh, which was to be the last of three beings, whom
God had created in nis cwn image. At length the sky became clouded, and
exactly at twelve o’clock a sudden darkness veiled the sun. “ The thunders rolled,
the lightnings flew.” At this awful juncture the condemned were brought on the
scaffold, the rain then poured down as if the floodgates of hehven had been
opened wide, and th? authorities took the poor creatures away. When the
storm had abated the barbarous work was finished. Three of the victims ap
peared to yield up their lives almost without the least apparent struggle, but the
sufferings of one was agonising in the extreme, his frame quivered for fully seven
minutes before
“ The breath of heaven
Would quit its tenement of elay.”
So far from the above exhibition proving of the slightest value, by way of example,
it is an absolute fact that the following assizes exhibited a calendar stained with
every species of offence that could possiby darken the statute book of an age. The
crimes of murder, highway robbery, stood out in bold relief; indeed, the Lord
C Jef Baron, in his charge to the grand jury, admitted that the execution of crimi
nals appeared to be without avail. And, with regard to the crime of arson, it was
quite clear that if the Government were not prepared to compel the different
parishes, throughout the whole kingdom, to afford food and shelter to the wandering
outcast, it was equally manifest the insurance offices must either be ruined, or
else make such provision themselves.
Howeve;, to return to the direct subject, hanging was still continued, as will
appear from a perusal of the annexed letters. But another execution took place
at Stafford, namely, that of Abel Hill, for the murder a young woman and her infant
child, which appeared to convince the Government that the scaffold must go down.
�When the jury had returned their verdict in the 'case just named, the criminal said
with an oath, “had I a cask of gunpowder I would blow you all to----- • and
whilst the late Mr. Justice Richards was addressing him, in the most feeling terms,
the monster made use of the most impious expressions, nor was his conduct on the
scaffold in the slightest degree altered, indeed, he was wholly unfit to die; but, in
point of all human probability, the heartrending scene which took place at the
execution of Sarah Harriet Thomas, at Bristol, a few years back, did more towards
shaking public opinion, with regard to Capital Punishment, than any preceding
circumstances of the kind. I happened to be at Gloucester, on business, the pre
vious day, and always being desirous, at the earliest convenient period, to render
my humble aid in accomplishing the object under consideration, I went to Bristol,
and witnessed what was nothing less than a judicial murder; the girl was believe d
to have been insane, to a greater or less extent. When brought out, her screams
were piteous, and she struggled hardfor life. Calcraft and four powerful turnkeys
*
however, dragged her to the fatal tree ; the poor creature saying, “ Do, n >w, let
me go; I want to go home.” At length all was still, and a portion of the vast
assemblage at once sang of the beautiful hymn—
“ And am 1 bora to die,
To lay this body down;
And must my trembling spirit fly
Unto a world unknown."
I do not, however, suppose that it will become essential for me to say more on
this part of the subject; and will, therefore, now furnish the letters, which I gave,
in the first instance, to the press gratuitously : —
LETTER I.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ” CHESTER RECORD/’
Sir,—The alarming increase of the crime of wilful murder, during the compass
of the last few years, and the futile results of public executions on the minds of
the wicked, are events calculated to enlist serious consideration. Indeed, I much
question whether the subject is not one requiring from the Legislature a far more
urgent attention than any of the many amendments needed in our social and
political system, by an industrious and intelligent people. But, in making use of
this expresoion, I am, of course, not unmindful of the immense extent of savage
ferocity which exists in the midst of the religion and piety lately manifested in
almost every district of the empire. The recent meeting held in Chester, on the
subject of establishing homes for poor, destitute, neglected children, I regard as
another proof of the sincere desire of those who possess their good things in this
life, to assist by all judicious means, in sowing the seeds of virtue in the human
heart, so that when the season of youth shall be succeeded by that of riper years,
a strong hope may be entertained that England will be blest with a people on
whose hearts will be engraved the solid principles of brotherly love, so that the
�clouds of darkness, despair, and wickedness, and all its attendant horrors, will
have rapidly began to decline and wither away. However, the pressing questions
are, What is the cause of that awful state of things which, in after ages, will be
regarded as so great a stain ou this generation, inasmuch as it is scarcely possible
to take up a newspaper without reading the details of murders, and other outrages,
revolting to the feelings of that nature sown by the Creator in the breasts of all
when he formed the stupendous undertaking of creating the world, and man to
cultivate and enjoy it for a season, and afterwards to receive everlasting
life? Secondly—Is the punishment of death, inflicted by the law-makers of king
doms, authorised by the Almighty, or by any means calculated to accomplish the
great aim of all punishments inflicted by man, namely, the prevention of crime?
I feel that a temperate discussion of the above important questions may be
deemed interesting at the present period to a portion of your readers, and for this
reason. Notwithstanding all that has been published of late years on the expe
diency of abolishing Capital Punishment, little information has found its way
an 'mgstthe masses, who, since the abolition of the newspaper stamp, can afford
tc read such excellent productions as your own, which, although in its infancy, is
a credit to your ancient city. With these feelings, and also with the desire to
place before the higher classes some details supplied by a recollection of criminal
trials and executions, I will proceed to furnish my own views on the whole subject,
in all its important points, aud for this purpose must, of necessity, trouble you,
probably, upon a few other occasions. I do this, as experience tells me that long
communications, with whatever ability written, do not receive that general atten
tion to which, under other circumstances, they might be entitled.
1 am, of course, not insensible to the strong feeling entertained by a great
portion of society, that life is required for life ; and I am equally aware that many
persons, possessing not only strong religious sentiments, but extensive knowledge
on human affairs, regard the passage in Genesis wherein it is written, “ whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” as a positive command
from God that a murderer should die. Now if this were so, it is somewhat remark
able that the same authority was not given to inflict the like punishment upon
those convicted of the crime of forgery, and other offences, now visited with
imprisonment or transportation; and it is also remarkable that ages should have
rolled over without this important point being settled on the basis of sound
reason, which tells us, that if the Divine authority was needed to take away life for
one description of offence, it was also needed for every other. The plain truth,
however, to borrow the words of the late Sir Samuel Komilly, is, that man begins
to feel the conviction that he has been usurping the authority of God, who has
said, “ Vengeance is mine. To me vengeance belongeth. I will repay.” It does»
therefore, appeal1 strange if it was ordained in the manner suggested, that
murderers should be exterminated from the earth, that Cain was spared, inasmuch
s his crime was of the most atrocious description, and his conduct afterwards did,
not entitle him to the slightest leniency. The Almighty, in permitting him to ter
minate his existence as a vagabond and a wanderer, gave an unmistakeable exem
plification of his written word, that he takes “ no delight in the death of a sinner,
but, rather, that he should turn from his wickedness and live.”
Notwithstanding the above remarkable manifestation of the Divine Will, it is
�1
insisted by those in power that blood for blood is required. My own views are,
that the passage in Scripture to which I referred in the commencement, is open to
a very different interpretation to that generally put upon it. And, with regard to
the Mosaic Law, I must remark, although that truly pious person exhibited,
during the whole period of his lengthened existence, the most sincere desire to
carry out the will of his Divine Master, yet 1 completely dispute that his com
mands, promulgated on the eve of his departure from the people whom he
governed, and which breathed a spirit of philanthropy that seemed too bright to
die, were intended to be binding on all generations. Moses was only mortal; and
what might in his day have been exceedingly good laws, would not be adapted for
a period like the present. Indeed, the slightest consideration of the Edicts them
selves, which are very plainly written in the book of Josephus, must convince any
person of ordinary understanding of the correctness of my hypothesis. But as I
hope to resume tne subject next week, I will not omit to place a few extracts of
the Mosaic Law under the consideration of yOur readers, one clause of whieh
expressly prohibited females, on account of their great inquisitiveness, from giving
evidence in a court of justice.
.
I am, Sir, yours respectfully,
G. BAKEWELL.
I
Beeston, May 5, 1857.
.... '
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LETTER II. '
. . Jum ..
-•/.». lite
/
A, ' J;J ’
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “CHESTER RECORD.
f
Sir,—in concluding my communication of last week, I expressed an intention
of furnishing some extracts from the code of laws promulgated by Moses, previous
to his departure from the world ; I feel, however, upon further consideration, that
if I carried out the intention, I might, in all likelihood, lay myself open to the
imputation of wishing to bring contempt upon a great and good man; on one who,
most admirably, completed his earthly mission, and then announced to his people
the precise period when he would be called to his Maker’s kingdom in heaven.
But I must, certainly, strongly urge on the consideration of those who contend
that the Mosaic Law, requiring that life should answer for life, forms but a very
small portion of the whole. The Punishment of Death was also enjoined for
various other offences; consequently, the question arises, why was it not carried
out My answer is, that succeeding governors to Moses discovered that the
execution of criminals for crimes mentioned was contrary to the intention of God,
consequently Moses must have been in error when he gave the law publication.
But upon one point there can be no kind of controversy, namely, that mankind,
in relaxing the punishment fixed for one portion of the offences, possess an equal
authority to adopt the same course with regard to the whole.
In proceeding to the further consideration of the important subject before me,
I feel exceeding anxious to impress on the minds of your’readers that in advo-
�$
eating the total abolition of Capital Punishments, I aru not actuated by the horrid
principles of what is termed Socialism, which amounts to nothing less than
absolute infidelity. In short, I iiave no sympathy with a murderer, who, I am
well aware, can carry into the midst of many a happy family the utmost extent of
affliction which it is possible for the human mind to endure; indeed, in the neigh
bourhood wherein I reside, the blood stained hand has recently occasioned such
results. I am induced to take up the subject for the reasons already suited, and
because I feel that the revolting spectacle afforded by public executions is utterly
useless by way of example, and, moreover, that convictions for the particular
offence to which I refer, can, in a very general way, only be secured by the
adoption of what lias been emphatically termed, circumstantial evidence; a
description of testimony which has frequently misled the ablest judges, and the
most enlightened juries. With these remarks I will proceed to furnish some
details relating to the immense sacrifice of human life which has taken place
during the compass of the last three centuries, by the hands of the common hang
man, which, when compared with the statistics of a period, when the population
has so vastly increased, must, of necessity, excite one common feeling of sorrow in
every reflecting mind.
Before the reign of Henry VIII. thoud&nds of persons had perished for witch
craft and political offences; and when that monarch came to the throne, Parlia
ment enacted that robbers, forgers, and cattle stealers should undergo the like
punishment; in this reign no fewer than 72,000 persons had been put to death,
and crime steadily increasing during the whole period. This state of things was
carried on for successive reigns, without the slightest remorse or relaxation; and
George III. had governed fifty years before he began seriously to feel the enor
mous weight of guilt which, undoubtedly, rested somewhere. At this period a
jubilee was held, and it became the duty of both Houses of Parliament to vote
addresses to the throne, which, of course, led to a reply from the King, wherein he
expressed the joy he felt in having been spared to rule so long over a happy, con
tented, and loyal people. Some little time afterwards, the subject of doing away
with Capital Punishment for all offences except the crime of wilful murder, was
mooted in the Lords, the indignation of all the refined classes In England, Irelan^,’
and Scotland having been most painfully excited some years previously, by the
execution of Dr. Dodd, and the two brothers, Perreux, for forgery. The then
Duke of Portland is reported to have made use of the following remarkable
words:—
** His Majesty, in bis gracious reply to this house, mentioned the contentment of the
people over whom be had been so long spared to rale. Now my feelings are, that a deep
discontent exists in the minds of all candid men who are convinced that the execution of
at least one of the Perreux, as well as that of Dr. Dodd, were judicial murders, inasmuch
os the last-named person never really intended to cheat Lord Chesterfield by signing his
name; but if he did, the offence was condoned by the acceptance of a security for the
money; and upon these, as well as various other grounds, J hope the punishment of the
scaffold may be mitigated so far as offences against property are concerned."
Little, however, was done towards accomplishing so desirable an object, until after
the accession of George IV., in 1821, as will appear from the following returns:—
In the year jast named, there were executed in England and Wales, for various
�9
offences, 114 persons. Strong efforts were then made to induce the Government
to amend the law, and many able appeals to accomplish that object in the House
of Commons were made. One of the speakers quoted the following lines, with a
view to show that the human race was entitled to pity, and, consequently, that
God should deal out his own measure of punishment to the more serious offender:
" Man, in his first estate, by ill advice,
Lost his Creator, and his Paradise.
Caused, in the place of llowers, rank weeds to gvow;
And peace departed at the sight of woe.
Since then the world in bitterness haB known,
The sigh, the tear, the lamentable groan.
Eternal day has fled—and awful night
Hongs over ea; th in horror and affright.
Man suceeeds man, and time gives way to time,
Change rolls on ohange—but yet, through all is crime.”
The result was, that transportation for life was substituted for various capital
crimes, which had the effect of reducing the number of executions in the seven
years between 1821 and 18’28, to the average of 59- Eventually, urther mitiga
tion was effected, by which means, in the next seven years, the number hanged
was re duced to 17; and in the succeeding ten years to six annually. I am sorry,
however, to state, that from the year 1810 to the year 1833, the period when
William IV. began to reign, no fewer than 56 persons had perished every year on
the scaffold. The above facts exhibit a painful retrospect, and naturally raises
the inquiry, whether the enlightened period in which we now live has not only
served to banish crime from the calendars of our sessions and assizes, but to do
away with the necessity of Death Punishment, provided mtn ever received a
power to exercise it.
With regard to the first point, the reader who has only recently been ac
customed to take his weekly newspaper, will be very sorry to receive an answer
in the negative. And what is, perhaps, a more startling announcement, there
never was a season, in the whole history of the kingdom, wherein there existed a
greater extent of depravity and remorseless wickedness than the present. In
short, the large towns and cities, nay, the rural districts, are infested with vaga
bonds of the vilest cast. Of course I may be asked to explain how, and in what
manner, such a terrible state of things has been produced? I answer—'one
portion of this class have been their own destroyers, by imbibing habits of intem
perance, which clouds the mind, so that the light of solid understanding cannot
penetrate within; and, moreover, the heart become hardened, and capable of
perpetrating offences at which the finer feelings of humanity stand aghast.
Another class are the offspring of vagrants, or persons who always prefer a
wandering and idle life to that of honest industry. But it is to be observed that
the laws relating to the relief of the poor, although apparently liberal, are, in
their operation, exceedingly cruel; so much so, as to induce those who would
gladly betake themselves to industry, if they had the power, to rush into a career
of crime from which they very seldom escape in following years.
With such an hideous mass of depravity — which has now reared its head
amongst us, like some anoient ruin—to deal with, the important questions arise ;«•
�10
Would it be safe to abolish the scaffold? If so, what punishment should be
substituted instead? What is to be done with our criminals, both in prison and
out of them ? What measures are to be adopted so as not only to destroy the
whole fabric of vice, but to prevent, so far as laws can prevent, similar results
from arising1 either in the present or in any future generation ? And, finally, on
the assumption that a majority of both Houses of Parliament should decide in
favour of the right of earthly rulers to destroy the breath of heaven, I feel fully
convinced that a large portion of my countrymen, whose conduct has been as
chaste as the icicle that is curdled by the frost from purest snow, wi’l naturally
demand to be told whether life is to be taken on doubtful evidence. I am well
aware that such men as Lord Sidmouth and Lord Ellenborough had always ready
answers to give to those who, in days now gone by, made appeals for mercy on
the grounds suggested. I can well remember reading of the dismay occasioned
to a sorrowing nation when the fate of poor Eliza Fenning was trembling in the
frail balance of life and death. Alas! the joy it would have given, had even a
short respite been granted her before the cruelty of the Government had cut her
off, and removed her far beyond the pale of human reparation, inasmuch as her
guilt was questioned by ninety-nine persons out of every hundred (the unfortunate
creature was executed for poisoning her master). Scarcely, however, had the
bloody work been done, before the real criminal, stung by all the agonies of
remorse and wild despair, gave himself up to justice, and afterwards suffered the
extreme penalty of the law. The general affliction occasioned by the death of
the victim was somewhat alleviated by the Christian spirit and fortitude she had
exhibited throughout the period of her tribulations. Even when the shadows of
death encompassed her, and in the face of her destroyers, her demeanour was
great, firm, and equal.
I hope, in succeeding letters, to be enabled, by furnishing the details of other
cases that have occurred within my own recollection, so to shake the whole fabric
of circumstantial evidence, as to induce those who have hitherto held with Capital
Punishment, to falter in their opinions, and to agree with me in believing that
when it becomes necessary for any one to be put to death, that such a work
belongs exclusively to the King of Kings. The Scripture says, “The Lord gave
and the Lord taketh away.” I am, nevertheless, aware that society would naturally
expect, when such an important change as the one contended for, was made, that
a punishment should be substituted, calculated to convince those who choose to
imbrue their hands in blood, that their sufferings will not be confined to a few
mortal pangs, but that a continued gloom, throughout the whole period of their
natural existence, is the certain result, awaiting them after conviction. Such a
law would also be the means of weakening the chances of escape for the guilty,
and what is of far greater moment a reparation could always be made to inno
cence when it was discovered.
I am, Sir, yours very respectfully,
BAKEWELL.
Beeston, May 12th, 1857,
�11
LETTER III.
TO TEE EDITOR OF THE "CHESTER RECORD.”
Sir,—With regard to the adoption of circumstantial evidence, and upon which
convictions for murder are generally founded, I readily admit that owing to the
fact of the criminal selecting for the completion of his purpose a time, a place,
and an opportunity, when he thinks no eye can see him, that no ear can hear him,
it would often be found impossible to secure the conviction of the guilty, if the
description of testimony to which I have adverted was to be excluded. If how
ever, as I contend, it is true that circumstantial evidence has again and again led
to the execution of the innocent, it forms in my judgment, apart from all other
considerations, the strongest possible ground for the total abolition of the scaffold.
In short, it is known also, beyond all question of controversy—not only to the
judges, but to every individual fully acquainted with the administration of justice
—that the secresy with which a murderer generally veils his guilt, frequently leads
to a verdict of acquittal. I know of numerous cases of the kind, in which the
juries would have felt no kind of hesitation in finding a verdict of guilty, but for
** The Punishment of Death.” I need only mention the case from Manchester,
tried at Liverpool, before Baron Platt—not many years ago—wherein a man and
his wife were tried for murder, and escaped all punishment whatever, simply
because the jury durst not, strong as the evidence was, consign the prisoners to a
doom from which they could never afterwards be extricated. I may also mention
—I trust without impropriety—the cases of Evans, for the murder of Mr. Price,
and that of Hodge, for the murder of Mrs.’Moore, of Winnington, as affording un
answerable arguments in favour of the correctness of my views. Away then, I
say, with the scaffold—and for ever. In short, I do not hesitate to assert that the
root, the stem, the bud, the flower, from which Death Punishments have so long
flourished, has been in all times and in all ages, a source of bitterness to the well
being of kingdoms, and a kind of cankerworm from which has emanated the very
worst results. I know these remarks may not be acceptable to one portion of
society, whose indignation at a murderer lead them frequently to forget the pas
sage in Scripture, wherein it is written, “ Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do
right.” Supposing, therefore, the malefactor was consigned to imprisonment for
life, as previously suggested, the Almighty, whose power is infinite, could add to
his pangs every punishment that was required. The great aim, however, of
earthly rulers ought to be in allaying the ferocity of human passions; inasmuch as
all experience has proved that education, timely counsels, and the certainty of
punishment, are the surest and strongest barriers against lawless violence.
Murder is a crime not confined to poverty, or ignorance; men of a superior educa
tion, and of even refined sentiments, have been known to imbrue their hands in
blood; but it has been generally discovered that they have done so after being
permitted to pursue a long career of profligacy. * aurence, Earl Ferrers, for
L
instance, in the opinion of all sensible men, ought to have been confined, as a
dangerous member to society, for years before he sent poor Mr. Johnson to the
grave. In plainer language, the offence of drunkenness—the origin of every
* This nobleman was executed at Tyburn, in the last year of the reign of George II.
�12
social evil—ought to be punished with the greatest severity, and by whosoever
committed; and, until the Government has done this, all the effoitsof philanthrophy will be incomplete. The operation of the Poor L'aw, to which I briefly
alluded in one of the preceding letters, I regard also as a most fertile source of
crime. From the very best information which has been gained on the subject, it
appears there are no fewer than three hundred thousand persons, spread oyer the
surface of the kingdom, who are nothing more than mere wanderers, or vagabonds,
living without, of course, any lawful means of existence; and when it is con
sidered that a portion of such a class are men who have been frequently convicted
of violating the laws, and now at large on tickets-of-leave, I do not see how
society can be considered as safe. Nevertheless, the recent amendment of the
law, with regard to the abolition of transportation, I am induced to believe will be
productive of much good. I trust, however, that further measures may be urged
on the consideration of Parliament, in order to make a suitable provision for all
cases of destitution. The present treatment of the poor, particularly those who
are called wayfarers, is cruel in the extreme. At many of the Unions the poor
creatures are bedded down like swine, and fed worse than the rich mans dogs;
whilst the allowance to the regular recipients of parochial relief, is a scandal to a
civilised nation. I mention these things as, in considering the question of doing
away with the scaffold, I feel how important it is that the absolute causes of crime
should be considered at the same time. When alluding to the immense number of
persons who are outcasts, I do not wish an inference to be drawn that the whole
are vicious members of the community. It is far otherwise, to a certain extent;
a portion of them have been persons formerly in good circumstances, but being
reduced by misfortune, or overtaken by age, refuse the Work house. They look
with scorn upon the law, as well as those who made it, and elect to travel from
place to place, in order to gain, by the enlivening scenes of nature, a temporary
relief from their tribulations, until God shall call them to that kingdom where the
weary and heavy laden find everlasting rest.
In thus advocating a provision for the poor,I wish to impress on the minds of the
young, that I believe all have a chance at one period or other to do well, provided it
is embraced ; and with regard to the working classes, I am convinced that nothing
would be more just than for the Government to get passed a National Poor-rate,
and, at one stroke, abolish the whole band of locusts, called Union Officers, who
absorb more than one-half of the rates. A plan of this kind would render an
ample allowance to all cases of destitution, a matter of mere insignificance ; whilst
the good effects to society would be beyond calculation. Indeed, there has been
more money expended during the last century, in the prosecution and transporta
tion of criminals, in making good losses from fire wilfully occasioned, in the
destruction of machinery, and in useless removals, than would have been needed
had the amount been invested for the support of the poor for time evermore. It
is true that lawless violence must be repressed, but it is much better to prevent
than cure.
In resuming the consideration of circumstantial evidence, which I regard as so
important a feature in the abolition of Capital Punishment, I need not ransack
such books as the Percy Anecdotes of the Newgate Calendar, in order to render
manifest its mischievous tendency. Cases, too numerous now to mention, have
�13
occurred within my own recollection, so as to afford a complete illustration on
this head. I will merely refer to those of Rush, for the murder at Stanfield Halt
and of Palmer, for the Rugeley poisonings, to show how near two of the greatest
criminals were of absolutely escaping punishment. In the former ease, it is
generally believed that if the criminal had employed counsel, the prosecution
would have failed ; and as it was, Mr. Baron Rolfe remarked, in passing sentence
with reference to Emily Sandford’s evidence“ Had you have kept your promise
to that young woman, by marrying her, in point of probability, the rule of law,
which seals the lips of a wife in all proceedings against her husband, would have
allowed your guilt to have gone unpunished.” Whilst with regard to that of
Palmer, all thinking men are convinced that his conviction, in consequence of the
conflicting nature of the medical testimony, was wholly unjustifiable ; and, more
over, that the summing up of Lord Campbell was partial and unfair. Such
opinions might not have been so strongly and generally entertained, had the issue
not been a matter of life or death, and until that punishment has been removed,
great offenders will always have awarded to them a sympathy.
I will now mention the following cases, and leave the reader to form his own
conclusions:—
At the Stafford assizes, held in March, 1824, Thomas Powell, a labouring man,
was indicted for the wilful murder of a female named Anne, the wife of Edward
Spencer, who resided at Gorst Cottage, near Willenhall, by striking her on the
head with a hatchet. He was further charged with stealing a quantity of wearing
apparel. The evidence, as usual, was purely circumstantial; the strongest point
was, that the prisoner had pledged at the shop of Mrs. Moore, a pawnbroker, a
portion of the stolen articles, on the day following the murder. But in his defence
he alleged that a man, dressed in a blue smock frock, had given him the bundle
to pledge, under a promise of paying for a quart of ale; and he asked the judge
if it was likely, had he committed the murder, that he should instantly have
exposed himself to the consequences of detection.
Mr. Justice Littledale summed up strongly in favour of an acquittal, but the
ury returned a verdict of guilty, and the unfortunate man received sentence of
death, and was executed within forty-eight hours. Connected with this case the
Staffordshire Advertiser remarked, “ Whilst the dying knell toll’d for the living
man, he solemnly denied all participation in the robbery or murderand, more
over, the late Mr. Brutton, who was the governor of Stafford Gaol, with whom I
was on terms of intimacy in youth, told me that he believed Powell to have been
entirely innocent. I may also mention, that a solicitor, now living at Uttoxeter’
who had to attend the judges lodgings, shortly after the trial, heard Mr. Justice
Littledale say, " Well Brother Garrow, I must confess that I should have been
better satisfied with a verdict of acquittal.” A few months afterwards, the man
dressed in the blue smock frock was himself transported for burglary, and he,
although making no admission of the murder for which Powell suffered, stated
that he had been wrongfully convicted.
Several years afterwards two men, named Paul Rigby and John Grimes, were
convicted at the Lancaster assizes, for an highway robbery, at Scotworth, near
Garstang. The prosecutor stated that his name was Stanley, and that he was by
trade a ’oiner, residing at Market Drayton, in Shropshire. That although the
�14
night was dark when the attack was made upon him, yet he was convinced the
prisoners were the men who ill-treated and robbed him. The constable who
had charge of the case, also gave evidence that the marks of Bigby’s shoe
exactly corresponded with various prints he discovered on the spot where the
robbery was alleged to have been committed. The prisoners nrotested their
innocence, but Mr. .Justice Park strongly summed up against them, and the jury,
without hesitation, returned a verdict of guilty, and sentence of death was
pronounced, with no hopes of mercy. Fortunately a chain of circumstances
was discovered, proving that the prosecutor was a gross impostor, and a reprieve
obtained just in time to stay the execution, the judge remarking, “ If these
men are innocent there is no reliance to be placed on circumstantial evidence
and I shall consider it a dangerous thing to take away life upon it hereafter.” It
is, perhaps, needless for me to add that the persons thus rescued at the eleventh
hour, in the dreary passage to the grave, were restored to their liberty, and to
those who were well nigh made fatherless children and widows. S;anley was soon
afterwards apprehended, and received sentence of transportation for the perjury
he had committed, but with regard to the circumstantial evidence in the case, it,
of course, merely shows its utter worthliness in all cases, and, consequently, how
careful juries should be in acting under its influence, particularly in business
capital. That, also, of the Ashcrofts, convicted of the murder at Pendleton, was
never very satisfactorily proved. The men suffered, denying their guilt with
their last breath, and many persons, now alive, are strongly convinced of their
innocence.
In conclusion, I fed that I ought not to omit alluding to the case of Mansell, at
Maidstone, who being kept in suspense for six months, and many times respited;
after, also being removed from the condemned cell, was publicly strangled, to the
utter abborance of a great portion of the nation.
I cannot avoid also mentioning the case of John Blagg, now lying under
sentence of death in Chester Castle, and whose conviction was founded on ex
ceedingly dubious evidence; the case altogether manifests the gross injustice of
the present game laws; and, until these laws are amended, it will be in vain to
expect the causes of murder will become diminished. Most persons to whom the
facts have become known, are convinced that B'a-g, even if he was the destroyer
of Ribbington, did not premiditate the act; but, that it was committed under
sudden passion. The deceased was the game-keeper to Mr. Corbett, of Tilstone
Lodge, and had repeatedly assaulted the prisoner, and upon one occasion broke
two of his ribs, still the verdict has been considered urjust, inasmuch as the
evidence of the foot-marks was far from being satisfactory; and, moreover, the
cutting observations of Mr. Justice Crowder to the grand jury, were highlycalculated to destroy all chances of a fair trial.
Such scenes, however, as those lately enacted in various parts of England can
be of mo long duration, provided towns like Manchester will only give full expres
sion to their opinions on the subject. Let this he done, and tire scaffold will be
removed, and the convicted murderer consigned to a punishment far more terrible
than death, namely,—one continued suffering so long as his life shall last.
G. BAKEWELL.
Beeston, near Tarporiey, Cheshire, August 1857.
�15
Since the preceding remarks were written, the author has been enabled to
procure the following returns of the number of criminals who have perished on
the scaffold at Chester, during the last 300 years; and also of the offences for
which they suffered. Iu point of all human probability, another victim will have
to be added to the list before this work shall meet the public eye, no respite
having been granted for the unfortunate Blagg up to the time of its going to
press:—
LIST OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS IN CHESTER,
FROM THE lg-tH CENTURY.
1534.—George Marsh, burnt at Spital Boughton, for his attachment to the Pro
testant faith.
1588. —September 8: A woman burnt at Boughton, for poisoning her husband.
1589. —John Taylor, gaolor of the Castle, for the murder of Mr. Hockenhull, a
prisoner in his custody for recusancy.
1592.—William Geaton, servant to the Bishop of Chester, for the murder of James
Findlove, a Scotch pedlar; his body was hung in chains on Groppenhall
Heath.
1601. —A woman named Candey, executed for conspiring to murder her husband ;
her paramour, Boon, refusing to plead, was pressed to death in the Castle.
1602. —One Arnet, servant to a Mr. Manley, of Saltney Side, hung for murdering
his fellow servant.
1654.—Sir Timothy Fetherstonhaugb, shot in the corn market of Chester, by
order of the Parliament.
1750. Two Irishmen executed, and gibbetted on the Parkgate Road, near the
Two Mills, for a murder.
1768.—Three men hung for burglary; the rope of one of them broke, when,lifting
up his cap, he exclaimed in horrible agitation, “My God! what am I to
suffer?”
1776—May 1: Execution of James Knight, for a murder at Odd Rode.—Sept. 21:
Christopher Lawless, Isaac Hutchinson, Alexander Solomon, and Isaac
Josephs, executed for robbing the shop of Mr. Pemberton, jeweller. They
were buried behind the Roodee Cop, opposite Ovcrleigh.
1777.—April 10: S. Thorley, executed for the horrible murder of Ann Smith, a
ballad-singer, near Congleton. After cutting off her head, he severed her
legs and arms from her body, which he threw into a brook ! part, however,
he actually broiled aud ate! He was hung in chains on the Heath, near
Congleton.
�IB
1779.—April 16: William Ellis, for burglary, and William Loom, for discharging
a loaded pistol at Charles Warren, of Congleton, executed at Boughton.—
October 2: Sarah Jones, executed for stealing 28 yards of chintz, from the
shop of Mr. Meacock, Chester.
1783. —Resolution Heap, and Martha Brown ; the former for a burglary at Whaley;
and the latter for a similar offence at Over.
1784. —April 26: Elizabeth Wood, hung for poisoning James Sinister, at Bredbury.
—May 15: John Oakes, hung for coining.
1786.—April 24: Execution of Peter Steers, for the murder of his wife, by poison.
•—May 6 : Edward Holt, for a burglary at Knutsford.—October 1: Thomas
Buckley, aged 20, for a burglary at Chester.—October 7 : Thomas Hyde,
aged 35, for horse-stealing. —October 10: James Buckley, aged 22, for a bur
glary in Miss Lloyd’s house, in Newgate-street, Chester.
1789. —February 4: Thomas Mate, for the murder of John Parry, a constable, in
Handbridge. He was 64 years old, and when at the gallows, he charged his
wife, 70 years old, with infidelity.
1790. —John Dean, from Stockport, for the most brutal murder of his wife, who
was seven months advanced in her pregnancy. He was hung in chains on
Stockport Moor.
1791. —April 21: Execution of Lowndes, for robbing the Warrington mail. His
prosecution, it is said, cost ^02,000. He was hung in chains on Helsby Hill;
but the gibbet pole was in a short time after cut down by some people in the
neighbourhood, and was not again erected—October 8: Allen, Aston, and
Knox, for a burglary at Northern. Upon this occasion, the fatal tree was
removed from Gallows Hill to the opposite side of the road, where it continued
till 1801, when the place of execution was finally removed within the Walls of
the City.
1796.—April 30: Thomas Brown and James Price, for robbing the Warrington
mail. They were hung in chains on Trafford Green, and remained there till
1820, when the pole was taken down, the place having been previously inclosed.
In the skull of Price was found a robin’s nest.
1798.—John Thornhill, for the murder of his sweetheart, Sarah Malone, at Lyrnm •
—October 4: Peter Martin, alias Joseph Lowter, for firing at a boat’s crew
of the Actceon, in the Mersey, when employed in the impress service.
1800. —Thomas Bosworth, for forgery, and Alexander Morton, for felony.—
October 10: Mary Lloyd, for forgery, at Stockport.
1801. —May 9: Thompson, Morgan, and Clare, for burglaries. When near the
gallows, Clare made a spring from the cart, rushed through the crowd, which
made way for him, rolled down a gutter-way towards the Dee—a rapid
descent—and plunged into the river. He was drowned, having immediately
sunk, from the weight of the chains, but his body was found, and afterwards
hung up with the others, the other two malefactors being kept in the cart in
the interval. These were the last criminals hung at Boughton, which had
been the place of execution for some centuries.—October 3: Aaron Gee and
�17
Thomas Gibson, hung out of a temporary window way, in the attics, on the
south side of the old Northgate, a building not now in existence.—The unfor
tunate men were propelled from the window about five feet, and dropped near
40 inches, their bodies beating against the windows beneath, so s to break
the glass in them.
1809. —May 6: Execution of George Glover and William Proudlove, in front of
the House of Correction, for shooting at an officer of excise at Odd Rode.
When the drop (used for the first time) sunk, the ropes broke, and the poor
men fell to the platform, half strangled; new ropes were procured, and the
sentence was carried into effect about an hour after the accident.
1810. —May 2: Execution of John Done, for the murder of Betty Eckersley, a
woman of bad character, at Lyrnm. He denied the offence to his last moment.
—October 10: Execution of Smith and Clarke, for a burglary and felony in
the shop of Mr. Fletcher, watchmaker, Eastgate. The conduct of Smith on
the drop was exceedingly unbending and audacious, and the night before his
execution he played at cards with some of his companions. They were buried
in St. Martin's Church-yard.
1812. —June 12: Temple and Thompson for rioting. They were connected with
the Luddites.—August 24: Execution of John Lomas, for the murder of his
master, Mr. Morrey, of Hankelow.
1813. —Edith Morrey, executed for the murder of her husband. She was tried
with Lomas, and with him found guilty on the clearest testimony. Immediately
after conviction she pleaded pregnancy, and a jury of matrons being impannelled, she was pronounced quick with child, and her sentence, of course,
respited till after her delivery. It appeared that an illicit intercourse had
for some time existed between her and Lomas, which led to her exciting him
to destroy her husband, and the crime was perpetrated with circumstances
of peculiarly savage atrocity.—June 26: Execution of William Wilkinson,
James Yarwood, and William' Burgess, for a rape on Mary Porter, near
Weston Point. They were flatmen, and when Wilkinson (a fine stout man,
about six feet high,) mounted the scaffold, he exclaimed to his companions,
“Keep up your spirits; never mind, my lads—we are all murdered men; I’m
just as happy as if I was going to a play I” and when the halter was placed
round his neck, he added, “ My new handkerchief fits me nice and tight.”—
Simeon Betson, William Betson, and James Renshaw, for a burglary at
Henbury.
1814. —May 28: William Wilson, an old sailor, in his 70th year, executed for
arson, at Tiverton, near Tarporley. His exit was most extraordinary: on the
morning of his death he entertained a number of persons in the parlour of the
constable’s house, with an account of his naval exploits; and in his way' along
the streets to the City Gaol, he chewed bread in his mouth, and threw it at
the beadle, observing that he was like Peeping Tom of Coventry. On the
drop he said, “ What a many people are here to see an old man hung; here’s
as much fus'g as if there were a hundred to be hanged.”
181-5—April 22: Execution of Griffith and Wood, for a burglary in the house of
John Holme, near Stockport.
�18
1817. —May 10: Execution of Joseph Allen, for uttering Bank of England notes.
In a solemn declaration, made on the morning of execution, he denied his
guilt, alleging that he did not know the notes were bad ones.
1818. —May 9: Abraham Rostern and Isaac Moors, the former for a burglary at
Edgeley, the latter for a similar offence at Cheadle Bulkeley. Both of them
acknowledged their guilt.—September 26: John Moor, executed for a
burglary.
1819. —May 8: Joseph Walker, for robbing his former master on the highway
between Northwich and Manchester. He denied his guilt to the last.—
September 25: Samuel Hooley and John Johnson (a man of colour), for a
burglary at Bowden.
1820. —April 15: Jacob M'Ghinnes, for shooting Mr. Birch, at Stockport. He was
connected with the radical reformers, and his intention was to have shot Mr.
Lloyd, then solicitor of that town, and now prothonotary of the county court.
This unfortunate man had not only embraced the politics but the theology of
Tom Paine, but during his confinement, and before his execution, he was
brought to embrace the Christian system, and died with great composure.—
April 22: Thomas Miller, for a burglary at Bowden.—September 16: Execu
tion of Ralph Ellis, for a burglary at Elton, and William Ricklington, for
setting fire to a rectory house at Coddington.
1821. —May 5: Execution of Samuel Healey, for a highway robbery at Stockport.
1822. —May 4: William Tongue, for a rape on an infant, and George Groom, for a
■highway robbery on a man named Kennerley.—September 14: Thomas
Brierley, for a highway robbery near Congleton.
1823. —April 14: Execution of Samuel Fallows, for the murder of his sweetheart
. at. Disley. ■ Several galvanic experiments were made on his body previous to
dissection.—May 20 : Execution of John Kragon, for a rape on an infant, at
Stockport.—September 13: Execution of Edward Clarke, for a highway
robbery at Stockport.
1824. —April 21: Joseph Dale, for the murder of Mr. Wood, near Disley. He had
been convicted at the preceding assizes, but execution deferred, in order to
take the opinion of the judges on a point of law urged in his favour by Mr. D.
F. Jones, his counsel. He died with great composure.
1826 —April 26: Philip M'Gowan, for the robbery of an inoffensive man, near
Disley, and Abraham Stones, for the robbery of Mr. Marsden, a gentleman of
upwards of 70 years of age, near Cowlane Bridge, under circumstances of
great violence. On this melancholy occasion, the apparatus for executions
was removed from the east to the west end of the City Gaol, where these
melancholy spectacles have ever since been exhibited.—August 26: John
Green, for burglary.
1829. — May 9 : John Proudlove, for highway robbery, and John Leir, for burglary
in.the house of the Rev. Matthew Bloor, attended, with aggravated ciicum
stances of violence.—September 26: —Joseph Woodhouse, for a rape on his
�own daughter ; and Joseph Henshall, for firing at the keepers, while poaching
in the grounds of the Earl of Stamford and Warrington.
1832.—Samuel Cumberledge, for arson.
1834.—Samuel Thorley, for the murder of Mary Pemberton, at Northwich ; John
Carr, for felonious shooting; Thomas Riley, for felonious cutting; William
Naylor, for felonious shooting; James Mason, for attempting to procure
miscarriage
1841.—Bartholomew Murray, for the murder of Joseph and Mary Cooke, at Over
Peover.
1843. —James Ratcliffe, for murdering his wife at Stockport.
1844. —Mary Gallop, for poisoning her father, at Crewe.
1848.—William Bates, for murdering William Wyatt, at Adlington.
1856—December 20: William Jackson, for the murder of his two children, in
Handbridge, Chester.
'
THE EXECUTION OE BLAGG.
At eight o’clock on Friday morning, August 28th, the above unfortunate person
suffered the extreme penalty of the law with a degree of fortitude and composure,
never equalled since the execution of Lord Balmarino, on Tower Hill. John
Blagg, with whom the author had been well acquainted for many years, in conse
quence of their being close neighbours, denied his guilt to the last; and it is to be hoped
that his fate may be the means of inducing the parliament to pass, next session, a
short bill, depriving gamekeepers of the power of making a sudden arrest of
poachers.
Blagg died without the slightest struggle, in short, his body never moved after
the drop fell. About 1,500 persons were present. His poor widow has received
notice to quit her cottage from the agent of John Tollemache, Esq., M.P., of
Peckferton Castle.
, A. Ireland
On., Printers by Steam Power, Pall Mall, Manchester.
��
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The impolicy of capital punishment considered : derived from observations, supplied by recollection of public executions; to which is added Letters on circumstantial evidence by the Author; also, a return of the names of the criminals who have been executed at Chester during the last 300 years, specifying the offences for which they died; with much interesting matter on the varied causes of crime
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Bakewell, George
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Place of publication: Manchester; Chester
Collation: 19 p. ; 20 cm.
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
CRI
S
AGAINST
CRIMINALS
AN ADDRESS
Delivered before the State Bar Association of New York,
January 21, 1890.
BY
COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
Price Threepence.
Xonbon :
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,.
28 Stonecutter Street, E.U.
1890.
�LONDON
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. KOOTK,
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALSIn this brief address, the object is to suggest, there
being no time to present arguments at length. The
subject has been chosen for the reason that it is one
that should interest the legal profession, because that
profession to a certain extent controls and shapes the
legislation of our country, and fixes definitely the scope
and meaning of all laws.
Lawyers ought to be foremost in legislative and
judicial reform, and of all men they should understand
the philosophy of mind, the causes of human action,,
and the real science of government.
It has been said that the three pests of a com
munity are—A. priest without charity, a doctor w ithout
knowledge, and a lawyer without a sense of justice.
I.
All nations seem to have had supreme confidence in
the deterrent power of threatened and inflicted pain.
They have regarded punishment as the shortest road to
reformation. Imprisonment, torture, death, consti
tuted a trinity under whose protection society might
feel secure.
In addition to these, nations have relied on confisca
tion and degradation, on maimings,whippings, brandings
�4
Grimes against Criminals.
and" exposures to pubic ridicule and contempt. Con
nected with the court of justice was the chamber of
torture. The ingenuity of man was exhausted in the
construction of instruments that would surely reach the
most sensitive nerve. All this was done in the interest
of civilisation for the protection of virtue, and the
well-being of States. Curiously enough, the fact is
that, no matter how severe the punishments were, the
crimes increased.
It was found that the penalty of death made little
difference. Thieves and highwaymen, heretics and
blasphemers, went on their way. It was then thought
necessaiy to add to this penalty of death, and conse
quently, the convicted were tortured in every conceivable
way before execution. They were broken on the wheel—
their joints dislocated on the rack. They were suspended
by their legs and arms, while immense weights were
placed upon their breasts. Their flesh was burned and
torn with hot irons. They were roasted at slow fires.
They were buried alive—given to wild beasts—molten
lead was poured in their ears—their eye-lids were cut off
and the wretches placed with their faces toward the
sun—others were securely bound, so that they could
move neither hand nor foot, and over their stomachs
were placed inverted bowls ; under these bowls rats
were confined; on top of the bowls were heaped coals
of fire, so that the rats in their efforts to escape would
gnaw into the bowels of the victims. They were staked
out on the sands of the s^a, to be drowned by the
slowly rising tide—and every means, by which human
nature can be overcome slowly, painfully and terribly,
were conceived and carried into execution. And yet
the number of so-called criminals increased.
For petty offences men were degraded—given to the
�Crimes against Criminals.
5
mercy of the rabble. Their ears were cut off, their
nostrils slit, their foreheads branded. They were tied
to the tails of carts and flogged from one town to
another. And yet, in spite of all, the poor wretches
obstinately refused to become good and useful citizens.
Degradation has been thoroughly tried, with its
mannings and brandings, and the result was that these
who inflicted the punishments became as degraded as
their victims.
Only a few years ago there were more than two
hundred offences in Great Britain punishable by death.
The gallows-tree bore fruit through all the year, and
the hangman was the busiest official in the kingdom—
but the criminals increased.
Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes
were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been
filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips,
with crosses and gibbets, with thumb-screws and racks,
with hangmen and headsmen—and yet these frightful
means and instrumentalities and crimes have accom
plished little for the preservation of property or life.
It is safe to say that governments have committed far
more crimes than they have prevented.
Why is it that men will suffer and risk so much for
the sake of stealing ? Why will they accept degrada
tion and punishment and infamy as their portion ?
Some will answer this question by an appeal to the
dogma of original sin ; others by saying that millions
of men and women are under the control of fiends,
that they are actually possessed by devils ; and others
will declare that all these people act from choice—that
they are possessed of free wills, of intelligence—that
they know and appreciate consequences, and that, in
spite of all, they deliberately prefer a life of crime.
�6
Crimes against Criminals.
II.
Have we not advanced far enough intellectually to
deny the existence of chance ? Are we not satisfied
now that back of every act and thought and dream
and fancy is an efficient cause ? Is anything, or can
anything, be produced that is not necessarily produced ?
Can the fatherless and motherless exist ? Is there not
a connection between all events, and is not every act
related to all other acts ? Is it not possible, is it not
probable, is it not true, that the actions of all men are
determined by countless causes over which they have
no positive control ?
Certain it is that men do not prefer unhappiness to
joy. It can hardly ‘be said that man intends per
manently to injure himself, and that he does what he
does in order that he may live a life of misery. On
the other hand, we must take it for granted that man
endeavors to better his own condition, and seeks,
although by mistaken ways, his. own well-being. The
poorest man would like to be rich—the sick desire
health—and no sane man wishes to win the contempt
and hatred of his fellow-men. Every human being
prefers liberty to imprisonment.
Are the brains of criminals exactly like the brains
of honest men ? Have criminals the same ambitions,
the same standards of happiness or of well-being ? If
a difference exists in brain, will that in part account for
the difference in character? Is there anything in
heredity 1 Are vices as carefully transmitted by
Nature as virtues ? Does each man in some degree
bear burdens imposed by ancestors'? We know that
diseases of flesh and blood are transmitted—that the
child is the heir of physical deformity. Are diseases
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7
of the brain—are deformities of the soul, of the mind,
also transmitted ?
We not only admit, but we assert, that in the physical
world there are causes and effects. We insist that
there is and can be no effect without an efficient cause.
When anything happens in that world, we are satisfied
that it was naturally and necessarily produced. The
causes may be obscure, but we as implicitly believe in
their existence as when we know positively what they
are. In the physical world we have taken the ground
that there is nothing miraculous—that everything is
natural—and if we cannot explain it, we account for
our inability to explain, by our own ignorance. Is it not
possible, is it not probable, that what is true in the
physical world is equally true in the realm of mind—in
that strange world of passion and desire ? Is it possible
that thoughts, or desires, or passions are the children
of chance, born of nothing ? Can we conceive of
Nothing as a force, or as a cause ? If, then, there is
behind every thought and desire and passion an efficient
cause, we can, in part at least, account for the actions
of men.
A certain man under certain conditions acts in a
certain way. There are certain temptations that he,
with his brain, with his experience, with his intelligence,
with his surroundings, cannot withstand. He is irre
sistibly led to do, or impelled to do, certain things; and
there are other things that he cannot do. If we change
the conditions of this man, his actions will be changed.
Develop his mind, give him new subjects of thought,
and you change the man; and the man being changed,
it follows as a necessity that his conduct will be
different.
In civilised countries the struggle for existence is
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Crimes against Criminals.
severe—the competition far sharper than in savage
lands. The consequence is that there are many
failures. These failures lack, it may be, opportunity,
or brain, or moral force, or industry, or something
without which, under the circumstances, success is
impossible. Certain lines of conduct are called legal,
and certain others criminal, and the men who fail in
one line may be driven to the other. How do we know
that it is possible for all people to be honest ? Are we
certain that all people can tell the truth 1 Is it possible
for all men to be generous, or candid, or courageous ?
I am perfectly satisfied that there are millions of
people incapable of committing certain crimes, and it
may be true that there are millions of others incapable
of practising certain virtues. We do not blame a man
because he is not a sculptor, a poet, a painter, or a
statesman. We say he has not the genius. Are we
certain that it does not require genius to be good ?
Where is the man with intelligence enough to take into
consideration the circumstances of each individual
case ? Who has the mental balance with which to
weigh the forces of heredity, of want, of temptation—
and who can analyse with certainty the mysterious
motions of the brain ?
Where and what are the
sources of vice and virtue ? In what obscure and
shadowy recesses of the brain are passions born ? And
what is it that for the moment destroys the sense of
right and wrong ? Who knows to what extent reason
becomes the prisoner of passion—of some strange and
wild desire, the seeds of which were sown, it may be,
thousands of years ago in the breast of some savage ?
To what extent do antecedents and surroundings affect
the moral sense ?
Is it not possible that the tyranny of governments,
�Crimes against Criminals.
9
the injustice of nations, the fierceness of what is called
the law, produce in the individual a tendency in the
same direction 1 Is it not true that the citizen is apt
to imitate his nation ? Society degrades its enemies—
the individual seeks to degrade his. Society plunders
its enemies, and now and then a citizen has the desire
to plunder his. Society kills its enemies, and possibly
sows in the heart of some citizen the seeds of murder.
III.
Is it not true that the criminal is a natural product,
and that society unconsciously produces these children
of vice ? Can we not safely take another step, and say
that the criminal is a victim, as the diseased and insane
and deformed are victims ? We do not think of punish
ing a man because he is afflicted with disease—our
desire is to find a cure. We send him, not to the peni
tentiary, but to the hospital, to an asylum. We do this
because we recognise the fact that disease is naturally
produced—that it is inherited from parents, or the
result of unconscious negligence, or it may be of reck
lessness—but instead of punishing, we pity. If Lhere are
diseases of the mind, of the brain, as there are diseases
of the body ; and if these diseases of the mind, these
deformities of the brain, produce, and necessarily pro
duce, what we call vice, why should we punish the
criminal, and pity those who are physically diseased 1
Socrates, in some respects at least one of the wisest
of men, said: “ It is strange that you should not be
angry when you meet a man with an ill-conditioned
body, and yet be vexed when you encounter one with
an ill-conditioned soul.”
We know that there are deformed bodies, and we
are equally certain that there are deformed minds.
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Orimes against Oriminals.
Of course, society has the right. to protect itself, no
mattei' whether the persons who attack its well-being
are responsible or not, no matter whether they are sick
in mind, or deformed in brain. The right of selfdefence exists, not only in the individual, but in society.
The great question is, How shall this right of selfdefence be exercised ? What spirit shall be in the
nation, or in society—the spirit of revenge, a desire to
degrade and punish and destroy, or, a spirit born of the
recognition of the fact that criminals are victims ?
The world has thoroughly tried confiscation, degra
dation, imprisonment, torture and death, and thus far
the world has failed. In this connection I call your
attention to the following statistics gathered in our
own country :
In 1850 we had 23,000,000 of people, and between
six and seven thousand prisoners.
In 1860—31,000,000 of people, and 19,000 prisoners.
In 1870—38,000,000 of people, and 32,000 prisoners.
In 1880—50,000,000 of people, and 58,000 prisoners.
It may be curious to note the relation between in
sanity, pauperism and crime :
In 1850 there were 15,000 insane; in 1860, 24,000;
in 1870, 37,000; in 1880, 91,000.
In the light of these statistics we are not succeeding
in doing away with crime.
There were in 1880,
58,000 prisoners, and in the same year 57,000 home
less children, and 66,000 paupers in almshouses.
Is it possible that we must go to the same causes for
these effects?
IV.
There is no reformation in degradation. To mutilate
a criminal is to say to all the world that he is a criminal,
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11
and to render his reformation substantially impossible.
Whoever is degraded by society becomes its enemy.
The seeds of malice are sown in his heart, and to the
day of his death he will hate the hand that sowed the
seeds.
There is also another side to this question. A punish
ment that degrades the punished will degrade the man
who inflicts the punishment, and will degrade the
government that procures the infliction. The whipping
post pollutes, not only the whipped, but the whippet,
and not only the whipper, but the community at large.
Wherever its shadow falls it degrades.
If, then, there is no reforming power in degradation
—no deterrent power—for the reason that the degrada
tion of the criminal degrades the community, and in this
way produces more criminals, then the next question is,
Whether there is any reforming power in torture ? The
trouble with this is, that it hardens and degrades to the
last degree the ministers of the law. Those who are
not affected by the agonies of the bad will in a little
time care nothing for the sufferings of the good. There
seems to be a little of the wild beast in men—a some
thing that is fascinated by suffering, and that delights
in inflicting pain. When a government tortures, it is
in the same state of mind that the criminal was when
he committed his crime. It requires as much malice in
those who execute the law to torture a criminal, as it
did in the criminal to torture and kill his victim. The
one was a crime by a person, the other by a nation.
There is something in injustice, in cruelty, that tends
to defeat itself. There were never as many traitors in
in England as when the traitor was drawn and quar
tered—when he was tortured in every possible way—
when his limbs, tom and bleeding, were given to the
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Crimes against Criminals.
fury of mobs or exhibited pierced by pikes or hung in
chains. These frightful punishments produced intense
hatred of the government, and traitors continued to
increase until they became powerful enough to decide
what treason was and who the traitors were, and to
inflict the same torments on others.
Think for a moment of what man has suffered in the
cause of crime. Think of the millions that have been
imprisoned, impoverished, and degraded because they
were thieves and forgers, swindlers, and cheats. Think
for a moment of what they have endured—of the
difficulties under which they have pursued their calling,
and it will be exceedingly hard to believe that they
were sane and natural people, possessed of good brains,
of minds well poised, and that they did what they did
from a choice unaffected by heredity and the countless
circumstances that tend to determine the conduct of
human beings.
The other day I was asked these questions :—“ Has
there been as much heroism displayed for the right as
for the wrong ? Has virtue had as many martyrs as
vice ?”
For hundreds of years the world has endeavored to
destroy the good by force. The expression of honest
thought was regarded as the greatest of crimes. Dun
geons were filled by the noblest and the best, and the
blood of the bravest was shed by the sword or con
sumed by flame. It was impossible to destroy the
longing in the heart of man for liberty and truth. Is
it not possible that brute force and cruelty and revenge,
imprisonment, torture, and death are as impotent to do
away with vice as to destroy virtue ?
In our country there has been for many years a
growing feeling that convicts should neither be
�Grimes against Criminals.
13
degraded nor tortured. It was provided in the Con
stitution of the United States that “ cruel and unusual
punishments should not be inflicted.”
Benjamin
Franklin took great interest in the treatment of
prisoners, being a thorough believer in the reforming
influence of justice, having no confidence whatever in
punishment for punishment’s sake.
To me it has always been a mystery how the average
man, knowing something of the weakness of human
nature, something of the temptations to which he him
self has been exposed—remembering the evil of his
life, the things he would have done had there been
opportunity, had he absolutely known that discovery
would be impossible—should have feelings of hatred
toward the imprisoned.
Is it possible that the average man assaults the
criminal in a spirit of self-defence ? Does he wish to
convince his neighbors that the evil thought and impulse
were never in his mind ? Are his words a shield that
he uses to protect himself from suspicion ? For my
part, 1 sympathise sincerely with all failures, with the
victims of society, with those who have fallen, with the
imprisoned, with the hopeless, with those who have
been stained by verdicts of guilty, and with those who,
in the moment of passion, have destroyed, as with a
blow, the future of their lives.
How perilous, after all, is the state of man. It is
the work of a life to build a great and splendid cha
racter. It is the work of a moment to destroy it
utterly, from turret to foundation stone. How cruel
hypocrisy is !
V.
Is there any remedy î Can anything be done for
the reformation of the criminal ?
�14
Crimes against Criminals.
He should be treated with kindness. Every right
should be given him, consistent with the safety of
society. He should neither be degraded nor robbed.
The State should set the highest and noblest example.
The powerful should never be cruel, and in the breast
of the supreme there should be no desire for revenge.
A man in a moment of want steals the property of
another, and he is sent to the penitentiary—first, as it
is claimed, for the purpose of deterring others ; and,
secondly, of reforming him. The circumstances of each
individual case are rarely inquired into. Investigation
stops when the simple fact of the larceny has been
ascertained.' No distinctions are made, except as
between first and subsequent offences. Nothing is
allowed for surroundings.
All will admit that the industrious must be protected.
In this world it is necessary to work. Labor is the
foundation of all prosperity. Larceny is the enemy of
industry. Society has the right to protect itself. The
question is, Has it the right to punish ?—has it the
right to degrade ?—or should it endeavor to reform the
convict ?
A man is taken to the penitentiary. He is clad in the
garments of a convict. He is degraded—he loses his name
—he is designated by a number. He is no longer treated
as a human being—he becomes the slave of the State.
Nothing is done for his improvement—nothing for his
reformation. He is driven like a beast of burden ;
robbed of his laboi’; leased, it may be, by the State to
a contractor, who gets out of his hands, out of his
muscles, out of his poor brain, all the toil that he can.
He is not allowed to speak with a fellow-prisoner. A.t
night he is alone in his cell. The relations that should
exist between men are destroyed. He is a convict.
�Crimes against Criminals.
15
He is no longer worthy to associate even with’ his
keepers. The jailor is immensely his superior, and the
man who turns the key upon him at night regards him
self, in comparison, as a model of honesty, of virtue
and manhood. The convict is pavement, on which
those who watch him walk. He remains for the time
of his sentence, and when that expires he goes forth a
branded man. He is given money enough to pay his
fare back to the place from whence he came.
What is the condition of this man? Can he get
employment ? Not if he honestly states who he is and
where he has been. The first thing he does is to deny
his personality, to assume a name. He endeavors by
telling falsehoods to lay the foundation for future good
conduct. The average man does not wish to employ
an ex-convict, because the average man has no con
fidence in the reforming power of the penitentiary. He
believes that the convict who comes out is worse than
the convict who went in. He knows that in the peni
tentiary the heart of this man has been hardened—
that he has been subjected to the torture of perpetual
humiliation—that he has been treated like a ferocious
beast; and so he believes that this ex-convict has in his
heart hatred for society, that he feels he has been
degraded and robbed. Under these circumstances,
what avenue is open to the ex-convict
If he changes
his name, there will be some detective, some officer of
the law, some meddlesome wretch, who will betray his
secret. He is then discharged. He seeks employment
again, and he must seek it by again telling what is not
true. He is again detected, and again discharged.
And finally he becomes convinced that he cannot live
as an honest man. He naturally drifts back into the
society of those who have had a like experience; and
�16
Crimes against Criminals.
the result is that in a little while he again stands in
the dock, charged with the commission of another crime.
Again he is sent to the penitentiary—and this is the
end. He feels that his day is done, that the future has
only degradation for him.
The men in the penitentaries do not work for them
selves. Their labor belongs to others. They have no
interest in their toil—no reason for doing the best they
can—and the result is that the product of their labor is
poor. This product comes in competition with the
work of mechanics, honest men, who have families to
support, and the cry is that convict labor takes the
bread from the mouths of virtuous people.
VI.
Why should the State take without compensation
the labor of these men; and why should they, after
having been imprisoned for years, be turned out with
out the means of support ? Would it not be far better,
far more economical, to pay these men for their labor,
to lay aside their earnings from day to day, from month
to month, and from year to year—to put this money
at interest, so that when the convict is released after
five years of imprisonment he will have several hundred
dollars of his own—not merely money enough to pay
his way back to the place from which he was sent, but
enough to make it possible for him to commence a busi
on his own occount, enough to keep the wolf of crime
from the door of his heart ?
Suppose the convict comes out with five hundred
dollars. This would be to most of that class a fortune.
It would form a breast-work, a fortress, behind
which the man could fight temptation. This would
give him food and raiment, enable him to go to some
�\
Crimes against Criminals.
17
other State or country where he could redeem himself.
If this were done, thousands of convicts would feel under
immense obligation to the government. They would
thihk of the penitentiary as the place in which they
were saved—in which they were redeemed—and they
would feel that the verdict of guilty rescued them
from the abyss of crime. Under these circumstances,
the law would appear benificent, and the heart of the
poor convict, instead of being filled with malice, would
overflow with gratitude. He would see the propriety
of the course pursued by the government. He would
recognise and feel and experience the benefits of this
course, and the result would be good, not only to him,
but to the nation as well.
If the convict worked for himself, he would do the
best he could, and the wares produced in the peni
tentiary would not cheapen the labor of other men.
VII.
There are, however, men who pursue crime as a
vocation—as a profession—men who have been convicted
again and again, and who still persist in using the
liberty of intervals to prey upon the rights of others.
What shall be done with these men and women ?
Put one thousand hardened thieves on an island—
compel them to produce what they eat and use—and I
am almost certain that a large majority would be
opposed to theft. Those who worked would not permit
those w’ho did not to steal the result of their labor. In
other words, self-preservation would be the dominant
idea, and these men would instantly look upon the idlers
as the enemies of their society.
Such a community would be self-supporting. Let
women of the same class be put by themselves. Keep
�Crimes against Criminals.
the sexes absolutely apart. Those who are beyond the
power of reformation should not have the liberty to
reproduce themselves. Those who cannot be reached
by kindness—by justice—those who under no circum
stances are willing to do their share, should be separated.
They should dwell apart, and dying, should leave no
heirs.
What shall be done with the slayers of their fellow
men—with murderers ? Shall the nation take life?
It has been contended that the death penalty deters
others that it has far more terror than imprisonment
for life. What is the effect of the example set by a
nation ? Is not the tendency to harden and degrade
not only those who inflict and those who witness, but
the entire community as well ?
A few years ago a man was hanged in Alexandria
(Virginia). One who witnessed the execution, on that
very day, murdered a pedlar in the Smithsonian grounds
at Washington. He was tried and executed, and one
who witnessed his hanging went home, and on the same
day murdered his wife.
The tendency of the extreme penalty is to prevent
conviction. In the presence of death it is easy for a
jury to find a doubt. Technicalities become important,
and absurdities, touched with mercy, have the appear
ance for a moment of being natural and logical. Honest
and conscientious men dread a final and irrevocable
step. If the penalty were imprisonment for life, the
jury would feel that if any mistake were made it could
be rectified; but where the penalty is death a mistake
is fatal. A conscientious man takes into consideration
the defects of human nature—the uncertainty of tes
timony, and the countless shadows that dim and darken
�>
Crimes against Criminals.
19.
the understanding, and refuses to find a verdict that, if
wrong, cannot be righted.
The death penalty, inflicted by the government, is a
perpetual excuse for mobs.
The greatest danger in a Republic is a mob, and as
long as States inflict the penalty of death mobs will
follow the example. If the State does not consider
life sacred, the mob, with ready rope, will strangle the
suspected. The mob will say : “ The only difference
is in the trial; the State does the same—we know the
man is guilty—why should time be wasted in techni
calities ?” In other words, why may not the mob do
quickly that which the State does slowly?
Every execution tends to harden the public heart—
tends to lessen the sacredness of human life. In many
States of this Union the mob is supreme. For certain
offences the mob is expected to lynch the supposed
criminal. It is the duty of every citizen—and as it
seems to me, especially of every lawyer—to do what he
can to destroy the mob spirit. One would think that
men would be afraid to commit any crime in a com
munity where the mob is in the ascendency, and yet,
such are the contradictions and subtleties of human
nature, that it is exactly the opposite. And there is
another thing in this connection—the men who con
stitute the mob are, as a rule, among the worst, the
lowest and the most depraved.
A few years ago, in Illinois, a man escaped from jail,
and, in escaping, shot the sheriff. He was pursued,
overtaken—lynched. The man who put the rope
around his neck was then out on bail, having been
indicted for an assault to murder. And after the poor
wretch was dead, another man climbed the tree from
which he dangled and, in derision, put a cigar in the
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Crimes against Criminals.
mouth of the dead; and this man was on bail, havinw
been indicted for larceny.
°
Those who are the fiercest to destroy and hang their
fellow-men for having committed crimes, are, for the
most part, at heart, criminals themselves.
As long as nations meet on the fields of war—as long
as they sustain the relations of savages to each other—
as long as they put the laurel and the oak on the brows
of those who kill—just so long will citizens resort to
violence, and the quarrels of individuals be settled by
dagger and revolver.
J
VIII.
If we are to change the conduct of men, we must
change their conditions. Extreme poverty and crime
go hand in hand. Destitution multiplies temptations
and destroys the finer feelings. The bodies and souls
of men are apt to be clad in like garments. If the
body is covered with rags, the soul is generally in the
same condition. Self-respect is gone—the man looks
down—he has neither hope nor courage. He becomes
sinister—he envies the prosperous, hates the fortunate,,
and despises himself.
As long as children are raised in the tenement and
gutter, the prisons will be full. The gulf between the
rich and the poor will grow wider and wider. One will
depend on cunning, the other on force. It is a great
question whether those who live in luxury can afford to
allow others to exist in want. The value of property
depends, not on the prosperity of the few, but on the
prosperity of a very large majority. Life and property
must be secuie, or that subtle thing called 44 value 31
takes its leave. The poverty of the many is a per
petual menace. If we expect a prosperous and peaceful
�Crimes against Criminals.
21
country, the citizens must have homes. The more
homes, the more patriots, the more virtue, and the more
security for all that gives worth to life.
We need not repeat the failures of the old world.
To divide lands among successful generals, or among
favorites of the crown, to give vast estates for services
rendered in war, is no worse than to allow men of great
wealth to purchase and hold large tracts of land. The
result is precisely the same—that is to say, a nation
composed of a few landlords and of many tenants—the
tenants resorting from time to time to mob violence,
and the landlords depending upon a standing army.
The property of no man, however, should be taken for
either private or public use without just compensation
and in accordance with law. There is in the State
what is known as the right of eminent domain. The
State reserves to itself the power to take the land of
any private citizen foi’ a public use, paying to that
private citizen a just compensation to be legally ascer
tained. When a corporation wishes to build a railway,
it exercises this right of eminent domain, and where
the owner of land refuses to sell a right of way or land
for the establishment of stations or shops, and the cor
poration proceeds to condemn the land to ascertain its
value, and when the amount thus ascertained is paid,
the property vests in the corporation. This power is
exercised because in the estimation of the people the
construction of a railway is a public good.
I believe that this power should be exercised in
another direction. It would be well, as it seems to me,
for the Legislature to fix the amount of land that a
private citizen may own, that will not be subject to be
taken for the use of which I am about to speak. The
amount to be thus held will depend upon many local
�Crimes against Criminals.
circumstances, to be decided by each State for itself.
Let me suppose that the amount of land that may be
held for a farmer for cultivation has been fixed at 160
ames and suppose that A has several thousand acres.
B wishes to buy 160 acres or less of this land, for the
purpose of making himself a home. A refuses to sell.
JSTow, I believe that the law should be so that B can
invoke this right of eminent domain, and file his peti
tion, have the case brought before a jury, or before
■commissioners, who shall hear the evidence and deter
mine the value, and on payment of the amount the
land shall belong to B.
I would extend the same law to lots and houses in
cities and villages—the object being to fill our country
with the owners of homes, so that every child shall
have a fireside, every father and mother a roof, pro
vided they have the intelligence, the energy and the
industry to acquire the necessary means.
Tenements and flats and rented land are, in my
judgment, the enemies of civilisation. They make the
rich richer, and the poor poorer. They put a few in
palaces, but they put many in prisons.
I would go a step further than this. I would exempt
homes of a certain value not only from levy and sale,
but from every kind of taxation, State and National—
so that these poor people would feel that they were
in partnership with Nature—that some of the land was
absolutely theirs, and that no one could drive them
from their home—so that mothers could feel secure.
If the home increased in value, and exceeded the limit,
then taxes could be paid on the excess; and if the home
was sold, I would have the money realised exempt for
a certain time in order that the family should have the
privilege of buying another home.
�Crimes against Criminals.
23
The home, after all, is the unit of civilisation, of
good government; and to secure homes for a great
majority of our citizens, would be to lay the founda
tion of our government deeper and broader and stronger
than that of any nation that has existed among men.
IX.
No one places a higher value upon the free school
than I do; and no one takes greater pride in the pros
perity of our colleges and universities. But at the same
time, much that is called education simply unfits men
successfully to fight the battle of life. Thousands to-day
are studying things that will be of little importance
to them or to others. Much valuable time is wasted
in studying languages that long ago were dead, and
histories in which there is no truth.
There was an idea in the olden time—and it is not
yet dead—that whoever was educated ought not to
work; that he should use his head and not his hands.
Graduates were ashamed to be found engaged in manual
labor, in ploughing fields, in sowing or gathering grain.
To this manly kind of independence they preferred the
garret and the precarious existence of an unappreciated
poet, borrowing their money from their friends, and
their ideas from the dead. The educated regarded the
useful as degrading—they were willing tc stain their
souls to keep their hands white.
The object of all education should be to increase the
usefulness of man—usefulness to himself and others.
Every human being should be taught that his first duty
is to take care of himself, and that to be self-respecting
he must be self-supporting. To live on the labor of
others, either by force which enslaves, or by cunning
�24
Grimes against Criminals.
which robs, or by borrowing or begging, is wholly dis
honorable. Every man should be taught some useful
art. His hands should be educated as well as his head.
He should be taught to deal with things as they are—
with life as it is. This would give a feeling of inde
pendence, which is the firmest foundation of honor, of
character. Every man knowing that he is useful,
admires himself.
Tn all the schools children should be taught to work
in wood and iron, to understand the construction and
use of machinery, to become acquainted with the great
forces that man is using to do his work. The present
system of education teaches names, not things. It is
as though we should spend years in learning the names
of cards, without playing a game.
In this way boys would learn their aptitudes—would
ascertain what they were fitted for—what they could
do. It would not be a guess, or an experiment, but a
demonstration.
Education should increase a boy’s
chances for getting a living. The real good of it is to
get food and roof and raiment, opportunity to develop
the mind and the body and live a full and ample life.
The more real education, the less crime—and the
more homes, the fewer prisons.
X.
The fear of punishment may deter some, the fear of
exposure others ; but there is no real reforming power
in fear or punishment. Men cannot be tortured into
greatness, into goodness. All this, as I said before,
has been thoroughly tried. The idea that punishment
was the only relief, found its - limit, its infinite, in the
old doctrine of eternal pain; but the believers in that
�Crimes against Criminals.
25
dogma stated distinctly that the victims never would
be, and never could be, reformed.
As men become civilised, they become capable of
greater pain and of greater joy. To the extent that
the average man is capable of enjoying or suffering to
that extent he has sympathy with others. The average
man, the more enlightened he becomes, the more apt
he is to put himself in the place of another. He
thinks of his prisoner, of his employee, of his tenant—
and he even thinks beyond these : he thinks of the
community at large. As man becomes civilised he
takes more and more into consideration circumstances
and conditions. He gradually loses faith in the old
ideas and theories that every man can do as he wills,
and in the place of the word “ wills,” he puts the word
“ must.” The time comes to the intelligent man when
in the place of punishments he thinks of consequences,
results—that is to say, not something inflicted by some
other power, but something necessarily growing' out of
whatisdone. The clearer men perceive the consequences
of actions, the better they will be. Behind conse
quences we place no personal will, and consequently do
not regard them as inflictions or punishments. Conse
quences, no matter how severe they may be, create in
the mind no feeling of resentment, no desire for
revenge. We do not feel bitterly toward the fire
because it burns, or the frost that freezes, or the flood
that overwhelms, or the sea that drowns—because we
attribute to these things no motives, good or bad. So,
when through the development of the intellect man
perceives not only the nature but the absolute certainty
of consequences, he refrains from certain actions, and
this may be called reformation through the intellect—
and surely there is no better reformation than this.
�Crimes against Criminals.
Some may be, and probably millions have been reformed
through kindness, through gratitude—made better in
the sunlight of charity. In the atmosphere of kind
ness the seeds of virtue burst into bud and flower.
Cruelty, tyranny, brute force, do not and can not
by any possibility better the heart of man. He who is
forced upon his knees has the attitude, but never the
feeling, of prayer.
I am satisfied that the discipline of the average
piison haidens and degrades. It is for the most part
a perpetual exhibition of arbitrary power. There is
really no appeal. The cries of the convict are not
heard beyond the walls. The protests die in cells, and
the poor prisoner feels that the last tie between him
and his fellow-men has been broken. He is kept in
ignorance of the outer world. The prison is a cemetery,
and his cell is a grave.
In many of the penitentaries there are instruments
of torture, and now and then a convict is murdered.
Inspections and investigations go for naught, because
the testimony of a convict goes for naught. He is
generally prevented by fear from telling his wrongs;
but if he speaks, he is not believed—he is regarded as
less than a human being, and so the imprisoned remain
without remedy. When the visitors are gone, the
conxict who has spoken is prevented from speaking1
again.
Every manly feeling, every effort towards real
reformation, is trampled under foot, so that when the
convict’s time is out there is little left on which to
build. He has been humiliated to the last degree, and
his spirit has so long been bent by authority and fear
that even the desire to stand erect has almost faded
from the mind. The keepers feel that they are
�Crimes against Criminals.
27
safe, because no matter what they do, the convict
when released will not tell the story of his wrongs,
for if he conceals his shame, he must also hide their
guilt.
Every penitentiary should be a real reformatory.
That should be the principal object for the establish
ment of the prison. The men in charge should be of
the kindest and noblest. They should be filled with
divine enthusiasm for humanity, and every means
should be taken to convince the prisoner that his good
is sought—that nothing is done for revenge—nothing
for a display of power, and nothing for the gratification
of malice. He should feel that the warden is his
unselfish friend. When a convict is charged with a
violation of the rules—with insubordination, or with
any offence, there should be an investigation in due and
proper form, giving the convict an opportunity to be
heard. He should not be for one moment the victim
of an irresponsible power. He would then feel that he
had some rights, and that some little of the human
remained in him still. They should be taught things
of value—-instructed by competent men. Pains should
be taken, not to punish, not to degrade, but to benefit
and ennoble.
We know, if we know anything, that men in the
penitentaries are not altogether bad, and that many out
are not altogether good ; and we feel that in the brain
and heart of all there are seeds of good and bad. We
know, too, that the best are liable to fall, and it maybe
that the worst, under certain conditions, may be
capable of grand and heroic deeds. Of one thing we
may be as assured—and that is, that criminals will
never be reformed by being robbed, humiliated, and
degraded.
�28
Grimes against Criminals.
Ignorance, filth and poverty are the missionaries of
crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks
honest effort—as long as society bows and cringes
before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough
to fill the jails.
XI.
All the penalties, all the punishments, are inflicted
under a belief that man can do right under all circum
stances—that his conduct is absolutely under his con
trol, and that his will is a pilot that can, in spite of
winds and tides, reach any port desired. All this is, in
my judgment, a mistake. It is a denial of the integrity
of nature. It is based upon the supernatural and
miraculous, and as long as this mistake remains the
cornerstone of criminal jurisprudence, reformation will
be impossible.
We must take into consideration the nature of man
—the facts of mind—the power of temptation—the
limitations of the intellect—the force of habit—the
result of heredity—the power of passion—the domina
tion of want—the diseases of the brain—the tyranny
of appetite—the cruelty of conditions—the results of
association—the effects of poverty and wealth, of help
lessness and power.
Until these subtle things are understood—until we
know that man in spite all, can certainly pursue the
highway of the right, society should not impoverish and
degrade, should not chain and kill, those who, after all,
may be the helpless victims of unknown causes that are
deaf and blind.
We know something of ourselves—of the average
man—of his thoughts, passions, fears, and aspirations—
something of his sorrows and his joys, his weak-
�Crimes against Criminals.
29
ness, his liability to fall — something of what he
resists—the struggles, the victories, and the failures of
his life. We know something of the tides and cur
rents of the mysterious sea—something of the circuits
of the wayward winds—-but we do not know where the
wild storms are born that wreck and rend. Neither do
we know in what strange realm the mists and clouds
are formed that dim and darken all the heaven of the
mind, nor from whence comes the tempest of the brain
in which the will to do, sudden as the lightning’s flash,
seizes and holds the man until the dreadful deed is done
that leaves a curse upon the soul.
We do not know. Our ignorance should make us
hesitate. Our weakness should make us merciful.
I cannot more fittingly close this address than by
quoting the prayer of the Buddhist:—“ I pray thee to
have pity on the vicious—thou hast already had pity on
the virtuous by making them so.’'’
���WORKS BY COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
■------------------ o------------------ -
s. d.
MISTAKES OF MOSES
...
...
...10
Superior edition, in cloth ...
...
... j g
Only Complete Edition published in England.
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
...
...0
Five Hours’ Speech at theTrial of C. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy.
0
REPLY TO GLADSTONE
...
...
With a Biography by J. M. Wheeler.
FAITH AND FACT.
GOD AND MAN.
0
4
Reply to Cardinal Manning
ROME OR REASON ?
...
0
4
0
2
Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
...
Second Reply to Dr. Field
THE DYING CREED
...
0 2
...
...
...
0 2
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
....
o 2
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
...
...
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Ooudert an 1
Gov. S. L. Woodford.
0 2
ART AND MORALITY
...
DO I BLASPHEME?
...
...
THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE
THE GREAT MISTAKE
LIVE TOPICS
...
2
0
..02
0
\ ...
...
...
...
2
0 1
0 x
...
...
... 0 1
... 0 x
MYTH AND MIRACLE
REAL BLASPHEMY
...
...
SOCIAL SALVATION
...
...
...
0 2
...
...
...
...
0 2
0 2
...
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ...
GOD AND THE STATE
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC?
...
...
0
2
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC?
Part II.
...
0
2
Progressive Publishing Co., 28 Stonecutter Street. E.O.
�
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Crimes against criminals : an address, delivered before the State Bar Association of New York, January 21, 1890
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
BIG BLUE BOOK NO. T> 1 Q
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
A
Resist Not Evil
Clarence Darrow
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
�z
Copyright, 1902,
Clarence S. Darrow.
Copyright, J 925,
Haldeman-Julius Company«
Printed in the United States of America.
�CONTENTS
Chapter
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI,
Page
Foreword ............................................................................................................ 5
Preface ......................................................................................................................... 7
The Nature of the State................................................................................... 9
Armies and Navies.................................................................................................18
The Purpose of Armies..................................................................................... .»16
Civil Government .........................................................
18
Theory of Crime and Punishment.............................................................. 31
Remedial Effects of Punishment................................................................ 34
Cause of Crime........................................................................................................ 30
The Proper Treatment of Crime................................................................ 35
Impossibility of Just Judgment................................................................... 37
The Judge of the Criminal....................................................................... ......40
The Measure of Punishment........................................................................... 42
Who Deserves Punishment............................................................................. 47
Natural Law and Conduct............................................................................... 49
Rules Governing Penal Codes and Their Victims............................. 52
The Machinery of Justice................................................................................ 56
The Right Treatment of Violence........................................................ 60
�Judge not, that ye be not judged.
Matthew $ :1.
Ye have heard that it hath been said: An eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you,
that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Matthew 5:38, 39.
�FOREWORD
This little book was written and first published twenty-five years
ago. At that time 1 was a devoted admirer of Tolstoy, and my thought
was largely inf’uenced by his remarkable books. I still admire Tolstoy
and class him as one of'the greatest and highest type of . literary artists
that the world has ever known. However, my scientific studies have
convinced me that man can never reach a state of non-resistance. His
structure is fixed and is moved by stimuli like all other animals, and
under sufficient inducement the primal emotions will sweep away all
the inhibitions and restraints that culture has woven around him. This
was fully demonstrated in the great war. In spite of this change of vie v
I am convinced that this book in the main is true, and with this foreword
am glad to have it once more issued in its original form.
September 1,1925.
Clarence Darrow.
��PREFACE
It is not claimed that the following pages contain any new ideas.
They Were inspired by the writings of Tolstoy, who was the first, and
in fact the only, author of my acquaintance who ever seemed to me to
place the doctrine of non-resistance upon a substantial basis. After
reading Tolstoy I determined to make a careful study of the subject,
but on a thorough search of book stores and libraries could find next to
nothing dealing with the question, while the shelves were crowded with
literature extolling the glories of war and the beneficence of patriotism.
The first part of this volume which deals with the state is very
fragmentary, and in no wise so complete as can be found in many other
volumes, but in the portion which deals with crime and punishment, I
have found a much newer field, and one which has generally been dis
cussed by those who have little practical knowledge of the machinery of
courts of justice.
It has been my purpose to state the reasons which appeal to me in
support of the doctrine of non-resistance, rather than to give authorities
to sustain the theories advanced. Still, I believe that the student who is
interested in the subject of criminology, and wishes to carefully investi
gate crime and punishment, will find that most of the great historians,
philosophers, and thinkers will amply corroborate the views herein set
forth, as to the cause of crime, and the evil and unsatisfactory results of
punishment.
Clarence Darrow.
Chicago, November 1,1902.
��RESIST NOT EVIL
CHAPTER I
THE NATURE OF THE STATE
N this heroic age, given to war and conquest and violence, the
precepts of peace and good will seem to have been almost sub
merged. The pulpit, the press, and the school unite in teaching
patriotism and in proclaiming the glory and beneficence of war;
and one may search literature almost in vain for one note of that “Peace
on earth, and good will toward men” in which the world still professes to
believe; and yet these benign precepts are supposed to be the basis of all
the civilization of the western world.
The doctrine of non-resistance if ever referred to is treated with
derision and scorn. At its best the doctrine can only be held by dreamers
and theorists, and can have no place in daily life. Every government on
earth furnishes proof that there is nothing practical or vital in its teach
ings. Every government on earth is the personification of violence and
force, and yet the doctrine of non-resistance is as old as human thought
—even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.
The doctrine of non-resistance to evil does not rest upon the words
of Christ alone. Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Socrates, show the evil and
destruction of war, of conquest, of violence, and of hatred, and have
taught the beneficence of peace, of forgiveness, of non-resistance to
evil. But modern thought is not content to rest the conduct of life upon
the theories of moralists. The rules of life that govern men and states
must today be in keeping with science and conform to the highest reason
and judgment of man. It is here that non-resistance seems to have
failed to make any practical progress in the world. That men should
“turn the other cheek,” should “love their enemies,” should “resist not
evil,” has ever seemed fine to teach to children, to preach on Sundays,
to round a period in a senseless oratorical flight; but it has been taken
for granted that these sentiments cannot furnish the real foundation for
strong characters or great states.
It is idle to discuss “non-resistance” in its effect upon life and the
world without adopting some standard of excellence by which to judge
results. Here, as elsewhere in human conduct, after all is said and done,
men must come back to the fundamental principle that the conduct which
makes for life is wise and right. Nature in her tireless labor has ever
been developing a higher order and a completer life. Sometimes for long
periods it seems as if the world were on the backward course, but even
this would prove that life really is the highest end to be attained. What
ever tends to happiness tends to life,—joy is life and misery is death.
In his long and toilsome pilgrimage, man has come to his present
estate through endless struggle, through brutal violence administered
and received. And the question of the correctness of non-resistance as
a theory, like any other theory, does not depend upon whether it can be
enforced and lived now or tomorrow, but whether it is the highest ideal
�10
Resist Not Evil
of life that is given us to conceive. In one sense nothing is practical
excepting what is; everything must have been developed out of all the
conditions of life that now exist or have existed on the earth. But to
state this means little in the settlement of ethical questions, for man’s
future condition depends quite as much upon his mental attitude as
upon any other fact that shapes his course.
Everywhere it seems to have been taken for granted that force and
violence are necessary to man’s welfare upon the earth. Endless volumes
have been written, and countless lives been sacrificed in an effort to prove
that one form of government is better than another; but few seem seri
ously to have considered the proposition that all government rests on
violence and force, is sustained by soldiers, policemen and courts, and is
contrary to the ideal peace and order which make for the happiness and
progress of the human race. Now and then it is even admitted that in
the far distant ages yet to come men may so far develop toward the
angelic that political governments will have no need to be. This admis
sion, like the common concept, presumes that governments are good;
that their duties undertaken and performed consist in repressing the
evil and the lawless, and protecting and caring for the, helpless and the
weak.
If the history of the state proved that governing bodies were ever
formed for this purpose or filled this function, there might be some
basis for the assumption that government is necessary to preserve order
and to defend the weak. But the origin and evolution of the political
state show quite another thing—they show that the state was born in
aggression, and that in all the various stages through which it has passed
its essential characteristics have been preserved.
The beginnings of the state can be traced back to the early history
of the human race when the strongest savage seized the largest club and
with this weapon enforced his rule upon the other members of the tribe.
By means of strength and cunning he became the chief and exercised
this power, not to protect the weak but to take the good things of the
earth for himself and his. One man by his unaided strength could not
long keep the tribe in subjection to his will, so he chose lieutenants and
aids, and these too were taken for their strength and prowess, and were
given a goodly portion of the fruits of power for the loyalty and help
they lent their chief. No plans for the general good ever formed a por
tion of the scheme of government evolved by these barbarous chiefs.
The great mass were slaves, and their lives and liberty held at the
absolute disposal of the strong.
Ages of evolution have only modified the rigors of the first rude
states. The divine right to rule, the absolute character of official power,
is practically the same today in most of the nations of the world as with
the early chiefs who executed their mandates with a club. The ancient
knight who, with battle-ax and coat of mail, enforced his rule upon the
weak, was only the forerunner of the tax-gatherer and tax-devourer of
today. Even in democratic countries, where the people are supposed to
choose their rulers, the nature of government is the same. Growing from
the old ideas of absolute power, these democracies have assumed that
some sort of government was indispensable to the mass, and no sooner
had they thrown off one form of bondage than another yoke was placed
�Clarence Darrow
11
upon their necks, only to prove in time that this new burden was no less
galling than the old. Neither do the people govern in democracies more
than in any other lands. They do not even choose their rulers. These
rulers choose themselves and by force and cunning and intrigue arrive
at the same results that their primitive ancestor reached with the aid
of a club.
And who are these rulers without whose aid the evil and corrupt
would destroy and subvert the defenseless and the weak? From the
earliest^ time these self-appointed rulers have been conspicuous for all
those vices that they so persistently charge to the common people whose
rapacity, cruelty and lawlessness they so bravely curb. The history of
the past and the present alike proves beyond a doubt that if there is, or
ever was any large class, from whom society needed to be saved, it is
those same rulers who have been placed in absolute charge of the lives
and destinies of their fellow men. From the early kings who with
blood-red hands, forbade their subjects to kill their fellow men, to the
modern legislator, who, with the bribe money in his pocket, still makes
nbery a crime, these rulers have ever made laws not to govern them
selves but to enforce obedience on their serfs.
The purpose of this autocratic power has ever been the same
in the early tribe the chief took the land and the fruits of the earth’
and parceled them amongst his retainers who helped preserve his strength.
Every government since then has used its power to divide the earth
amongst the favored few and by force and violence to keep the toiling
patient, suffering millions from any portion of the common bounties of
the world.
In many of tne nations of the earth the real governing power has
stood behind the throne,, has suffered their creatures and their puppets
to be the nominal rulers of nations and states, but in every case the real
rulers are the strong, and the state is used by them to perpetuate their
power and serve their avarice and greed.
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Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER II
ARMIES AND NAVIES
OW is the authority of the state maintained ?. In whatever guise,
or however far removed from the rudest savage tribe to the
most modern democratic state, this autocratic power rests on
violence and force alone. The first great instrument which
supports every government on earth is the soldier with his gun and
sword. True, the army may be but rarely used. The civil power, the
courts of justice, the policemen and jails generally suffice in civilized
lands to maintain existing things; but back of these, to enforce each
decree, is the power of armed men with all modern implements of death.
Thousands of church organizations throughout the Christian world
profess the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, of peace on earth and good
will to men, and yet each of these Christian lands trains great bodies
of armed men to kill their fellows for the preservation of existing
things. Europe is made up of great military camps where millions of
men are kept apart from their fellows and taught the trade of war alone.
And democratic America, feeling the flush of victory and the glow of
conquest, is turning her energies and strength to gathering armies and
navies that shall equal those across the sea. Not only are these trained
soldiers a living denial of the doctrines that are professed, but in
obedience to an eternal law, deeper and more beneficent than any ever
made by man, these mighty forces are working their own run and death.
These great armies and navies which give the lie to our professions of
faith exist for two purposes: first, to keep in subjection the people of
their own land; second, to make war upon and defend against the other
nations of the earth. The history of the world is little else than the story
of the carnage and destruction wrought on battlefields; carnage and de
struction springing not from any difference between the common peo
ple of the earth, but due alone to the desires and passions of the rulers
of the earth. This ruling class, ever eager to extend its power and
strength, ever looking for new people to govern and new lands to tax,
has always been ready to turn its face against other powers to satisfy the
ruler’s will, and without pity or regret, these rulers have depopulated
their kingdoms and carried ruin and destruction to every portion of the
earth for gold and power.
Not only do these European rulers keep many millions of men whose
only trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idle
ness by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and
are ever ready to answer to their master’s call, to desert their homes and
trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the ruler
of the state. Millions more must give their strength and lives to build
forts and ships, make guns and cannon and all the modern implements of
war. Apart from any moral question of the right of man to slap his fel
low man, all this great burden rests upon the poor. The vast expense of
war comes from the production of the land and must serve to weaken
�Clarence Darrow
13
and impair its industrial strength. This very force must destroy itself.
The best talent of every nation is called upon to invent new implements
of destruction—faster sailing boats, stronger forts, more powerful ex
plosives and more deadly guns. As one nation adds to its military stores,
so every other nation is also bound to increase its army and navy too.
Thus the added force does not augment the military power, but only
makes larger the burden of the state; until, today, these great armies,
aside from producing the moral degradation of the world, are sapping
and undermining and consuming the vitality and strength of all the na
tions of the earth. Cost of labor and strength means cost of life. Thus
in their practical results these armies are destroying millions of lives
that a policy of peace and non-resistance would conserve and save.
But when these armies are in action how stands the case? Over and
over again the world has been submerged by war. The strongest nations
of the earth have been almost destroyed. Devastating wars have left
consequences that centuries could not repair. Countless millions of men
have been used as food for guns. The miseries and sufferings and bru
tality following in the wake of war have never been described or imag
ined, and yet the world persists in teaching the glory and honor and
greatness of war. To excuse the wholesale butcheries of men by the
governing powers, learned apologists have taught that without the havoc
and cruel devastation of war the human race would overrun the earth;
and yet every government in the world has used its power and influence
to promote and encourage marriage and the rearing of children, to pun
ish infanticide and abortion, and make criminal every device to prevent
population; have used their power to heal the sick, to alleviate misery
and to prolong life. Every movement to overcome disease, to make
cities sanitary, to produce and maintain men and women and children
has received the sanction and encouragement of all governments; and
still these glorious rulers have ruthlessly slaughtered in the most bar
barous and cruel way tens of millions of their fellow men, to add to their
glory and perpetuate their names. And philosophers have told us that
this was necessary to prevent the over-population of the earth!
No single ruler, however cruel or ambitious, has ever yet been able
to bring the whole world beneath his sway, and the ambitions and lusts
of these separate chiefs have divided the world into hostile camps and
hostile states. Endless wars have been waged to increase or protect the
territory governed by these various rulers. In these bloody conflicts the
poor serfs have dumbly and patiently met death in a thousand sickening
ways to uphold the authority and prowess of the ruler whose sole func
tion has ever been to pillage and rob the poor victims that fate has placed
within his power. To these brutal, senseless, fighting millions the bound
aries of the state or the color of the flag that they were taught to love
could not in the least affect their lives. Whoever their rulers, their mis
sion has ever been to toil and fight and die for the honor of the state
and the glory of the chief.
But, today, even national preservation demands that the rule of
peace shall give place to the rule of war. In the older countries of the
earth the great drains made upon industry and life to support vast armies
and equip them for slaughter is depopulating states and impoverishing
the lands. And besides all this, so far as external power is concerned, no
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Resist Not Evil
nation adds to its effectiveness to battle with the others by increasing its
army and navy. This simply serves to increase the strength of the
enemy s guns and to make new combinations between hostile lands until
the very strength of a. nation becomes its weakness and must in turn lead
to its decay and overthrow. The nation that would today disarm its
soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more
to its building up than by all the war taxes wrung from its hostile and
unwilling serfs. A nation like this would exhibit to the world such an
example of moral grandeur and true vitality and worth that no nation
however powerful, would dare to invite the odium and hostility of thé
world by sending arms and men to conquer a peaceful, productive nonresistant land. If the integrity and independence of a nation depended
upon its forts and guns the smaller countries of Europe would at once
be wiped from the map of the world. Switzerland, Holland, Greece,
Italy and Spain are absolutely powerless to defend themselves by force’
If these nations should at once disarm every soldier and melt every gun
and turn the worse than wasted labor into productive, life-saving work
they could but greatly strengthen themselves among the other nations of
the earth. Not only this, their example would serve to help turn the tide
v
world from the barbarous and soul-destroying path of war toward
the higher, nobler life of peace and good will toward men.
But not alone are these small nations made still weaker by war but
every battleship that is built by England, Russia, France, Germany, or
the United States really weakens those nations too. It weakens them
not alone by the loss, of productive power but by the worse than wasted
energy which is required to support these implements of death, from the
time their first beam is mined in the original ore, until scarred and
worthless and racked by scenes of blood and violence and shame, they
are thrown out upon the sands to rot. But every battleship weakens a
nation by inviting the hostility of the other peoples of the earth, by com
pelling other rulers to weaken their kingdoms, to build mighty ships and
powerful guns. Every preparation for war and violence is really a vio
lation of the neutrality under which great nations profess to live. They
are a reflection upon the integrity and humanity of their own people and
an insult to every other land on earth. The building of a man of war,
the rearing of a fort, or the planting of a gun can be likened only to a
man who professes to live in peace and quiet with his neighbors and his
friends and who goes about armed with pistol and with dirk.
But these patent evils and outrages are after all the smallest that
flow from violence and strife. The whole pursuit of war weakens the
aspirations and ideals of the race. Rulers have ever taught and encour
aged the spirit of patriotism, that they might call upon their slaves to give
their .labor to the privileged'class and to freely offer up their lives when
the king commands. Every people in the world is taught that their coun
try and their government is the best on earth, and that they should be
ever, ready to desert their homes, abandon their hopes, aspirations, and
ambitions when their ruler calls, and this regardless of the right or wrong
for.which they fight. The teaching of patriotism and war permeates all
society, it reaches to the youngest child and even shapes the character of
the unborn babe. It fills the soul with false ambitions, with ignoble de
sires, and with sordid hopes.
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Clarence Darrow
Every sentiment for the improvement of men, for human justice,
for the uplifting of the poor, is at once stifled by the wild, hoarse shout
for blood. The lowest standard of ethics of which a right-thinking man
can possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to
shoot his fellow man. In youth he may have learned the command,
“Thou shalt not kill,” but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters man
hood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through
his neighbor’s heart,—and this unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred,
and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his
ruler gives the word. It is not the privilege of. the common soldier to
ask questions, to consider right and wrong, to think of the misery and
suffering his act entails upon others innocent of crime. He may be told
to point his gun at his neighbor and his friend, even at his brother or
father; if so he must obey commands.
Theirs npt to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
represents the code of ethics that governs a soldier’s life.
And yet from men who believe in these ideals, men who sacrifice
their right of private judgment in the holiest matter that can weigh upon
the conscience and the* intellect, the taking of human life,—men who
place their lives, their'consciences, their destinies, without question or
hesitation, into another’s keeping, men whose trade is slaughter and
whose cunning-consists in their ability to kill their fellows,—from such
men it is expected to build great states and rear a noble humanity!
These teachings lead to destruction and death; the destruction of the
body and the destruction of the soul. Even on the plea of physical evo
lution in the long sweep of time, these men must give way to the patient,
peaceful, non-resistants, who love their brothers and believe in the sa
credness of life. Long ago it was written down that “He who takes the
sword shall perish by the sword.”
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Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER III
THE PURPOSE OF ARMIES.
UT the great armies and navies are not really kept today for for
eign conquest. Now and then, in obedience to the commercial
spirit that rules the world, these vessels of destruction are sent
to foreign seas. But the' rulers of the earth live on fairly
friendly terms. Long since, the most ambitious have abandoned their
dreams of world power and are content to exploit a portion of the earth.
When warships are sent to foreign seas they usually fire a salute rather
than train their guns for death. Monarchs the world over respect each
other. They are bound together by ties of common interest, if not of
common love. When a ruler dies, even though the most tyrannical and
despotic, every other ruler promptly sends condolences to the sorrowing
court; their own subjects may die unwept, but a touch of common feeling
moves them to mourn a ruler’s death. Nations are bound by many ties
to preserve peace among each other. Scions of royal families are handed
round in marriage from court to court, treaties of all sorts are made and
ratified in most solemn form; and even more than this, the real owners
of the world, those who possess the stocks and bonds which rest upon the
wealth that the poor have labored to create, these real rulers whd make
war or peace by giving or withholding funds, these own the great bulk
of the property of the various nations of the world, and will not lightly
suffer their possessions to be destroyed. And yet these same real rulers,
who stand behind the thrones of all the world, approve of this prepara
tion for war, approve of taking millions of men from their homes and
training them to kill, approve of every fort and gun and battleship.
More than this, they contribute largely of their private funds to build
batteries and equip militia, especially in the great cities of the earth.
Through the speeches of their agents and the voice of their press, all
this grim visage of war is for the_stranger without their gates. But in
reality the prime reason for all the armies of the world is that soldiers
and militia may turn their guns upon their unfortunate countrymen when
the owners of the earth shall speak the word. And these unfortunate
countrymen are the outcast and despised, the meek and lowly ones of the
world, the men whose ceaseless toil and unpaid' efforts have built the
forts and molded the cannon and sustained the soldiers that are used to
shoot them down.
1
To say that these armies and frowning forts and gatling guns are
needed to maintain peace and order at home is to admit at once that the
great mass of men are held captive by the more powerful few. Organ
ized soldiers and policemen, courts and sheriffs, with guns and forts and
jails, have the greatest advantage over the disorganized mass who cannot
act together, and who know not which way to turn to keep outside the
meshes of the law. Not one in a thousand needs be trained to arms and
authority to keep the unorganized mass in the place reserved for it to
live. The purpose of guns and armies is to furnish the few an easy and
sure way to control the mass. Neither are these armies made of the
ruling class. The officers, it is true< are generally taken from the fa
�Clarence Darrow
17
vored ones, but the regular soldier is the man too poor and abandoned
to find his place in any other of the walks of life. He is only fit to be
an executioner of his fellow man. No ruler can love his subjects when
he takes their money and their labor to buy cannon and train men to
shoot them down. That this is the real purpose of standing armies and
warlike equipments is plain to all who have eyes to see. More and more
the rulers have learned to build their barracks and massTheir troops not
on the borders of their land but convenient to great cities, in thè middle
of districts thickly populated by working men. As nations grow older
the opportunities of the masses grow less. More men are called to serve
the state, and greater preparations are made to preserve the possessions
of the rich. These soldiers are moved from place to place, are massed
at time of need, not in accordance with the petition of the citizens from
whose ranks the soldiers come, but in response to the request of the
ruling class.
Quite apart from the question of the rights of capital on one hand
and labor on the other, what must be the effect of this policy of force
and violence when reaching over long periods of time? A nation is
really great and possessed of the lasting elements of strength in propor
tion as her people are strong, intelligent, and free. The rulers of a na
tion should owe their subjects some duty in return for the homage and
taxes they receive. The ruler who deliberately governs his subjects by
violence and force, and through tyranny and fear, must find in time
that this policy of hatred and outrage is destroying and sapping the
foundations of the state; the more strength and vitality that he draws
from the poor and the more soldiers required to support arbitrary power,
the greater the chasm that yawns beneath his feet. The loyalty that is
kept through fear is lost with opportunity. The rulers of Rome before
her destruction, had drawn all the soldiers from the people that the
fields and shops could spare, and used these to support their tottering
power. Kings can gain nothing by governing soldiers alone. They must
have farmers, artisans, all sort of producers, or their conquest is not
worth the price. The policy of hatred and violence must in the end de
stroy the state. It can breed only hatred in the hearts of the outcast and
the poor. If their subjection is incomplete, the throne is resting upon
the shifting sands. If perfect and complete, their subjects are lifeless
xnachines and their empires crumbling to decay. It is really idle to spec
ulate as to whether love and brotherhood could accomplish more; it is
certain they could not do less. To disband the armies and destroy the
forts, to diffuse love and brotherhood, and peace and justice in the place
of war and strife, could tend only to the building up of character, the
elevation of the soul, and the strength and well-being of the state. True,
the class lines wòtild disappear. Brotherhood would have neither ruler
nor ruled, would have no authority of man over man, would treat all as
brothers and co-equals, and from it would grow a stronger state and a
higher manhood than the world has known. Peaceful industry relieved
from the burdens of soldiers and arms would inevitably increase, and
life, rendered less burdensome by the exactions of authority, would
lengthen and sweeten through the beneficent influence of love. No
nation can be really great that is held together by gatling guns, and no
true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.
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Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER IV
CIVIL GOVERNMENT
H FTER the evolution of society through 'brute force and the first
Jg stages of militarism, comes civil government. In its forms and
methods civil government differs from military government
Civil crn AUt in
esseHce, its real purpose and effect, it is the same’
Civil government, like military government,.rests on violence and force
As society reaches the industrial stage, it is easier and costs less waste
of energy for the ruling class to maintain its supremacy through the
intricate forms and mazes of civil government, than through the direct
means, of soldiers and guns.
, 11 9V1 governments like military governments, are instituted and con
trolled by.the ruling class. Their purpose is to keep the earth and its
resources in the hands of those who directly and indirectly have taken it
for themselves. This can only be done by the establishment and main
tenance of certain rules and regulations concerning the disposition of
property and the fate of men. A vast army of officials, governors legis
lators, tax-gatherers, judges, sheriffs, policemen, and the like are’maintained by the governing class to enforce these rules and regulations and
keep the exploited in their place. The decrees of courts and the various
orders of civil government are enforced by violence, differing only in
kind from the general’s commands. The decrees of courts, whether
rightful or wrongful,' must be obeyed, and the penalty of disobedience
is the forcible taking of property, the kidnapping and imprisoning of
men, and if need be, the taking of human life, flf it shall ever occur
that the civil authorities have not sufficient force to compel obedience
the whole power of the army and navy may at once be made subservient
to the civil power.
. .. 7^ vast army which is charged with enforcing and maintaining
civil law is drawn largely from the ruling class and those who contribute
as their willing tools. This, class must be supported and maintained in
greater luxury than that enjoyed by the ordinary man, and the support
entails ceaseless and burdensome exactions from the producing class.
These exactions are a portion of the price that the worker pays for the
privilege of being ruled. It is true that-a portion of the money forcibly
taken through the machinery of government is used for those cooperative
commercial purposes that are incident to a complex social life, but it has
never yet been, shown that an autocratic power like a political state is
needed to provide the common resources incident to social life.
Practically the whole army of officials, with its wastefulness, its ex
travagance and its endless peculation, is supported and kept in worse than
idleness for the purpose of ruling men through violence and force. Even
in.so-called democracies the civil law., with its ponderous and costly ma
chinery, serves the same purpose as in monarchical states. It is easy to
understand that when the decrees of a ruler are absolute it can matter
little whether these decrees are issued to an army and carried out by
force of the bayonet and gun, or whether they are crystallized into law
and carried out by the orders of courts to be enforced by consigning
�Clarence Darrow
19
troublesome and rebellious subjects to the prison or the block. In either
event the will of the sovereign is law,|5nd the law is made for the benefit
of the ruler, not the ruled?}
In democracies, the fcJfm is somewhat changed, but the results are
not unlike. Every democracy begins with a great mass of regulations in
herited from the autocratic powers that have gone before. These laws
and customs are originally the same decrees that have gone forth from
the absolute rulers of the earth, and every change in- forms and insti
tutions is based upon the old notions of property and rights that were
made to serve the ruler and enslave the world.
Then, too, authority has the same effect on human nature whether
in an absolute monarchy or a democracy, and the tendency of authority
is ever to enlarge its bounds and to encroach upon the natural rights of
those who have no power to protect themselves. The possession of au
thority and arbitrary power ever tends to tyranny, and when autoci atic
orders may be enforced by violence, liberty and life depend upon suffer
ance alone. A close community of interest naturally springs up between
those circumstanced alike. The man who possesses one sort of power, as,
for instance, political privilege, is very friendly to the class who possess
another sort, as, for instance, wealth, and this community of interest
naturally and invariably arrays all the privileged classes against the
weak. The laws and regulations of a democracy tend no more to equality
than those of a monarchy. Under a democratic government inequality of
possession, of opportunity, of power, is quite as great as under absolute
monarchies. Given the right to use force of. man over man and the
strongest force will succeed. You may forbid it in one direction, it will
but find a new method to accomplish the same result, like the pent-up
torrent that will find its outlet, in however circuitous a route it is obliged
to move. The legislators who make laws come either from the ruling
class or draw their honors, rewards, and emoluments from this class;
and the statutes of the most democratic states are not unlike the dictates
of the absolute monarch, and the decrees of both alike may be enforced
by all the power and violence of the state. But laws do not execute
themselves, and every official appointed or self-chosen to enforce the
law either comes from or naturally gravitates toward the ruling class.
Here again power grows by what it feeds on. Order is more important
than liberty, and at all costs order must be enforced upon the many. The
few have little need for law. Whatever is, is theirs, and may they not
use their own to suit themselves? The business of the courts and of
ficials is to enforce order upon the great mass who must depend upon
the few for the means of life. To enforce order upon them means that
they may only live in certain ways.
But admitting the orthodox view of government to be correct, then
how stands the case? The great majority of mankind still believe in
the utility of the state. They not only believe that society could not ex
ist without the state, but likewise that this political institution exists and
is maintained for the public good; that all its functions and activities in
some mysterious way have been conferred upon it by the weaker class of
fociety, and that it is administered to save this class from the ravages of
the vicious and the strong. Of course, there are many humane officials,
men who use their power to promote the public good, as they see and
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Resist Not Evil
understand the public good, 1 hese, in common with the community,
look upon the endless provisions of our penal code as being the magical
power that keeps the state from dissolution and preserves the lives and
property of men from the vicious and the bad. The idea of punishment,
of violence, of force, is so interwoven with all our concepts of justice
and social life that but few can conceive a society without force, without
jails, without scaffolds, without the penal judgments of men. The
thought, never suggests itself to the common mind that nature, unaided
by man’s laws, can evolve social order, or that a community might live
in measurable peace and security moved only by those natural instincts
which form the basis of and render possible communal life. To be sure,
the world is full of evidence that order and security do not depend on
legal inventions. From the wild horses on the plains, the flocks of birds,
the swarming bees, the human society and association in new countries
amongst unexploited people, suggestions of order and symmetry regu
lated by natural instincts and common social needs are ample to show
the possibility at least of order or a considerable measure of justice with
out penal law. It is only when the arrogance and the avarice of rulers
and chiefs make it necessary to exploit men that these rulers must lay
down laws and regulations to control the actions of their fellows. And
the more fixed the caste, the better settled the community; the more
complete the private appropriation of land, and the longer the penal code,
the greater the number of victims that are caught within its snares.
Turning from the examples everywhere present of the naturalness
of order and system to what we observe of the daily acts of men, the
thought that right conduct has little relation to penal laws is still further
confirmed. :'In the myriad acts of men it is only rarely that one is done
diiectly because of law.*'j To turn to the right when you meet vour neigh
bor on the street; to imperil your happiness and even your life to help
in dire need; to protect the helpless; to defend the weak; to tell the truth ;
in fact, to obey all that natural morality or right conduct requires, is the
first instinct of man, and ever prevails, not only regardless of human law
but in spite of human law, and this, too, for the best and most abiding
reason that can influence the life of man. Nature provides that certain
conduct makes for life, and in the sweep of time, those who conform to
this conduct live and their offspring populate the earth when they are
gone; those who violate the laws of communal life will die or leave no
descendants or leave weak offspring to be the last survivors of their line.
The unschooled child and the uncivilized race alike tell the truth; they
obey the laws of nature and the laws of life. It is only after the exploiter
appears with his rules for enslaving man that he must needs build jails
in which to pen those who'defy or ignore their power.
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Clarence Darrow
CHAPTER V
THEORY OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
HOSE who believe in the beneficence of force have never yet
agreed upon the crimes that should be forbidden, the method
and extent of punishment, the purpose of punishment, nor even
its result. They simply agree that without force and violence
social life cannot be maintained. All conceivable human actions have
fallen under the disfavor of the law and found their place in penal
codes: Blasphemy, witchcraft, heresy, insanity, idiocy, methods of
eating and drinking, the manner of worshiping the Supreme Being,
the observance of fast days and holy days, the giving of ihedicine
and the withholding of medicine, the relation of the sexes, the right
to labor and not to labor, the method of acquiring and dispensing
property, its purchase and sale, the forms of dress and manner of
deportment, in fact almost every conceivable act of man. / On the
•other hand, murder, robbery, pillage, rapine, have often been com
mended by the ruling powers, not only permitted, but under certain con
ditions that seemed to work to the advantage of the ruler, this conduct
has been deemed worthy of the greatest praise?. The punishments for
illegal acts have been as various as the crimes. -Death has always been
a favorite visitation for the criminal, but the means of death have varied
with time and place: Boiling in oil, boiling in water, burning at the
stake, breaking on the wheel, strangling, poisoning, feeding to wild beasts,
beheading, and in fact every conceivable way down to the humane meth
ods of electrocution and hanging by the neck until dead. Death, too, has
been made the punishment for all sorts of crimes, always for the crimes
of denying your Maker, or killing your ruler. After death has come
public flogging, standing in the stocks, ducking, maiming, down to the
humane method of penning in a cage. No two sets of rulers have ever
agreed upon the relative enormity of the various crimes, the sort of pun
ishment they merited, the extent and duration of punishment, or the pur
pose to be accomplished by the punishment. One age has pronounced
martyrs and worshipped as saints the criminals that another age has put
to death. One law-making body repeals the crimes that another creates.
Some judges with venerable wigs have pronounced solemn sentence of
death upon helpless, defenseless old women for bewitching a cat. Grave
judges have even sentenced animals to death after due and impartial trial
for crime. The judges who pronounced sentence of death on women
for witchcraft were as learned and good as those who today pronounce
sentence for conspiracy and other crimes. It is quite as «possible that
another generation will look with the same horror on the subjects of our
laws as we look upon those of the years that are gone. It is but a few
years since a hundred different crimes were punishable with death in
England, and the wise men of that day would not have believed that the
empire could hold together had these extreme statutes been limited to
one or two.
_ But however drastic the laws at different periods of civilization,
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Resist Not Evil
they have never been so broad but what a much larger number of blame
worthy acts were outside than inside the code. Neither have they ever
been enforced alike on all. The powerful could generally violate them
with impunity, but the net was there to ensnare the victim whom they
wished to catch.
Neither has the method of determining the victim for these various
laws been as accurate and scientific as is generally presumed. Sometimes
it has been by torturing until the victim is made to confess; sometimes by
wager of battle; sometimes by tying the victim’s feet and hands and
throwing him into a pond, when if he sank he was innocent, if he swam
he was guilty and promptly put to death. The modern method of ar
raying a defendant in court, prosecuted by able lawyers with ample re
sources, tried by judges who almost invariably believe, in the prisoner’s
guilt, defended as is usually the case by incompetent lawyers, and with
out means, is scarcely more liable to lead to correct results than the
ancient forms. From the nature of things it is seldom possible to be
sure about the commission of the act, and never possible to fix the moral
responsibility of the person charged with crime.
For ages men have erected scaffolds, instruments of torture, built
jails, prisons and penal institutions without end, and through all the
ages a long line of suffering humanity, bound and fettered, has been
marching to slaughter and condemned to living tombs; and yet human
governments charged with the responsibility of the condition and lives of
these weak brothers, have never yet been able fo agree even upon the
purpose for which these pens are built. All punishment and violence is
largely mixed with the feeling of revenge,—from the brutal father who
strikes his helpless child, to the hangman who obeys the orders of the
judge; with every man who lays violent unkind hands upon his fellow
the prime feeling is that of hatred and revenge. Some human being has
shed his neighbor’s blood; the state must take his life. In no other way
can the crime be wiped away. In some inconceivable manner it is be
lieved that when this punishment follows, justice has been done. But
by no method of reasoning can it be shown that the injustice of killing
one man is retrieved by the execution of another, or that the forcible
taking of property is made right by confining some human being in a
pen. If the law knew some method to restore a life or make good a loss
to the real victim, it might be urged that justice had been done. But if
taking life, or blaspheming, or destroying the property of another be an
injustice, as in our short vision it seems to be, then punishing him who
is supposed to be guilty of the act, in no way makes just the act already
done. To punish a human being simply because he has committed a.
wrongful act, without any thought of good to follow, is vengeance pure
and simple, and more detestable and harmful than any casual isolated
crime. Apologists who have seen the horror in the thought of vengeance
and still believe in violence and force when exercised by the state, con
tend that punishment is largely for the purpose of reforming the victim.
This, of course, cannot be held in those instances where death is
the punishment inflicted. These victims at least have no chance to be
reformed. Neither can it be seriously contended that a penal insti
tution is a reformatory, whatever its name. A prisoner is an outlaw,
�Clarence Darrow
an outcast man, placed beyond the pale of society and branded as
unfit for the association of his fellow man phis sentence is to live in
silence, to toil without recompense, to wear the badge of infamy,
and if ever permitted to see the light, to be pointed at and shunned
by all who know his life.
*
*
/
X
<•
�24
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER VI
REMEDIAL EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENT
HE last refuge of the apologist is that punishment is in
flicted to prevent crime. No one can speak from experience
as to whether punishment prevents what is called crime or not,
for the experiment of non-resistance has never yet been
fairly or fully tried. To justify killing or penning a human being
upon the theory that this prevents crime should call for the strictest
proof on the part of those who advocate this course. To take the
life or liberty of a fellow man is the most serious responsibility that
can devolve upon an individual or community. The theory that
punishment is a preventive to unlawful acts does not seriously mean
that it is administered to prevent the individual from committing a
second or a third unlawful act. If this were the case the death
penalty should never be inflicted, as life imprisonment accomplishes
the same results. Neither would it be necessary to restrain men in
the way that is done in our penal institutions, to deprive them of all
pleasures and the income of their labor. All that would then be
needed would be to keep men safely locked from the world. But
most unlawful acts are committed hastily in the heat of passion or
■ upon what seems adequate provocation, or through sore need. Such
acts as these would almost never be repeated. Genuine repentance
follows most really vicious acts, but repentance, however genuine,
gives no waiver of punishment.
Then, too, many men who commit no act in violation of the law
are known to be more likely to commit such acts than others who
through some circumstances may have violated a criminal statute.
Men of hasty temper, of strong will, of intemperate habits, often
with no means of support, all of these are more liable to crime than
one who has once overstepped the bounds. But it is obvious that
this is not the real reason for punishment; if it were it would be the
duty of judge and jury to determine, not whether a man had com
mitted a crime, but whether he wras liable to commit one at some
future time, an inquiry which is never made and which it is obvious
could not be made.
The safety aimed at through punishment does not mean safety
for the individual, but it is contended that the fact that one per
son is punished for an act deters others from the commission of
similar unlawful acts; it is obvious that there is a large class who
are not deterred by these examples, for the inmates of prisons never
grow less, in fact prisons grow and increase in the same proportion
as other institutions grow. But here, too, the theories and acts of
rulers have been as various and contradictory as in relation to other
matters concerning crime and its punishment. If the purpose of pun
ishment is to terrorize the community so that none will dare again
to commit thesa» acts, then the more terrible the punishment the
surer the result. This was generally admitted not many years ago,
�Clarence Darrow
25
but in its treatment of crime the world ever prefers to be illogical
and ineffectual rather than too brutal.
If terrorisih is the object aimed at, death should again be sub
stituted for the various crimes, great and small, which ever justified
taking human life. Death, too, should be administered in the most
cruel way. Boiling, the rack, wild beasts, and slow fires should be
the methods sought. It should be steadfastly remembered by all
squeamish judges and executioners that one vigorous punishment
would prevent a thousand crimes. But more than all this, death
should be in the most public way. The kettle of boiling oil should
be heated ttdth its victim inside, out upon the commons, where all
eyes could see and all ears could hear. The scaffold should be
erected high on a hill, and the occasion be made a public holiday for
miles around. This was once the case even within the last half cen
tury. These public hangings in Europe and America have drawn
great crowds of spectators, sometimes reaching into the tens of
thousands, to witness the value that the state places on human life.
But finally, even stupid legislators began to realize that these scenes
of violence, brutality and crime bred their like upon those who came
to see. | Even governments discovered that many acts of violence
followed a pubilc hanging;. The hatred of the state which calmly
took a human life engendered endless hatred as its fruit. And in all
countries that claim a semblance of civilization, public hangings are
now looked back upon with horror and amazement. Hangings today
take place inside the jail in the presence of a few invited guests, a
state doctor who watches carefully to see that the victim is not cut
down before his heart has ceased to beat, a chaplain who calls on
the Creator of life to take back to his bosom the divine spark which
man in his cruelty and wrath is seeking to snuff out. Even the state
is not so cruel but that it will officially ask the Almighty to look
after the soul that it blackens and defiles and does its best to ever
lastingly destroy. A few friends of tbe jailer are present to witness
the rare performance, and the newspapers too are represented, so
that the last detail, including the breakfast bill of fare, may be
graphically- set before the hungry mob to take the place of the real
tragedy that they had the right to witness in the good old days.
Many states today have provided that executions shall be inside the
penitentiary walls, that the victim shall be wakened, if perchance
he is asleep, in the darkness and dead of night; that he shall be
hurried off alone and unobserved and hastily put to death outside
the gaze of any curious eye; that this barbarism shall be done, this
unholy, brutal deed committed in silence, in darkness, that the
heavens and earth alike may cover up the shocking crime, from
which a sensitive public conscience stands aghast. The ever-present
public press in many cases is allowed to print only the barest details
‘ of the bloody scene, so that oblivion may the more quickly and
deeply cover this crowning infamy of-the state.
The abolition of public hangings may speak something for the
sensitiveness, or at least, the squeamishness of the state. But it is
evident that all of this is a terrible admission of guilt upon the
part of those who uphold this crime. It is possible that one might
�26
Resist Not Evil
believe at least in the sincerity of those who argue that punishment
prevents crime, if these terrible scenes of violence were carried out
in open day before the multitude, and fully understood and discussed
in all their harrowing, shocking details of cruelty and blood. If
the sight of punishment terrorizes men from the commission of
crime then., of course, punishment should be as open as the day.
In so far as the state is successful in keeping secret the execution
of its victim, in this far does it abandon every claim of prevention
and rests its case for punishments on vengeance and cruelty alone.
The rulers of this generation, who are ashamed of their deeds, may
be wiser and more sensitive than those of the last, but our ancestors,
although less refined, were much more logical and infinitely more
honest than are we.
The whole question of punishment is not only proven but fully
admitted by our rulers in their dealings with the death penalty.
It is now everywhere admitted that the brutalizing effects of public
executions are beyond dispute. It was only after the completest evi
dence that the believers in the beneficence of punishment and vio
lence abandoned public executions, for to abandon these was to
utterly abandon the principle on which all punishment is based.
It would, of course, be impossible to prove the exact result of. a
public execution. Somewhere in a quiet rural community, growing
out of sudden passion or some unexplained and temporary aberra
tion, a man takes the life of his fellow man. To the shock incident
to this fatal act is added a long public trial in the courts where
every detail is distorted and magnified and passed from tongue to
tongue until even the lisping babe is thoroughly familiar with every
circumstance of the case with all its harrowing details iterated and
reiterated again and again. There grows up in the public mind a
bitter hatred against the unfortunate victim whose antecedents, life
and motives they can in no way understand or judge. It is really
believed that no one has the right to look upon this person with
any feeling save that of hatred, and the least word of pity or sign
of sympathy for the outcast is set down as sickly sentimentalism
and the mark of mental and spiritual disease. Weeks and months,
sometimes even years, elapse in the slow and unending process of
the courts. The whole tragedy has been well nigh forgot, at least it
no longer has any vital effect upon the community. Finally it is
announced that on a certain day a public hanging will take place.
Once more every detail of the tragedy is recalled to the public mind;
once more each man conjures up a monster in the place of the
hunted, weak, doomed victim whose act no one either fathoms or
seeks to understand. A sightly spot is chosen perhaps upon the
village green. For several days men are kept busy erectkig a strange
and ominous machine; the old men and women, the middle aged,
the boys and girls, the little children, even the toddling babes,, filled
with curiosity watch the work and discuss every detail of the weird
and fatal trap. At length the day arrives for the majesty of the law
to vindicate itself. From every point of the compass comes a great
throng of both sexes, all conditions and ages, each to witness the
most startling event of their lives; children are there, babes in arms,
�Clarence Darrow
27
and even the unborn. A rope is tied around a beam, a noose is
formed of the other end, a trembling, helpless, frantic, friendless
victim is led up the steps, placed on a trap, his hands and feet are
bound, a black cap is pulled down to hide his face, the noose is
securely fastened around his necik below his ears. The crowd
watches breathless with suspense, the signal is given, the trap opens,
the man falls through space, he is caught in mid-air by the rope
tightening about his neck and strangling him to death. His body
heaves, his legs and arms move with violent convulsions, he swings
a few minutes in mid-air before the crowd, a ghastly human pendu
lum moving back and forth, the mortal body of a man created in the
image of God whom the state has led out and killed to show the
glory and majesty of law!
' The advocate of punishment is right in the belief that such^a
scene will produce a profound impression upon all who see or hear
or know. The human being does not live who can witness such a
tragedy or even know its details and not receive some impression
that the rest of life cannot efface. The impression must be to
harden and brutalize the heart and conscience, to destroy the finer
sensibilities, to cheapen human life, to breed cruelty and malice that
will bear fruit in endless ways and unknown forms. No parent who
loved his child and who had any of the human sentiments that
should distinguish man from the brute creation, would ever dare to
trust that child to witness a scene like this. Every intelligent loving
mother carrying an unborn babe would close her eyes and stop her
ears and retire to the darkest corner she could find lest the unborn
babe marked by the baleful scene should one day stand upon the
same trembling trap with a rope about his neck.
The true morality of a community does not depend alone upon
the number of men who slay their fellows. These at most are very
few. The true morality depends upon every deed of kindness or
malice, of love or hatred, of charity or cruelty, and the sum of
these determine the real character and worth of a community. Any
evil consequences that could flow from a casual killing of a human
being by an irresponsible man would be like a drop of water in the
sea compared . with a public execution by the state.
It would probably not be possible to find a considerable num
ber of men today who would believe that a public hanging could
have any but bad results. This must be true because the knowledge
of its details tends to harden, embitter and render cruel the hearts
of men. Only in a less degree does the publication of all the details
affect the characters and lives of men, but unless they are at least
published to the world, then the example is of no effect. The state
which would take life without any hope or expectation that the
community would in any way be bettered could not rank even
among savage tribes. Such cruelty could only be classed as total
depravity.
But the effect of other punishment is no whit different save in
degree from that- of hanging. Cultivated, sensitive people have long
since deplored the tendency of newspapers to give full and vivid
accounts of crimes and their punishment, and the better and humaner
�2U
Resist Not Evil
class of citizens. shun those journals which most magnify these
details. All of this has a tendency to familiarize man with violence
and force, to weaken human sensibilities to accustom man to cruel
ty, to blood, to scenes of suffering and pain. What right-thinking
parent would place this, literature before his .child and familiarize
his mind with violence practiced either by the individual or the
Sute1i p"114 -yet
Punishment is a deterrent, the widest publicity
shouid be given to. the story of every crime and the punishment
inflicted by the state.
That men even unconsciously feel that punishment is wrong is
shown by their attitude toward certain classes of society. A hang
man would not be tolerated in a self-respecting body of men or
women, and this has been the case for many years, in fact since
men made a trade of butchering their fellow man. A professional
hangman is really as much despised as any other professional mur
derer. A detective, jailer, policeman, constable and sheriff are not
generally regarded as being subjects of envy by their fellows. Still
none of these are as much responsible for their acts as the real rulers
who make and execute the law. The time will come when the pub
lic prosecutor and the judge who sentences his brother to death or
imprisonment will be classed with the other officers who lay vio
lent and cruel hands upon their fellows.
If the imprisonment of men tended to awe others into obedience
to law, then the old ideas of penal servitude are the only ones that
can be logically sustained. A prison should be the most horrible
gruesome, painful place that can be contrived. Physical torture
should be al common incident of prison life. The victim' himself is
beyond the pale of society. His life should be used to aid the com
munity by frightful example:
Dark dungeons, noxious smells,
vermin, rats, the hardest, most constant toil, long terms of impris
onment, and a red mark to be branded on his brow, when he
at last is turned loose to the light of day. Prisons should be open
public, so that the old and young" can constantly witness the
terrible effects of crime. Prisons and jails should be in every community and in the most conspicuous place. The young should not
be left to hear casually of public punishments or to imagine a penal
institution. The living horrible example in all its loathsome, sicken
ing details should be ever kept before their eyes. Most men now
regard these public exhibitions of the malice of the state exactly as
they now look on public hangings, as tending to degrade and debauch
and harden the hearts of those who become familiar with the sight.
But if the open sight and knowledge of a penal institution tends to
degrade and harden the heart, then the secret, imperfect, covert;
knowledge produces the same effect only in less degree.
All communities and states are in reality ashamed of jails and
penal institutions of whatever kind. Instinctively they seem to un
derstand that these are a reflection on the state. More and more the
best judgment and best conscience of men are turned toward the
improvement of . prisons, the introduction of sanitary appliances,
the bettering of jail conditions, the modification of punishment, the
treatment of convicts as men. All of this directly disproves the
�Clarence Darrow
29
theory that the terrible example of punishment tends to prevent
crime. All these improvements of prison conditions show that society
is unconsciously ashamed of its treatment of so-called criminals;
that the excuse of prevention of crime is really known to be humbug
and hypocrisy, and that the real motive that causes the punishment
of crime is malice and hatred and nothing else. The tendency to
abrogate capital punishment, to improve prisons, to modify sen
tences, to pardon convicts is all in one direction. It can lead to but
one inevitable result, the abolition of all judgment of man by man,
the complete destruction of all prisons and the treatment of all men
as if each human being was the child of the one loving Father and
a part and parcel of the same infinite and mysterious life.
�30
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER VII
CAUSE OF CRIME
JJF the punishment of so-called crimes tended in any way to
||| prevent violent acts, this tendency would be manifest in.
some conclusive way. Whether brotherhood love and nonresistance would lessen crime may be a matter of debate,
but that punishment does not lessen it, seems to be as well
established as any fact that cannot be absolutely proved. The
death penalty was for years drastically enforced for the crime
of smuggling, but its enforcement in no way tended to prevent
the practice which flourished in spite of executions without
number,—the. common consciousness would not accept this pun
ishment as just and finally rulers were forced to modify the
punishment in self-defense. The punishment of death for larceny
did not prevent the crime. Nearly every religion has made its
way in the face of the severest penal statutes.
Its converts
have all been criminals and they have accepted and taught their
faith at the risk of life. Every organization of working men has
grown up in violation of human laws, and the jails, prisons» and
scaffolds have been busily engaged in suppressing this species of
crime; but in spite of the fact that judges still imprison and execute
for this crime, these associations are now almost as firmly estab
lished as any institution of the world. All new political ideas, de
mocracy, socialism, nihilism have met the same fact and have made
their way regardless of scaffolds and jails. Even in the common
crimes, like burglary and larceny, prisons have had no effect. From
the dawn of civilization an endless procession of weak and helpless
victims, handcuffed, despised and outlawed, have been marching up
to prison doors and still the procession comes and goes. Time does
not stay nor punishment make it less. In fact the older the com
munity and the better settled and undisturbed its life, the greater
^the number of these unfortunates whom, for some mysterious reason,
the Infinite has decreed a life of shame and a death of ignominy and
and dishonor. If scaffolds and prisons and judges and jailers have
no effect to prevent and lessen crime, common wisdom, to say nothing
of humane instincts, ought to seek some other plan.
Intelligent men have long since ceased to believe in miracle or
chance. Whatever they may think of ancient ’miracles and the original
chance that brought the universe into being, still most people now be
lieve that the world’s affairs, be they small or great, physical, intellectual,
or moral, come within the realm of law.
- In the ordinary affairs of life, men everywhere seek the causes
that produce effects. Men are called into being, live their lives and pass
away in obedience to natural laws which are as immutable as the move
ment of the tides. In our half civilized condition we partially compre
hend this fact. The defect of the born cripple, the idiot, the insane is
no longer charged to the poor victim who, unhampered by the world,
still has a burden as heavy as should be given to mortal man to bear.
B
�Clarence Darrow
31
The physician who would treat fever or measles or diphtheria without
considering the cause would be considered the veriest bungler an re
sponsible for his patient’s death. It is not so very long ago that a world
about as intelligent as our own believed that disease, deformity, and
sin came from the same cause,—some sort of an evil spirit that found
its abode in man. The way to destroy the evil spirit was generally to
destroy the man. The world will perhaps, grow wise enough not
only to believe that disease, deformity, and sin have a common cause,
but perhaps so wise as to find their common cause. No skilful physician
called to the bedside of a child suffering with scarlet fever would up
braid the child for the evil spirit that caused its pain; no more would he
punish the consumptive for his hacking cough; he would understand
perfectly well that the physical condition of each was due to some natural
cause, and that the disease could be cured in these patients and avoided
in others only when the cause was destroyed, or so well known that •
no one need fall a victim to the malady. Even in diseases of the most
contagious sort, where the isolation of the patient is necessary to protect
the lives and health of others, this isolation would be accomplished not
in hatred or malice but in the greatest tenderness and love,, and the isola
tion would last only for the purpose of a cure and a sufficient time for
cure; and every pains would be taken to destroy and stamp out the
cause which produced the disease.
The theory of disease is so well understood today that our physicians
clearly recognize mental disease as well as physical. Insanity is no
longer punished as a crime as in the days gone by, and even kleptomania
is now a well classified and recognized disease. No intelligent person
doubts the disease of kleptomania; its symptoms are too well established.
When a person steals a thing he does not need, it is an evidence, of ■
kleptomania, an ungovernable will. When a poor person takes a thing
he needs and cannot live without, there is no evidence of an ungoverna
ble will.
Many facts have been classified concerning physical disease and our
knowledge of its nature, cause, and cure grows year by year. Malignant
spirits and accident are no longer considered in reference to disease;
while the origin of all bodily ailments is not yet known, so many have
been ascertained as to make it sure that with sufficient knowledge,
all could be traced to their natural cause. And while the means have
not yet been found to cure each disease, still so much is known as to
. warrant the belief that there is no physical ailment that will necessarily
cause death.
And intelligent research is constantly adding to the known and ever
narrowing the realm of the mysterious and unexplained. In physical dis
ease long observation has shown that certain climates and certain locali
ties are favorable to this disease or that; some places naturally breed
malaria, and the mind of man is turned to discovering methods to over
come the conditions which produce the disease. If fevers abound, the
conditions are carefully observed to find what breeds the infectious
germ. It is not difficult to imagine that if the medical profesison should
ever labor purely to cure disease, instead of to make money for itself,
< and should continue its research and investigation, that few would die
�32
Resist Not Evil
ushers°iHnge Sh°uld terminate Jife as simply and naturally as birth
m the+ re-alm of the mental and the moral, the law has been
content for centuries to rest at ease. Our practical dealings with crime
e based on the same theories of evil and evil spirits that made wise
piysicians drive the devils into swine and swine into the sea. If anv
progress has been made it has been in believing that, instead of one
being possessed of a devil, he really is a devil. When the physical
dhion of fhV
1S S“ff*lent1^ far removed from the physical conhe is treated for^hn ?hlCh
t0 rePresent the n°rmal man,
varies fromdthfaf nfh!hdlSeT’ When
mental condition sufficiently
varies from that of the ordinary man, the normal man, he is promptly
imprisoned or put to death. Judges and juries debate and ponder over
done bv h’V 1 whetheS arm,an has done s°me act that is nJt commonly
art th7 hls,fellows> aI?d lf they determine that he is guilty of doing the
clL tJUiment follows that he must have wilfully and perversely
h X V° Wrong* N.° one then mcjuires why he did the act and
w ether there are conditions of disease present in the community that
will lead others to do like acts. There is but one thing to do The man
is evil. The state must lay violent hands upon him-must meH evil with
malice
is but one cure for “alfce and thS is
rule^nf XT“™?’*
law, and its administrators, some of the
rules of conduct have been brought to light: while iudp-es
iwon
sentencing, and haqgmen and jailers plying their gruesome trades there
?nXbner(?ihinkerSfa”i1 TT"48 and hiftoriaisgX“t beiiev:
' ishment
W!fihcrait a?d evil sPirits on which human punck^?Hed fniZ
J n These,stude1nts and scholars have labeled and
classified facts and have at least learned something as to the cause
wedd0tognroveWthhatfmen °En?Ugh at least has been discovIrimet P
H
pumshment has absolutely no effect to lessen
nc -Tihe an?ents believed in the existence of the body and the soul
ntithedreonpdhni entltle,s* . Each bad its own sphere
action and
In
T had any r-C atl?n tO the other' This idea has c°me down
d 1S+i?-reSnt J-n a l rour dealmgs with our fellow man. Par
ticularly is this the view of government in its tender care of those
v o^ are the subjects of its laws. The care and treatment of the
teaVeTnfYh
Jhke . Provjnce of .the physician. The care and
treatment of the soul belong to the priest and the hangman. Whether
man has a soul that ever existed or can exist independent of the body
™ay n! 7i?UfSu°n th,at wiI1 remain forever °Pen to occupy our
thoughts. But this at least is true: that the condition of the body
has the greatest influence over the mental and so-called moral nature
•ot man./ lhe body and mind grow together and decay together.
Health in one generally indicates health in the other. The overfeed
ing. or the starvation of the one means the disease of the other
VL d°ubtful
W mental characteristic or abnormal condition
could not be traced to its physical cause either in the individual or
ms ancestors, if science were far enough advanced.
Everyone who is familiar with the inmates of jails and penal
�Clarence Darrow
33
institutions has learned to know the type of man that is confined as
a criminal. In nearly every case these are inferior physically to the
average man. In nearly every case they are also inferior mentally
to the average man. One needs but visit our criminal courts day
after day to find that the average criminal is a stunted, starved, defi
cient man. More than this, almost universally they come from the
poorer class—men and women reared in squalor and misery and
want, surrounded from youth by those who have been compelled to
resort to almost any means for life; people who, whatever their own
code of ethics, have not been able in their growth to maintain those
distinctions in conduct which to the common mind constitute the
difference between lawful and unlawful acts. Here and there of
course one finds someone in jail who has been differently reared;
but these are the exceptions which in no way disprove the rule.
These cases too can be traced to their cause like all the rest.
There are certain moral diseases like speculation, for instance, that
seize on men exactly as the measles or the mumps. These diseases
generally flourish in great cities and are not indigenous to country
life. Not only are these prisoners deficient in stature and intellect,
but the shape Jp their heads shows them different from other men.
As a class their heads are much less symmetrical and what are
known as the higher faculties are much less developed than with
jthe ordinary man.
If it were established even that the criminal type is inferior
mentally and physically and that they have all misshapen heads,
this alone ought to be sufficient to raise the inquiry as to who was
responsible for their acts. Long ago a wise man said that no one
could by taking thought add a cubit to his stature, and yet we
hang and pen because these unfortunates have not grown as tall,
as large, or as symmetrical as the ordinary man. But the mental
actions of man have been shown to be as much due to law and
environment as his physical health,—certain sections of the world are
indigenous to men who kill their fellows; and more than this, cer
tain portions produce men who kill with-guns, others who kill with
a knife, others still who administer poison.- In certain sections, the
chief crime is horse stealing; in others, running illicit distilleries;
again, burglary; in some places, poaching; sometimes, robbery; and
again, smuggling. A study of conditions would reveal why each of
these crimes is indigenous to the particular soil that gives it birth,
and just as draining swamps prevents the miasma, so a rational
treatment of the condition caused by the various crimes would cure
them, too. If our physicians were no more intelligent than our law
yers, when called to visit a miasmic patient, instead of draining
the swamp they would chloroform the patient and expect thus to
frighten all others from taking the disease.
Observation as to so-called crime has gone much further. The
number of inmates of our jails is much larger in winter than in
summer, which ought to show that there is something in the air
that produces a wicked heart in the winter, or that many persons
directly or indirectly go to jail because in winter food and warmth
are not easily obtained and Work is hard to get. For many years it
�34
Resist Not Evil
has been observed that jails are very much more crowded in hard
times than in good, times. If work were sufficiently plenty or
remunerative both jails and almshouses would be compelled to close
their doors. Long ago it was ascertained from statistics that the
number of crimes rose and fell, in exact accord with the/price of
bread. All new communities, where land is cheap or free and labor
has ample employment, or, better still, a chance to employ itself, are
very free from crime. England made Australia its dumping ground
for criminals for years, but these same criminals when turned upon
the wide plains with a chance to get their living from the soil, became
peaceable, orderly citizens fully respecting one another’s rights.
England, too, used certain portions of her American colonies'where
she sent men for her country’s good. These criminals like all the
criminals of the world were the exploited, homeless class. When
they reached the new country, when they had an opportunity to live,
they became as good citizens as the pilgrim fathers who were like
wise criminals themselves. As civilization has swept westward
through the. United States, jails have lagged behind. The jail and
the penitentiary are not the first institutions planted by colonists in
a new country, or by pioneers in a new state. These pioneers go to
work to till the soil, to cut down the forests, to dig" the ore; it is
only when the owning class has been established and the exploiting
class grows up, that the jail and the penitentiary become fixed insti
tutions, to be used for holding people in their place. '
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Clarence Darrow
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PROPER TREATMENT OF CRIME
Kf^SKlEASON and judgment as well as an almost endless array of
JI facts has proven that crime is not without its cause. In showi
its cause> its cure has been made plain. If the minds and
fcUSOl energies of men were directed toward curing crime instead of
brutally assaulting the victims of society, some progress might be made.
It is often difficult to trace results, because their relations are not
always direct and plain. Even in the realm of physical facts it is always
easy to stray from the straight path between cause and effect. When we
observe the conduct of men and seek to find its cause the problem is
still more complex. Each human being is an entity made up of all that
is and of all that has gone before. It may not be possible to tell from
whence he obtained every quirk or peculiarity of his brain, but one
thing is sure, he did not form his own skull and could have but little
part in arranging the brain cells within the bone. This portion came
from his father, that his mother gave, this was bequeathed by a bloody
ancestor who died long generations since ; but all who went before did
their part, and gave their little mite to make the composite brain that
drives its possessor here and there.
While the exact cause of any act may not be ascertained, still the
general causes are beyond dispute. A stunted body means that either
its owner or its ancesor has almost surely been starved and that want
and hunger have left their traces on the brain. An inferior mind means
some incapacity, disease or disadvantage, either in the individual or his
ancestor, that has left him different from his fellow men. An asym
metrical head may reach back to the early ape, and account for any
possible seeming deficiency or peculiarity in the brain, which after all
must be molded in the shape that the bones allow it to assume. Starved
bodies can be cured by food. True, it may take more than one gen
eration to cure them as it may have taken several to produce them,
but, after all, they can be cured by food ; and a rational humane world
would commend itself more to thinking men and to the posterity which
will judge us, by feeding these starved bodies rather than imprisoning
them in pens. An inferior mind or an ill-shaped head can be reached
in a generation or more by feeding the body that supports it, by treating
it with tenderness, charity and kindness, rather than ruling it with
hatred, bitterness and violence.
Nearly every crime could be wiped away in one generation by giving
the criminal a chance. The life of a burglar, of a thief, of a prostitute,
is not a bed of roses. Men and women are only driven to these lives
after other means have failed. Theirs are not the simple, natural lives
of children,.nor of the childhood of the world; but men and women
can learn these professions or be bred to them. After other resources are
exhausted they will be chosen for the simple reason that life is sweet.
With all its pangs and bitterness, it is the nature of life to send its poor
�3b
Resist Not Evil
tendrils deep into the earth and cling with all its force and power to this
poor, fleeting, transitory world.
Men are slow to admit that punishment is wrong and that each
human soul is the irresponsible, unconscious product of all that has gone
before; and yet every kind and wise parent in the world proves by his
every relation with his child that he knows that he is the author of his
being and the molder of his character, and that he, the parent, is in
finitely more responsible for the soul he launches than is the child
himself. There might be some measure of justice in trying and punish
ing the parent for the conduct of the child, but even this does not reach
back. The.source of every life runs back to the Infinite itself. Every
right thinking' father does his best to have his child reared in those
influences and surroundings which will best contribute to his physical,
mental and moral growth. Even then he feels that the future is doubt
ful enough; that mag is weak and finite and blind; that he sees but a
little way into the dim, uncertain future; that he is filled with passions,
emotions and desires; that he must travel a path beset with all sorts
of temptations and promises; that his weak sight will look upon beau
tiful cities and fair prospects which are only mirages and sent to beguile
and ensnare his soul. Few judges, if called upon, would not sooner slay
their innocent sleeping child with their own loving hands, than abandon
him to grow up in the streets or make his way unaided through the
tangled mazes that confront’ the homeless and the poor; and yet these
same judges will coolly arraign men who all their lives have walked
in the shadows through a tangled maze beset with passion and fear
and sentence them to death and ask God to have mercy on their souls'
Every man who loves his child and seeks to surround him with what is
best for his physical, mental and moral needs denies in his very life the
right of man to judge and punish his fellow man.
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Clarence Darrow
CHAPTER IX
IMPOSSIBILITY OF JUST JUDGMENT
ATURAL laws rule the world. It is a mistake to believe that
the conduct of man is outside of natural law. The laws, of
being that move all the sentient world rule him. His first
impulse is to preserve his life, and his next to preserve the
species. Nature planted these instincts so deeply in his being that no
civilization can root them up. To destroy these instincts would be
to destroy the human race. The first instinct- of man is to pre
serve his life. To do this he must obtain the food, shelter and raiment
that enable him to live. His constant effort has been ever to get
these at the smallest expenditure of time and strength. In a semi
cooperative state like ours the strongest choose the easiest, most re
munerative occupations society can bestow. The less fortunate the
next best, and so on down the scale. At the lowest place some are
forced to abject toil, to practical slavery, to beggary, to crime. Men
would not steal sheep if they had land on which to raise mutton. Men
would not explore their neighbor’s houses at dead of night, if their own
were filled; and women would not sell their bodies if society left them
any other fairly decent and pleasant way to live.
Even if punishment by the state could ever be justified, no man
is wise enough or_good enough to administer that punishment. It is
the theory of the law that by means of its magical wisdom it is enabled
to fix a code enumerating the acts that are sufficiently evil to consti
tute a crime; and for each of these enumerated acts it sets a penalty
which it presumes is sufficiently severe and drastic in some mysteri
ous way to atone for, excuse, absolve or at least in some way make
right, or certainly make better the commission of the act. Punishment
must proceed upon the theory that some are wilfully bad, possessed of
devils, and the bad must be punished when found bad, to prevent others
who are bad from committing crime. Men could only be punished be
cause they are wilfully bad. If men are part good and part bad it
will not do to punish. Plow could the law or courts fix the exact line
as to how bad a man might be to deserve punishment, and how good
to excuse it? Neither is it the act that should be punished, for it
would be a hard and cruel and strange code of negative ethics that
should say that a man should be punished for an evil act and not be
rewarded for a virtuous one; and even judges might find difficulty in
balancing the good and bad; and besides, does not the law in its wisdom
say that an evil act shall be punished regardless of its consequences?
I may steal my neighbor’s horse at night and return it in the morning.
I am none the less a thief and my home is the prison. I may burglarize
a safe and find it empty, but the crime has been completed and it de
serves the penitentiary. In each case I deserve the penitentiary because
my heart is bad. Thus the old theory is the only one on which the
believer in punishment could rest for a moment, that some men are
bad and some are good—at least some are bad.
The law is not concerned with the good. Its business is not re
H
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Resist Not Evil
warding, but punishment; not love, but hate. How can human judg
ment determine what heart is bad ? Men’s lives are a strange mixture
of thought, motive and action; an infinite mixture of good and evil, as
it is given to finite man to know good and evil. No life is wholly good,
and no life is wholly bad. A life of great virtues may here and there
be interspersed with an evil act. The law picks out the evil and ignores
the good. A life barren of real affirmative goodness may still be free
from serious positive sin, and thus escape the condemnation of man
and his courts. The conduct which falls under the observation of
others is not so much due to the goodness or badness of the heart
as to the emotion or placidity of the nature. In balancing the evil
of a life against the good, no one can give the exact weight to each
for no two men weigh moral worth or turpitude with the same
scales. Neither can a man’s standing be determined until his life
is done. Acts which seem evil if left to develop character are often
the means of softening the heart, of developing love and charity and
humanity, of really building up the moral worth of man. But no
person can be judged even by his conduct. Goodness and evil are
both latent in man and this fact shows the evil of resistance and
force. One may be intrinsically good and live a long life and still
never be touched upon the proper side to develop character and
reveal to the world the real self. It requires circumstance, oppor
tunity and the proper appeal to develop the best in man, the same
as to develop the worst in man. To judge the character of a human
soul from one isolated act, would be as impossible as to judge his
physical health by testing his sight or hearing alone. Every person’s
first impressions show how often these are really wrong, and how
much they depend upon the circumstances.of time and place. To
really judge another’s character requires almost infinite knowledge,
not of his acts alone, but of his thoughts and aspirations, his tempta
tions, and environment, and every circumstance that makes up his
life. But if the administration of punishment is to depend on
the good or evil of the man, then each person must be judged from
his own standpoint. One’s merit or demerit depends not on what
he does but on his purpose and intent, upon his desire to do good
or evil. In short, upon the condition of his heart, which can only be
- told in part from his isolated acts.
Each person has his own rule of conduct and of life. The high
est that can be done by any human soul is to live and strive accord
ing to his best conception of the highest life. To one man an act
appears harmless which to another is a heinous crime. One man
would blaspheme, but under no circumstances would beat a dog or
kill a fly. One might commit larceny or even murder by the very
strength of his love. Again, real character, merit and demerit cannot
be judged except in view of the capacity, the opportunity, the teach
ing of the life. No honest judgment of the worth of any soul can be
measured except with full knowledge of every circumstance that
made his life, and with this knowledge the man who would accuse
would but condemn himself. But even if every act of every life were
open to the sight of man, this could furnish no guide to true char
acter. The'same temptation does not appeal alike to all. One man
�Clarence Darrow
39
fnay not be tempted by strong drink and may never fall. Another
with an appetitie born in a remote ancestor may struggle. manfully
and fail. The temptation to take property by force does not appea
to one who can get it by inheritance or gift or fraud. The desire
Jo kill never moves the soul of the placid man. To know what it
means requires an intimate, infinite knowledge of every emotion of
Se soul of every fiber of the body, and the understanding not of
how the temptations or inducements that he met would affect, the
judge, but how they would affect the mam Science has determined
a way to measure the height and the girth of an individual 1o tell
the color of his eyes and hair, to determine the shape ^d contour
of his skull. It has not yet found a way to look beneath the skull
and weigh the actions and responsibilities of that hidden involved
mystery—the human brain, or to look at the real man the huma
soul, and judge whether the Infinite Maker made it white or black.
If every man who passed an unjust judgment on his fellow shou
be condemned, how many judges would be found so vain and foo
as to review and condemn their Maker s work.
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Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER X
THE JUDGE OF THE CRIMINAL
I^^^T even if some men deserve punishment, who is to judge?
The old injunction still comes back and ever will return
when man arraigns his fellow, “Let him who is without sin
cast the first stone.” To find a judge without sin in the
ordinary meaning of the word is necessarily out of the question.
They must of course pretend to be holier than the rest, and or
ganized society helps out the farce and fraud. At the best, one
guilty man is.set up. to judge another,—one man filled with his
weaknesses, his infirmities, his shortcomings, sets himself up to
judge not only that his fellow man is a criminal but that he him
self is better than his fellow. And yet all the past and the present
have conspired to make him good, to keep him from temptation, that
he might the better pass judgment on another, while all the world
have conspired to place the victim where he is. Verily, in the light
of infinite justice, no greater crime .could be committed than to
judge and condemn your fellows, and if there shall ever be a final
day when the crooked is made straight and the purpose of all shall
be revealed and understood, safer far will be the man who has
received the sentence than the one who has dared to pass judgment
on another’s life and pronounce it bad.
But how is this judge to determine the guilt or innocence of
his fellow? He cannot know his life and does not seek to know,
To understand fully another’s life would require infinite pains and
Such research as no judge could give or pretend to give. The judge
cannot balance, up the character of his victim; he simply seeks in a
poor, clumsy, imperfect way to ascertain whether he did a certain
act. Whatever else he did, his attitude of mind, his necessities, his
early training, his opportunities and temptations, the number of
temptations resisted before one proved too much.—all of this is
beyond the power of a human judge to know; yet all of it bears upon
the real character of the man and should go to show whether, on the
whole, he deserves blame or praise, and the extent of each.
In the light of all this, how many human souls could be guiltily
cast out as bad ? It requires infinite pains and almost infinite knowl
edge to judge -one’s physical condition. A man is suffering from
some ailment and a doctor is called to treat him. The disease may
be of long standing and located income organ beyond the reach of
sight and.hearing; he patiently -watches every symptom to know the
real condition of the physical man and the cause that made him ill.
He calls the wisest surgeons to consult and these may never be able
to locate the disease, or the cause that made the patient as he is.
But twelve untutored jurors and a judge wantonly and carelessly set * themselves up to pass on the condition of a human soul—a soul no
man has seen or by any chance can ever see,—a life they do not
know and could not understand and do not even seek to understand.
They take this soul and, with their poor light, which at the best is
�Clarence Darrow
41
blackest darkness, they pronounce it bad, and in violence and malice
deny it the right of fellowship with its human brothers, each equally
a portion of the great Infinite which takes all of good and all of bad
and makes of these one great, divine, inclusive whole.
The judge must and does view the conduct of his victim accord
ing to his own ideas of right and wrong. At his best he takes with
him to the judgment tribunal every prejudice, bias and belief that
his education, surroundings and heredity have left on him. He
measures the condemned by the ideal man, and the ideal man must
be himself, or one made from his weak, fallible- concepts of right
and wrong. Naturally he places little weight or value upon those
vices which are a portion of his own character, or those virtues
which he does not possess, or especially admire. A judge can see no
character or virtue in an accused man, who would rather suffer
imprisonment or death than to betray his fellows. In the judgment
of the courts the betrayer is rewarded, the man of character and
worth condemned. A judge reads the code, “Thou shalt not steal.”
He cannot understand how a so-called thief should have forcibly
taken a paltry sum. He cannot conceive, that he, himself, could
under any circumstances have done the like. .Such conduct must
come from a depraved and wicked hea-rt—a devil that dwells .within
the culprit. The common thief looks at the judge arrayed in fine
linen and living in luxury and ease, with nothing to do but pass
judgment on his fellowman. He dimly understands how much
easier it is for the judge to obtain his large salary than for him
to get the poor wages of his hazardous and shifting trade. But the
judge does not begin to comprehend that, if he could not have
received his salary or obtained a tolerable life in any of the endless
grades of activity between his profession and the thief’s, very easily
he might have been the victim with some other fortunate man to
pronounce him bad. Human judgments are not passed in view of
all the circumstances of the case. If this was the condition of human
judgments, no man could be condemned.
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Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER XI
THE MEASURE OF PUNISHMENT
UT admitting the right to punish, where is there a man with
the wisdom to inflict punishment? By what magical scales
can he weigh the guilt of a human being, and by what
standard can he determine the judgment that is propor
tionate to his guilt? It must be evident that the wit of man
never did invent or can invent a measure that shall determine
the just amount of punishment for any human act. The punish
ment administered does not in any way indicate the extent of
the culprits transgression, but simply shows the degree of bru
tality of the law, and of those who are given the power of fixing
the extent of punishment to be imposed. The victim whom the
law catches in its net is at the mercy of the judge. His fate
depends not upon his life, not upon what society has done for
n°’" uPon h°w he kas repaid the debt. Nor does it depend upon
the intrinsic value of his souh for no human judgment can reach this.
Neither does it depend upon the ratio between the brain he had, and
the temptation he resisted, or the ratio between the overpowering
force he met and the. weak will and intellect which heredity had
bequeathed to him. His. fate rests with the humanity or inhumanity
displayed, the point of view, the experience, the prejudice, the social
surroundings, the physical condition, the appetite or the breakfast
of the judge, whose, light and easy duty it is to pronounce judg
ment on the life or liberty of a fellow man.
Given the best equipment and the greatest knowledge and sense
of responsibility on the part of the judge, how then will stand the
case? A. prisoner is arraigned for forcibly taking a pocketbook on
the public street. The instinct to do the act may have come upon him
in a moment’s time, as the opportunity seemed suddenly present and
the need seemed great. Under the peculiar circumstances of the time
and place, he may have been impelled to act when a moment’s reflec
tion. would have stayed his hand. In a hundred cases the oppor
tunity for the reflection was present, and he passed through un
scathed, and then there came a time when the judgment had no
chance to speak and he was lost. The crime even at its worst dif
fers only in degree, perhaps not in that, from the actions of our daily
lives. We look at another’s pocketbook and covet it, or covet his
home or coat or wealth—the case presents the same evil heart. Our
action, however, is tempered and controlled by judgment and the
power of will.
Assuming the man is bad, where is the judge who can measure
the punishment he ought to have? How many endless, silent, shame
ful days, each made of hours that seem eternities, should he be con
fined for this? How many days should drag their endless weary
length into, months and years before the act should be atoned ?
And is justice done when the victim, old and bent, and silent, and
�Clarence Darrow
43
gray, with health destroyed and character and hope forevei gone, is
once more led out into the strange, bewildering light of day?
There can be'no measure for human conduct. All scales, rules
and measures are valueless when used to judge the soul. Even time
cannot be counted. The judge upon the bench lightly consigns his
victim to a prison pen. He measures the victim s years by t e
swiftly gliding days that pass like magic in his joyous life, io the
judge, time strides with seven league boots; even the grim specter
at the end, the one skeleton at his feast, even this ever-present
shadow but hastens the magic flight of years. But the clock that
ticks away the joyous wasted moments at the banquet hall is not
the same timepiece that hangs upon the penitentiary walls. One
pendulum leaps gladly back and forth; the other moves with the
weight and gravity of human life, of human death, of endless agony,
of unmitigated pain. Time is the most obstinate of the delusive gifts
that fate bequeaths to man. When we would have her speed she
moves with leaden foot. When we would have her halt she flies
with magic wings.
.
,
Rulers have invented and used all sorts of punishments ana
constantly alternated from one to the other; each one in use seeming
to be inferior to some one hitherto untried. .Corporal punishment
has respectively come and gone. Public floggings and private flog
gings, tortures, and death in various ways, have met the approval
and then the disapproval of the governing power. But with all of
them, crime has gone on and on, unmindful alike of the form or
extent of the punishment in vogue.
The effect of an act of cruelty and violence can never be mea
sured or understood. No one can tell the full consequences that
occur to every human being when the state puts one to death, or
flogs, or maims, or imprisons, or even fines. A violent a-ct produces
injury, hardship and suffering to the victim who is powerless in the
strong grasp of the law. But the evil does not end with him.
In ever-widening circles the results of cruelty move on and on
until to some degree or part they reach every member of society.
Unless punishment lessens the sum of human suffering, increases
the measure of human joy, and thus lengthens and adds to life, it has
no right to be.
Punishment brings positive evil. Any possible good that it may
produce is at the best problematical and wholly impossible to prove.
From the first victim whom the state degrades with punishment,
the evil and the hardship and suffering moves on to family and ,
friends. In no theory of the law is compensation, or recompense,
or making good, any part of punishment. If taking the life, of the
prisoner could bring to life the victim whom he killed there might be
some apparent excuse for the punishment of death. If imprisoning
in the penitentiary in any way retrieved a wrong or made up a loss,
a prison might be tolerated, and some relation might be shown
between punishment and crime. Even in cases where a fine is admin
istered, in place of imprisonment, the fine does not go in any way
to retrieve any loss, but goes to the state as pure punishment and
nothing else. Everywhere in the theory and administration of pun-
�44
Resist Not Evil
ishment is the rule the same. The one purpose is to injure, to
harm, to inflict suffering upon the individual whom society sets
apart.
.
When traced to the end, the sole theory on which punishment
is based is that a certain man has committed an act of violence and
crime, and that, therefore, in some mysterious way this is to be
made right by inflicting an injury on him. That the original wrong
will not be undone has no bearing on the case—that others entirely
innocent may suffer more grievously than the accused is not to be
considered in the infliction of punishment. The father may be taken
from the helpless children, and these left to grow up as best they
can, with their own hardships and their father’s evil name to bear, but
society stands, unmoved. Though the heavens fall, justice must be
done, and justice can only be done by inflicting pain. The execution
or imprisonment of the father may not unreasonably turn the chil
dren to follow in the path the state marked out for him. This is not
the affair of government,—not prevention or recompense or reward
is the function of the state; but vengeance, vengeance sure and com
plete.
Justice is not the function of the state; this forms no part of
the scheme of punishment. Punishment is punishment. A wife and
helpless babes may be left in want when the state lays its hand in
wrath upon the man. Under the law of natural justice the child has
a right to support and care from the father, who is responsible for
its life. Still, the state, not with a prior right, but with a greater
power, takes, the. father from his child, kills him or pens him, and
turns the child into the byways of the world, giving it only the
heritage of the father’s shame. It is no answer to say that such a
father, is of no value to the child. Many a kind, indulgent father
has violated the penal codes of man. Many a father has been sent
to prison because he so loved his child that he committed crime.
From the nature of things there can be no justice in punish
ment. Justice imposes relation between act and consequence. The
judgment of man is utterly powerless to pass upon the merits or
elements of a human soul. But justice from the state to its citizens
imports some ratio between the rewards, opportunities and punish
ments meted out to each. As to rewards and opportunities, the
state does nothing except to assist the strong to despoil the weak.
It furnishes no opportunity for its helpless, no chance for develop
ment and life, and gives no rewards for meritorious conduct, and
makes no allowance for resisting temptation from crime. But aside
from all this, within the realm where the state pretends to do jus
tice, there, is no equality meted out between its various members.
The code is unyielding, the positive dead letter of the law is man’s
highest and profoundest judgment as to the conduct of his fellows.
Each human soul is a separate entity, with its own hopes, de
sires and fears; some impassive and stolid, some sensitive and
shrinking. To be accused of crime means more to some natures
than years of imprisonment to others. The body is not alone the
subject of punishment. Man, with his tortures and cruelties, seeks
to reach the mind even more than the body. Striped clothes furnish
�Clarence Darrow
45
the same warmth as other garments, but to some the stripes are an
ever-consuming flame. To others, properly educated and hardened
by the state, this consciousness does not add to the punishment
involved. One day of forced confinement, or one moment of the
indignity of handcuffs, means more to some than a year of hard
labor. The terms of imprisonment are not the same to all. To
some a term, however short, means the blighting of a life, and the
destruction of a family—perchance a wife and child, a father or a
mother, whose sorrow and shame are greater for being indirect.
With a sensitive soul no punishment ends when the prison gates
are opened up. Its consciousness lives as long as life endures. No
day is so bright, and no prospect so pleasing, but the black shadow
is ever-present, blighting life, and driving hope and sunshine from
the soul.
In cases where fines are meted out those who can afford to pay
escape with comparative ease; others are forced to shift a burden
of debt upon father, mother, wife, children, or friends, who are thus
punished for years, not for crime, but for their loyalty and love.
If, perchance, through any effort the money for a fine can be ob
tained, the state cruelly and brutally takes the unholy, ill-gotten
cash, although it may mean that a home is scant of food and shiver
ing in cold or darkness; or a little child is forced from school to a
factory or store. It may mean a plundered girlhood and abandoned
-womanhood, that the vengeance of the state may be appeased. The
taking of money by the state in payment of crime is infinitely more
damnable than private theft. The evils of force and violence are
unending—bold and ignorant, indeed, is he, whether ruler, official,
or.private citizen, who sets in motion bitterness and hate. It is an
evil force set loose upon the earth to wander up and down, canker
ing, polluting and despoiling all it meets, augmented by every other
force, to be conquered and subdued, if ever conquered and subdued,
only by infinite mercy and charity and love.
Every man ,whether ruler, juror, judge or whosoever that is
called upon or volunteers to pass judgment on the conduct of others,
must do it according to his own flickering, feeble light, according
to the experiences that have made up his life. It is for this reason
that good men are so bad, and bad men so good. Life ordinarily
means breadth. Some, of course, are born deaf and blind, and the
longer they travel the road the more contracted, cold and unchar
itable they become; but to the ordinary person life means suffering
and, above all other lessons, it teaches charity. As the real man
grows older, less and less does he believe in or administer punish
ment, and more and more does he see the extenuating circumstances
that explain and excuse every act. The stern and upright judge is
an impossibility. No one can be stern and upright. In proportion
as he becomes truly upright, really just, the more nearly he ap
proaches the character of the ideal judge, the more nearly does he
understand the injustice of violence and cruelty, and the eternal
unfailing righteousness of charity and love. Where is the man so
wise or the judge so great and just that he could take any two
-human beings with their different ancestry, environment, oppor
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Resist Not Evil
tunities, passions and temptations, and pronounce a judgment that
would equalize the two? Lawmakers, since the world began, have
been busy undoing each other’s wrongs. Courts have been estab
lished whose sole duty it is to correct other courts. Unjust judg
ments are necessarily incident to the infirmities of man. The wise
judge who looks back over a long career, the judge who knows
human life and has a human heart, the judge who seeks to be ruled
by his conscience, will find much in his past career he would wish
undone. He .will look back on many unjust judgments, on many
things done in anger and hatred, cruelty and wrong, on blighted
hopes and ruined lives. But in his whole career he will regret no
act of charity, no deed of mercy that he has been moved to do.
He will look back on judgments he would reverse, but these are not
judgments of love or forgiveness or charity, but judgments of force,
of violence, of hate.
*
�Clarence Darrow
47
CHAPTER XII
WHO DESERVES PUNISHMENT?
F there is any justice in human punishment it must be based
upon the theory of intrinsic evil in the victim. Punishment
■
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limflflPrl hpponcp rz +
z-x-f l-m+v-»1*-.»..
'T'q
1
1
I
1
I
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I
I
�48
Resist Not Evil
they might produce a very different effect. It is like a body in mechan
ics operating upon another smaller or larger body. The laws of the
universe are not at work in one place and held in abeyance in another.
In these cases reason and judgment have no opportunity to act. Re.
flection and conscience in no wise enter into the affair. Feeling, emo
tion, passion alone are responsible for the deed. The human feelings
as they sweep through that uncharted land, the human soul, produce
infinitely varied results, like the moving wind, whose sound depends
entirely upon the unconscious instrument with which it toys,
�Clarence barrow
49
CHAPTER XIII
NATURAL LAW AND CONDUCT
ANY of the crimes fixed by law are purely arbitrary. To
commit them or to refrain does not necessarily imply innocence
or guilt. Of such a character, for instance, are revenue laws,
the observance of holy days and the like. A large number of
forbidden acts that are generally supposed to imply moral guilt are also
purely arbitrary. Most of the laws governing the taking and obtaining
of property, which constitutes the great burden of our penal code, are
arbitrary acts, whose sole purpose is to keep the great mass of property
in the hands of the rulers and exploiters and to send to jail those who
help themselves and who have no other means within their power to sus
tain their lives. Most of the so-called thieves and other offenders against
property, dimly know this fact. Without being able to analyze or logi
cally realize it, they, after all, feel that they have committed no wrong,
and that they took the only road life had left open for their feet.
/Nearly our whole criminal code is made up of what may be called
property crimes, or crimes against property, if they may be so called.
These crimes, are burglary, larceny, obtaining property by false pre
tenses, .extortion, and the like. The jails and penitentiaries of every
nation in the world are filled to overflowing with men and women who
have been charged with committing crimes against property. Probably
nine-tenths of all the business of criminal courts come directly from
property crimes./ A very large proportion of the balance comes indi
rectly from this cause. Nothing could more completely show the hum
buggery, knavery and the absolute hypocrisy of all punishment by the
state than the patent facts with reference to these crimes. From first
to last these inmates of jail and penitentiary, these suffering outcast
men are utterly without property and have ever been. In the penal
institutions of the world are confined a motley throng charged with
committing assaults upon property, and yet this whole mass of despised
and outcast humanity have ever been the propertyless class, have never
had aught whereon to lay their heads. But where is all the property
that has been the subject of these dire assaults? No matter where you
turn your eyes in the world, the whole property is in the hands of a
chosen few, and the so-called owners of all this wealth created by the
labor of man and the bounty of nature—these co-called owners have
committed no crime against property. The statement of the fact is
sufficient to show the inequality of the whole system under which the
fruits of the earth are kept in the possession of the few. These despised
and outcast ones have violated no law of conscience or justice, have
committed no unrighteous assault on property. The plain fact that will
one day stand clearly forth to explain the whole brutal code which is
used to imprison and enslave,—the plain reason and object of these laws
is the fact that the rulers who have forcibly seized the earth have made
certain rules and regulations to keep possession of the treasures of the
world, and when the disinherited have reached out to obtain the means
of life, they have been met with these arbitrary rules and lodged in jail.
�50
Resist Not Evil
worlJheAdV0CateS °f Pu"ishnlent believe that law controls the natural
¡faSSfeSR«
diminish iwrt KT« t/
-m r , r .seasons of the year increase or
6 wdd f™l flies north in summer and south
in Winter Th f
v1 r Th sYarmm£ of bees> the homes of ants in short all the
activities, lives and deaths of the brute creation are surely seen to t
depends upon the same powers and forces, the same great source of
But when man is reached it would seem that the rule of law is at
dnp^n'rt
lfe and death’ his goin^s in and out, his myriad acts are
due to no rule or system or law, but are the result of capricious will
alone. True, in many of his acts man recognizes the great force in whn««
*ePa0WH,?e TT ‘hVnSeCt’ °r the ^ain 'S —Thy S
nAy v Hi and there he seems to dimly understand the great laws
fath!
Lty\°i se(luence, of consequence, that govern human life Everv
father who takes pains in the rearing of his child, who surrounds h
wi h the influences that build up character and develop judgment and
men“th?Xnrth of ThV “T*7’ the controlling power of environent, the strength of habit and circumstance. The life of tribes and
races and nations show that fixed laws control in the actions of men
as everywhere e se within the realm of nature. Man is a part of nature’
the highest evolution of all, but still a part firmly bound by law to
verse contains^ ^7^
PtrtlCF °f force which the wide unif?11131118’ Th? llfe and death of man, his distribution over the
Hfpth’Ma
aS an mdlvlduaI or a tribe, depend upon all other
e. Man draws his sustenance from the animate and inanimate world
The lives of bees depend upon &e flowers, their number and condition'
their coming and going; their birth and death is due to this natural cause
outside the control of the individual bee. The life of man depends unon
SfSlifUePP Itfs tf00dihni -Shver’ UP°n hin abiHty t0 obtain ^necessities
th«
1
lhat in ?ls Progress he is no longer bound so closely
i tbe ,eartb as m hJs early stages. He has learned something of the
laws of . nature and is able to take some thought for the morrow: but
^et fam3ne destr°ys him, disease overcomes him; severe droughts pro
tracted heat, great inundations of flood, all these affect his life, cha7<
population, destroy vast numbers, always the weaker, those less able to
provide for themselves, those who, from circumstances, have taken the
smallest thought for the morrow.
. EvenJn the most civilized, progressive lands man is dependent on
nature The constant thought of much the largest portion of mankind
is for the piocurement of those things that will sustain, prolong and
render their lives more comfortable. The vast majority of men are
closely bound to the soil and their whole life is a struggle for the means
tn1piVKi
arge “aJority of tbose whose condition is the most
tolerable, find life an endless struggle and anxiety their constant com
�Clarence Darrow
51
panion. Such a thing as a free choice of life is out of the question for
the vast majority of men born upon the earth; their residence, occu
pation, hours of labor, method of life, are fixed almost irrevocably in
obedience to the demands of their physical being. After those whose
conditions of life are the most tolerable, come a great mass whose exist
ence is most precarious, dependent upon the condition of the harvest,
the condition of trade, the amount of rain or snow, the quantity of sun
shine, and a thousand circumstances far beyond their control.
As a consequence of his desire for life and the means that make
it certain and pleasant, man has ever turned his attention toward the
conquest of nature, reducing vegetable and animal life to his control.
But his conquest does not end here. Not vegetables and animals alone
must be his slaves, but man as well. Ever has man enslaved his fellow;
from the beginning of his career upon the earth he has sought to make
his own existence pleasanter and more certain by compelling others to
toil for him. In its more primitive stages slavery was enforced by the
ownership of the man. In its later and more refined stages it is carried
on by the ownership of the things from which man must live. All life
comes primarily from the earth and without access to this great first
source of being, man must die. Passing from the ownership of indi
viduals, rulers have found it easier and more certain to own the earth—
for to own the earth is to fix the terms on which all must live. More
and more does the master seek to control access to land, to coal, to
timber, to iron, to water—these prime requisites to life. More and more
certainly, as time and civilization move on, do these prime necessities
pass to the few. Every new engine of production makes it easier for
the few to reduce the earth to their possession. Even land itself is of
no value without the railroads, the harbors, the mines and the forest.
Everywhere these have passed into the hands of the few. From the
private ownership of men, the rulers have passed to the private owner
ship of the earth and the control of the land. The rulers no longer
have the right to buy and sell the man, to send him here and there to
suit their will. They simply have the power to dictate the terms upon
which he can stand upon the earth. With the mines, the forests, the
oil, the harbors, the railroads, and the really valuable productive land
in the rulers’ hands, the dominance and power of man over his fellows
is not necessary to show that it is the ruling class who own the earth—
the owners of the earth must be the ruling class.
�52
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER XIV
RULES GOVERNING PENAL CODES AND THEIR VICTIMS
HE rulers make penal codes for the regulation and control of the
earth and all the property thereon—the earth which was made
long ages before they were evolved, and will still remain ages
after they are dust. Not only do they make these rules to
control the earth for their brief, haughty lives, but they provide that it
may pass from hand to hand forever. The generations now living, or
rather those that are dead and gone, fixed the status of unborn millions,
and decreed that they shall have no place to live except upon such terms,
as may be dictated by those who then controlled the earth. To retain
all the means of life in the hands of the few and compel the many to do
service to support-these few requires the machinery of the state. It is
for this that penal laws are made, and the effort of the despoiled to
reach out in their despair and obtain a small portion of the natural
heritage of all, is directly and indirectly the basis of all property assaults.
Every person who has observed cattle knows that if the pasture is
good the animals are quiet, and will stay where they are placed ; but let
the pasture grow thin until hunger comes and they will learn to jump.
There were never cattle so quiet and well behaved that they could not
be made to jump, and never cattle so breachy that they could not be
made tame. Even successive generations of starving and abuse will not
so far pervert their nature but that successive generations of kind treat
ment will bring them back to a peaceful, gentle life. Human beings are
like cattle in a field. They are cattle in a field. Give them a chance to
live and. prosper, and violent acts will be unknown ; but bring them close
to the line of starvation or want and their natural rights assert them
selves above the forms and laws that man has made to hold the earth
and enslave his fellows. Of course here and there may be found cases
where generations of outlawry and exploitation have left their marks
upon men, until they seem to prefer this life; but in those cases fair
treatment would generally remove this in the first generation, and always
before many generations had come and gone.
All energy manifests itself along lines of least resistance, and the
first energies of man are devoted to the procurement of the means of
life. . It is only where organized tyranny has made violence and force
the line of least resistance that men will deviate from the normal path,
and so long as the cupidity and brutal selfishness of man shall make this
the line of least resistance, all the laws on earth cannot overcome the
primal instincts and feelings upon which life depends. A race that would
starve, or beg, or accept alms before violating the brutal laws that fence
the children of nature from their source of life, would quickly degenerate
into abject slavery and finally into nothingness. All so-called animals
do not reason out the cause that placed them where they are. Instinc
tively they feel that they are doing what they must. This class hâve
generally lived for years, sometimes for generations, so near the border
line, have lived such precarious lives that their callings and avocations »
�Clarence Darrow
53
have grown as natural and normal as monopolizing the earth has grown
to another class. They are fully aware of the dangers incident to their
craft, of the scanty recompense that their lives afford, and, like all other
men, would at once abandon their calling for an opportunity to lead
more normal lives. They are in no sense devoid of these common in
stincts of humanity upon which nature rests all life. Given a child fall
ing into a river, an old person in a burning building, a woman fainting
in the street, and a band of convicts would risk their lives to give aid as
quickly at least as a band of millionaires.
Nature takes little account of atoms, her operations are on a. wide
field, a broad scale'. She brings famine, a million men must, die; she
does not seem to pick out the individual men—she draws a straight hard
line, and those who step across cannot return. Nature and man com
bine to make hard the condition of human life for the great majority
that live upon the earth. A very few choose the roads of luxury and
ease; the vast mass are scattered in all the avenues of life; some serve
by abject toil; some enter the hazardous callings of the railroads and
the mines; some the extra hazardous of making gunpowder and nitro
glycerine ; and some the still more hazardous—these are thieves. or
burglars or robbers or prostitutes, as the case may be. Conditions im
prove, and man moves up in the scale; the toilers have greater luxury;
those in hazardous callings take an easier place; the extra hazardous
rise to the hazardous; and the still more hazardous to the extra hazard
ous. The conditions of life become more severe and the current flows
-the other way. It is then that the jails and the penitentiaries are crowded
to the utmost limit they will hold.
Statistics have shown that the number of inmates in our prisons
increases with every rise in the price of food. If a combination increases
the price of flour a cent a pound and ten thousand men are sent to jail
throughout the world, in the judgment of infinite wisdom and justice
who will be held responsible for the crime? Every time that the trust
raises the price of coal some poor victims are sent to jail, and at every
raise in the price of oil some girls are sent out upon the streets to get
their bread by a life of wretchedness arid shame.
That these property laws are purely arbitrary is shown by the
slightest thought. The criminal statutes forbid extortion and swindling,
and yet the largest part of business is extortion, and much of the bal
ance is swindling. When the law forbids extortion and swindling, it
simply forbids certain forms and methods of these acts, and these forms
and methods are the ones not practiced by the ruling class. They are so
small and insignificant as not to constitute business but only petty annoy
ance to the ruling class. To go directly to a victim and by threats of
violence compel him’ to pay more for some commodity than it is really
worth is generally extortion, but this is a very clumsy and infrequent
act. Real extortion is taking for any service more than it is fairly worth
by means of agencies created by the extorter to despoil his victim, and
' this is the business of the business world. Nearly every street-car line
and every gas plant in the world operates its business by means of
special privileges, and from one-half to three-fourths of the money
they receive is extorted from that portion of the community that has
no redress. The railroad companies, who, through watered stocks and
�54
Resist Not Evil
bon^and combinations, charge the consumer twice and more the value
stait ThrV1Ce Te?’ t0UrCh the pocket Of every°ne who
Un a modern
state. The production of iron, clothing, many kinds of food in fact the
largest part of what is used in daily life, is controlled by combinations
ose sole pui pose is extortion; they scheme to control the market ab
solutely and take from the consumers what they have. And vet for this
extortion which reaches every home and despoils every fireside the law
furnishes no redress. Either it does not come withi/the provisions of
to r^°fVe Se i0? Wh° -re char£ed with
enforcement do not care
to reach this sort of extortion which is the only kind that reallv affects
the world In either case it shows that the penal code is made and
enforced by the ruling class, not upon themselves, but to keep the weak
at the bottom of the social scale.
p
The law forbids swindling at least in certain ways and vet a larim
part of business consists in making the public believe7that they are getTh±n f°r
th?AjVe tha” the tradesman can possibly
attord. Die daily papers are filled to overflowing with lying advertiseScedCwhh°T
m? thC rhef- °Ur fences’ rocks and Gildings are
aced with vulgar, hideous lies m order to swindle men out of their
much coveted, cash. All our merchants and tradesmen frantically call
out their lies m every form, that they may sell their ware for a larger
price than they are really worth. And yet, to all of this, the criminal
code has no word to say. This is not the class of swindlers it was
made to reach. The man who can buy the space of a great paper to tell
e wondrous qualities of the wares he has to sell is not the sort of
man
to come within the meshes of the penal code.
People in.the jail and people out, when reproached for certain
conduct, almost invariably respond that they have done no worse than
o eone else who stands uncondemned, and this retort is true when
motives are fully analyzed and conduct thoroughly understood The
actions of men are wondrously alike. When we look at the criminal in
?s nni
°r? mUr \nemy in the street’ we do not see ^e man. This
is not due to him. It comes from the malice, the hatred the want of
human charity that dwells in our own hearts. Through’this fog and
mist there can be no clear true sight. “To the pure all things are fure ”
To the just all souls are really white.
P
The web of the law reaches so far that there are very few who have
not m some way been touched by its meshes. One infallible proof as to
t e real nature of crime and the character of the criminal is open to
almost everyone who wishes to observe. Few men are so poor and out
cast as to have no friends The victims who cluster around the corridors
and entrances of our jails are.as pitiable as those who dwell inside.
o those friends who. know him the criminal is a man, a man for
whom they will sacrifice time, money, sometimes honor and even life.
If it is nothing but a poor wife, or a helpless child who has known the
kind heart of a husband or a father, these are there to prove that the
wretch is not a. monster, but a man—these are the ones who knew
1m, who saw his life, who touched him on the human side, the side
hat shows the real true kinship of man. Judges, lawyers, clergymen
physicians, all classes of men readily come forward and tell of the
virtues of the criminal whom they know, they tell of the extenuating
�Clarence Darrow
I
55
circumstances that led to his act, or they show that, in spite of these,
they understand the worth of the man. The criminal is always the
man we do not know or the man we hate—the man we see through the
bitterness of our hearts. Let one but really love his fellow and he
knows full well that he is not a criminal. He sees his pulsing heart, he
knows his weak flesh, his aspiring soul, his hopes, his struggles, his
disappointments, his triumphs and his failings, and he loves the man
for all of theses
I
I
I ‘
lo
�56
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER XV
THE MACHINERY OF JUSTICE
HE state furnishes no machinery for arriving at justice. Even
if it were possible under any circumstances to judge, and even
though men were really criminals, the state has no way of
arriving at the .facts. If the state pretends to administer jus
tice this should be its highest concern. It should not be interested
in convicting men or punishing crime, but administering justice be
tween men. It is obvious to the most casual observer that the state
furnishes no machinery to accomplish this result. The penal law
simply takes a man into its hopper and grinds out a criminal at
the end. f A. force of able-bodied, well fed, well paid men are kept
busy in their search for crime, i These find pecuniary reward in
the crime of their fellows. An indictment is easily returned against
a friendless man—a suspicion is enough in any case where the victim
has no friends. If he is poor he is at once lodged in jail. Later he is
placed on trial in the courts. When he steps into the dock both judge
and jurors look on him as a guilty man—believe he has committed
crime. He is carefully guarded by officers, like a guilty, hunted thing.
Arrayed against him is an able ’ prosecutor, well paid, and having per
sonal and political ambitions dependent on the number of men he grinds
into criminals. The prosecutor has ample means for the conduct of the
case. The prisoner, helpless enough at best, is rendered absolutely
powerless to prepare his case by being lodged in jail. Without money he
has no advocate with either the learning, influence or ability to help
his cause. If he is silent he is convicted. If he speaks no one believes
his words. Innocent or guilty, it is a miracle if he escapes, and in this
miracle the fact of his innocence or guilt plays but the smallest part.
Given a few suspicious circumstances, a helpless prisoner, an indictment
—another victim is the sure result. And in the hands of a shrewd
lawyer, or under the belief of guilt, any circumstances are suspicious
circumstances. Almost all acts are subject to various interpretations,
and the guilt or innocence of a circumstance depends not upon the act
but upon the mind that passes judgment on the act. We look back
with horror at the criminal courts of England, of Spain, of Italy, even
upon our own Puritan judges who sentenced witches to death. These
judges were doubtless as intelligent as our own. Their brutal, cruel
judgments did not grow from a wicked perverted heart, but from the fact
that they were passing judgment on their fellow man. These unjust
judgments are the fruit of the cruel system of force and barbarism
which clothes one man with the authority and power to condemn his
fellow. All prosecutions are malicious, and all judgments are meted
out in anger and hatred. Our own judges are constantly showing this.
In nearly every instance they condemn a prison to a term of servitude,
and when passion has fled and the sane and holy feelings of mercy, of
charity, of humanity once more regain their sway, they call on the
pardoning power to rescind their cruel acts. In all these cases of pardons
reflection shows the judges that the punishment meted out was at
�Clarence Darrow
57
least too severe. The difference is in the frame of-mind of the judge
when engaged in the business of administering judgment, and when
in the mood for listening to those feelings of human charity which are
the diviner part of man.
Punishment, to in any way be justified, should diminish the sum
of human misery, the result of the bitterness and hatred of men.. But
here, as everywhere else, punishment falls short. Wherever the judg
ment of courts enters it is to corrupt and to destroy. The misery and
suffering entailed on man by scaffolds, racks; blocks, dungeons and
jails has never yet begun to be told. Blood and misery and degradation
has marked the administration of punishment
Since man first penned his fellow men,
Like brutes, within an iron pen.
Let any reasoning being consider the tens of thousands who have
been burned, and hanged, and boiled, and otherwise put to death for
witchcraft; the millions for heresy; the thousands of noble victims who
have suffered for treason; the victims of fire, of torture, of scaffold,
of rack and of dungeon, for all the conceivable crimes since time began.
Let him consider the oceans of blood and rivers of tears shed by the force
and brutality of the rulers of the world; the cruelty, torture and suffer
ing heaped upon the helpless, the weak, the unfortunate; and then ask
himself if he believes that punishment is good. Even could violence ever
prevent crime, the brutality, suffering, blood and crime of the rulers has
towered mountain high above that of the weak and obscure victims whose
wrongs they have pretended to avenge. And this cruelty does not abate.
It is simple madness that doubts the justice of past condemnations and
believes in the righteous judgments of today. No condemnation is just,
and no judgment is righteous. All violence and force are cruel, unjust
and barbarous, and cannot be sustained by the judgment of men.
But the evil of judgment and punishment does not end with the
unfortunate victim. It brutalizes and makes inhuman all who are
touched with its power. Under the influence of punishment jailers,
policemen, sheriffs, detectives and all who deal with prisons are brutal
ized and hardened. The iniquities produced upon helpless prisoners
leave their effects upon the captor as well as the captives. To witness
the constant suffering and indignities of prison life is to destroy the finer
sensibilities of the soul. Men who are otherwise kind in the various relatons of life do not hesitate at cruelty to these despised prisoners whom
the law has placed outside its ban. To underfeed and overwork, to
insult, degrade and beat are common incidents of prison life, and this,
too, not because jailers are naturally cruel and bad, but because prisons
are prisons, and convicts are outcasts. Instead of approaching these
unfortunates as brothers in fellowship and love, their only concern is
to make them feel that the heavy hand of the state has been laid upon
them in malice and violence.
However thoroughly the futility, cruelty and injustice of punish
ment may be shown, men will still persist that it must exist. The
thought that society could live without prisons and policemen seems to
be beyond the conception of the common man. If punishment has no
�58
Resist Not Evil
effect to diminish or prevent crime, then no danger would be incurred
to dismiss our jailers and jurors and close our prison doors. The results
of this policy can, of course, not.be proven absolutely in advance, but
so sure as the existence of man is consistent with justice, charity and
love, so sure is this policy right and would produce good results. It is 1
not necessary to prove the theory of non-resistance to show that this
policy is practical today. Society, as now organized, rests upon violence
and wrong. The* non-resistant pleads for a better order, one in which
the law of love and mercy- will be the foundation of every relationship
of man with man.. The present unjust system is supported by violence
and force. The unjust possessions of the rich are kept in their place by
soldiers, guns and policemen’s clubs. If these were withdrawn would
the weak at once take the earth and all its fullness from those who for
ages have ruled the world?
No violent and forcible readjustment of this,sort could come. Force
is wrong both to commit and to redress evil. In the rule of force the
weak must always fall. For the poor and oppressed to advocate the use
of force means that they must still be the victims, for the strongest force
must win.. All that can help the weak is the rule of brotherhood, of love.
Unless this can be proved, there is no way to destroy the injustice that
is everywhere the rule of life. To make the weak strong, and the strong
weak, could neither destroy injustice nor permanently change the wretch
ed order of the world. A bayonet in the hand of one man is no better
than in the hand of another. It is the bayonet that is evil and all of its
fruits are bad.
The world must learn that violence is wrong. Individuals who
understand this truth must take no part in violent acts, whether to
enslave or to free. The inherent cohering forces will hold society together
and cause man to co-operate for his highest good. A large part of present
society is purely voluntary and due to natural law. It is for force and
violence, and injustice that the aid of the state is called. Society should
not punish. I The great burden that rests upon the production to support
armies, courts and prisons with all their endless officers and staggering
weight should be taken from the shoulders of the poor. This of itself
'would so relieve industry and add to the possibilities of life that the
very hazardous occupations that we call criminal would almost wholly
disappear. The class from which these victims come is known to be '
the outcast and the poor.l,A small fraction of the vast sum squandered
for violence and force would easily place all these dangerous persons
beyond the temptations of criminal activity. Even now, with all the
injustice of today, the expenditure of public money to relieve suffering,
to furnish remunerative employment, rationally to prevent crime by
leaving men with something else to do, would produce better results
than all the imagined benefits that follow in the wake of scaffolds and
of jails.
The effort of the penal codes has never been to reach any human
being before violence is done, except to awe him by the brief transitory
show of force; but after the act is done the state must spend its strength
and substance for revenge. Most men are driven to criminal acts from
the necessities of life and the hatred bred by the organized force they
meet. Remove dire poverty, as could be easily done with a tithe of what
�Clarence Darroiu
59
is now spent on force; let organized society meet the individual, not
with force, but with helpfulness and love, and the inducement to commit
crime could not exist. Let society be the friend not the tyrant, the brother
not the jailer, and the feeling will be returned a thousandfold. No man
or no society ever induced love with clubs and guns. The emblem of
the state is the soldier, the policeman, the court, the jail. It is an emblem
that does not appeal to the higher sentiments of man—an emblem that
so long as it exists will prevent true brotherhod and be a hindrance to
the higher sentiments that will one day rule the world.
Even if now and then passion and feeling should gain control of
man, this passion and feeling would be brief and transitory; if it accom
plished destruction, no power could make it whole. The concern of
society would then be to call back this soul to saner thoughts and a
truer, nobler life; not to blacken and destroy, nor to plant bitter hatred
and despair in the soul of one who might be brought to a fine and high
realization of human conduct and human life. Under this sort of treat
ment a large proportion of those who commit violent deeds would be
brought to a full realization of their acts, and they themselves would
seek in every way to repair the ill effects of their evil deeds.
�Resist Not Evil
60
CHAPTER XVI
THE RIGHT TREATMENT OF VIOLENCE
ES-g7?®|ENTIMENTAL and humane thoughts and purposes are
often, perhaps generally, based on real life, and have a natural reason for their being. To “turn the other cheek” or to
“resist not evil” may seem at first glance to have no support
in the facts of life, but after all that which makes for a higher
humanity, a longer life, and a more vigorous community, is. the
true philosophy. To use violence and force upon the vicious
and the weak must produce the evil that it gives. /Like produces
likeA Clubs, jails, harsh language, brutal force inevitably tend to
reproduce the same state of mind in the victim of the assault.
This is not merely a fact in human nature. It is a fact in all
nature, plant and animal and man. So long as the gentle spring
time rather than the cruel winter brings vegetable and animal life
to an awakening earth, just so long will kindness and love triumph,
produce joy and life, where force and violence bring only evil and
death. Harsh treatment kills plant life, and kind .treatment builds
it up. Violence and brutality produce their like in animal life, and
kindness tames and subdues. With gentleness and kindness a
swarm of wild bees may be handled and controlled, but approach
them with violence and force and each bee is converted into a
criminal whose only purpose is to destroy.
With all animal life the same rule exists; even those beasts
whose nature calls for a diet of flesh and blood may be subdued in
time by gentleness and love. Man with his higher intellect and
better developed moral being is much more susceptible to kindness
and love, f Likewise he more easily learns to fear and hate.l Man
readily discerns the feelings and judgment of his fellows, and as
readily renders judgment in return. The outcast and abandoned
form not the slightest exception to the rule—they know and under
stand the ones who meet them with gentleness and love, for these
they make sacrifices, to these they are faithful, to these they exhibit
the higher qualities that show the possibilities of the soul. Cases
where one convicted of crime comes from a place of safety and risks
his liberty and life to help save his friend are not rare in the. least.
True comradeship and loyalty is met quite as often here as in the
higher walks of life. Nothing is more common in ordinary selfish
society than to see one man refuse all aid and help to another in
financial need. Many convicts and outcasts could teach a much
needed lesson of loyalty and generosity to the exemplary man.
No amount of treatment can reclaim an evil heart if the treat
ment is administered without love. As children at school we knew
with our young natural instincts the teacher who loved us and.the
teacher who despised us—the one awoke feelings of love and kind
ness, the other hatred and revenge. No heart is so pure that it may
not be defiled and hardened by cruelty, hatred and force, and none
so defiled that it may not be touched and changed by gentleness and
�Clarence Darrow
61
love. Unless this philosophy of life is true the whole teaching of
the world has been a delusion and a snare. Unless love and kind
ness tend to love, then hatred and violence and force should be
substituted and taught as the cardinal virtues of human life. The
mistake and evil of society is in assuming that love is the rule of
life, and at the same time that large classes of people are entirely
outside its pale. No parent ever teaches his child any other philoso
phy than that of love. ^Even to quarrelsome playmates they are
taught not to return blows and harsh language, but to meet force
with kindness and with loveA The parent who did not depend on
love to influence and mold the character of the child rather than
force would be regarded not as a real parent but a brute.» Force is
worse than useless in developing the conduct of the child* It is true
that by means of force the little child may be awed by superior brute
power, but he gives way only under protest, and the violence that
he suppresses in his hand or tongue finds refuge in his heart.
Violent acts are not evil—they are a manifestation of evil. Good
conduct is not goodness. It is but a manifestation of goodness.
Evil and goodness can only be conditions of the inmost life, and
human conduct, while it generally reflects this inmost life, may be
so controlled as not to manifest the real soul that makes the man.
Every child needs development, needs training to fit him to live
in peace and right relations with his fellow man. Every intelligent
and right-thinking person knows that his development must be
through love, not through violence and force. The parent who
would teach his child to be kind to animals, not to kill and maim
ruthlessly, would not teach this gentleness with a dub. The in
telligent parent would not use a whip to teach a child not to beat
a dog./ The child is not made into the good citizen, the righteous
man, by pointing out that certain conduct will lead to punishment,
to the jail or the gallows. The beneficence of fear was once con
sidered a prime necessity in the rearing of the child, and this theory
peopled the earth with monsters and the air with spooks ready to
reach down and take the helpless child when he wandered from the
straight and narrow path; but this method of rearing children does
not appeal to the judgment and humanity of today. The conduct of
children can only be reached for good by pointing to the evil results
of hatred, of inharmony, of force, by appealing to the higher and
nobler sentiments which, if once reached, are ever present, influenc
ing and controlling life. The code of hatred, of violence and force,
too, is a negative code. The child is given a list of the things he
must not do, exactly as the man is furnished a list of the acts for
bidden by the state. At the best, when the limits of this list are
reached and the forbidden things are left undone, nothing more is
expected or demanded. But no code is long enough to make up
the myriad acts of life. Kindness or unkindness can result in a
thousand ways in every human relationship. If the child or the man
observes the-written code through fear, the unwritten moral code, infinely longer and more delicate, will be broken in its almost every
line. But if the child or the man is taught his right relations to the
world and feels the love and sympathy due his fellow man, he has
�62
Resist Not Evil
no need of written codes; his acts, so far as those of morals can be
will be consistent with the life and happiness of his fellow mam
And this not through fear, but because he bears the highest attitude
toward life.
With our long heredity and our imperfect environment, even if
the organized force of the state should disappear, even if the jails
and penitentiaries should. close their doors, force would only com
pletely die in course of time. Evil environment and heredity may
have so marked and scarred some men that kindness and love could
never reach their souls. It might take generations to stamp out
hatred or destroy the ill effects of life; but order and kindness most
surely would result, because nature demands order and tolerance and
without it man must die. No doubt here and there these so-called
evil ones would arouse evil and hatred in return, and some sudden
act of violence would for a time occasionally be met with violence
through mob law in return. CBut uncertain and reprehensible as mob
law has ever been it is still much more excusable and more certain
than the organized force of society operating through the criminal
courts. Mob law has the excuse of passion, of provocation, not the
criminal nature of deliberation, coldness and settled hate. Mob law
too generally reaches the objects of its wrath, while evidence is
fresh and facts are easily understood and unhampered by those rules
and technical forms which ensnare the weak and protect the strong.
And unjust and unwise as the verdicts of mob law often are, they
are still more excusable, quicker, more certain and less erring than
the judgments of the criminal courts.
But neither civil law nor mob law is at all necessary for the
protection of individuals. Men are not protected because of their
strength or their ability to fight. In the present general distribution
of weapons, in one sense, every man’s life is dependent on each per
son that he meets. If the instinct was to kill, society as organized
presents no obstacle to that instinct. When casual violence results
it is not.the weakest or most defenseless who are the victims of the
casual violence of individuals. Even the boy at school scorns to war
upon a weaker mate. The old, the young, the feeble, children and
women, are especially exempt from violent deeds. This is because
their condition does not call for feelings of violence, but rather
awakens feelings of compassion, and calls for aid and help. The
non-resistant ever appeals to.the courageous and the manly. With
out weapons of any kind, with the known determination to give no
violence in return, it would be very rare that men would not be safe
from disorganized violence. It is only that state that ever lays its
hands in anger on the non-resistant.
Neither would non-resistance in the state or individual indicate
cowardice or weakness or lack of vital force. The ability and in
clination to. use physical strength is no indication of bravery or
tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies.
Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery. In
the lower, animals it is more pronounced than in man. The bulldog
and the fighting cock are quite as conspicuous examples of physical
bravery as the prize-fighter or the soldier. The,history of all war-
I
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�.
’nee Darrow
63
shows either that physical bravery is not an indication of
t excellence or that supreme excellence is very common, in fact
,.ost a universal possession. Under the intoxication of patriotism,
the desire for glory, or the fear of contempt, most men will march
HMwith apparent willingness into the face of the greatest danger. ,
■ Often it requires vastly more courage to stay at home than to enlist
■ -more courage to retreat than to fight. Common experience shows
■ .ow much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thou■ sand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man
will dare espouse an unpopular cause. An army well equipped and
ready for action has less terror for the ordinary man than the un
favorable comment of the daily press. True courage and manhood
come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world,
the faith in one’s own purpose, and the sufficiency of one’s own /h
approval as a justification for one’s own acts. This attitude is not
that of the coward, for cowardice is really disapproval of self, a con_ sciousness of one’s own littleness and unworthiness in the light of
on^’s own soul, which cannot be deceived.
...
Intelligent men are willing to accept many truths that they be-'
heyig are not fitted for the universal acceptance of mankind, and
however they may feel that punishment is wrong they still urge
that it will not do to teach this doctrine to the great mass of men
and to carry its practice into daily life. But sooner or later all con
duct and all life must rest on truth. It is only fact that can form a.
basis for permanent theories that tend to the preservation of the
race. No one is too poor, or too young, or too vicious to know
the truth, for the truth alone is consistent with all the facts of life,
and this alone can furnish any rule of life. The truth alone can make
free. When society is taught the truth that it is wrong to punish,
to use force, to pass judgment on man, it will have no need for jails.
The man who really knows and understands this truth can have no
malice in his heart, can use no force and violence against his fellow,
but will reach bim with love and pity. The name or society that
understands this truth will know that so-called crime is only soKilled crime.; that human conduct is what the necessities of life make
K the individual soul. Then in reality, as now only partially, men
Mill turn their attention to the causes that make crime. Then will
they seek to prevent and cure, not to punish .and destroy. Then man
will learn to know that the cause of crime is the unjust condition of
human life; that penal laws are made to protect earth’s possessions
|' the hands of the vicious and the strong. Man will learn that
poverty and want are due to the false conditions, the injustice which
Jooks to human law and violence and force for its safeguard and
3rot^£tion. Man will learn that crime is but the hard profession that
to a large class of men by their avaricious fellows. When
«^unities for life are given, a fairer condition of existence
adually be.opened up and the need for violence and the cause
violence will disappear.
Instead of avenging a murder by taking a judge, sheriff, jurors,
messes, jailer, hangman, and the various appendages of the court,
foe^nd staining their hands with, blood and crime, the
r
"
�VviZ
Resist Not'“’“'"...
be,
world will make the original murder impossible, and thus. sawn,
crimes of all. Neither will the vicious control without the aid of ’e
Society ever has and must ever have a very large majority v>
naturally fall into order, social adjustment and a rational, peim
sible means of life. The disorganized vicious would be far le> powerful than the organized vicious, and would soon disappear.
Punishment to terrorize men from violating, human order is like
the threat of hell to terrorize souls into obedience to the law of
God. Both mark primitive society, both are degrading and debasing,
and can only appeal to the lower instincts of the lower class of men.
M Most religious teachers have ceased to win followers by threats, of
hell. Converts of this sort are not generally desired.. The religion
that does not approach and appeal to men along their higher conRs, duct is not considered worthy to teach to man.. And those souls who
-w ' cannot be moved through the sentiments of justice and humanity,
rather than threats of eternal fire, are very, very rare, and even
should such a soul exist the fear of hell would cause it still further
to shrivel and decay.
-Too
Hatred, bitterness, violence and force can bring only bad ref- suits—they leave an evil stain on everyone they touch. No human
soul can be rightly reached except through charity, humanity and
love.
64
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Resist not evil
Creator
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Darrow, Clarence
Description
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Place of publication: Girard, Kansas
Collation: 64 p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: Big Blue Book
Series number: No. B-18
Notes: Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer, a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. Contents: The nature of the state --Armies and navies --The purpose of armies --Civil government --Theory of crime and punishment --Remedial effects of punishment -- Cause of crime --The proper treatment of crime -- Impossibility of just judgment --The judge of the criminal --The measure of punishment --Who deserves punishment --Natural law and conduct --Rules governing penal codes and their victims --The machinery of justice --The right treatment of violence. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Haldeman-Julius Company
Date
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1902
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G5770
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Crime
Evil
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English
Crime and Punishment
Evil
NSS
Passive Resistance
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174e853deed951f4ef66ff33d12dcbbe
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Text
THE
CRIMINAL’S ASCENSION
A DISCOURSE
Given March 2nd 1879.
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
MINISTER OF SOUTH PLACE SOCIETY, AND AT THE
ATHENASUM, CAMDEN ROAD.
FRIGE TWOPENCE.
��THE CRIMINAL’S ASCENSION
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To a rational eye it would be difficult to picture a
more startling, scene than a man with the hangman on
one side preparing to strangle him, and a clergyman
on the other promising him bliss at God’s right hand.
But no eye can rationally take in at once a scene so
familiar. It requires patient analysis to discover the
full significance of a situation in which human society
by one officer decides that a man is unfit to live on
-earth, by another officer pronounces him quite fit for
the society of the beings it worships. In the majority
of modern executions, the gallows has been looked
upon by the criminals as a stepping-stone to eternal
glory; and no clerical voice have I ever heard denying
their probable ascension to Heaven. Theology still
represents a Christ saying to the malefactor, “ This
day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” The old
story was recently repeated when an exceptionally
base criminal exclaimed, “ I am going to Heaven/’
�4
and the chaplain said, “Lord Jesus receive his soul.”
I am glad to observe that the public conscience is
shocked, and common sense recoils.
Such ever-recurring facts reveal a fearful chasm
dividing the practical needs of man from the alleged
requirements of God. They disclose the awful fact
that “religion” and morality use totally different
weights and measures. The vilest scoundrel to one
may be a saint to the other. What moral laws pro
nounce a life of villainy outraging man and woman,
“ religion ” says may be outweighed by a few moments
of prayer to God and compliments to Jesus.
I think it is not going too far to say that it is
impossible for the masses of a community to obtain
any apprehension of the real nature of crime, so longas the religious instruction provided for them teaches
that the supreme rewards of existence are attainable
without reference to life and character. It does not
materially affect the case that the Ten Commandments
are solemnly repeated. The power of any law to
control human passions depends on the sanctions it
carries; and these sanctions are penalties. A whole
code of mere remonstrances against theft were vain.
The Decalogue, so far as it is enacted law, is powerful
simply because a punishment is affixed to each com
mand. But if the Legislature should provide that
every individual violating any law might escape its.
�5
< penalty by kneeling before the Queen, it would be
equivalent to abrogation of the law. Society could
not exist under such conditions.
The moral sentiment of a community is not repre
sented by its lawyers, but chiefly by its religious
teachers. The law-books represent certain practical
interests of society which may be of moral importance,
but may not. One law preserves the life of a pheasant,
-another the life of a man; the same code punishes
fictitious offences, like fishing out of season, and
immoralities. It is a business-like matter, and, were
there no moral or religious sentiment, a man might
take his day of sport out of season, or his neighbour’s
property, and run his risk, and feel no worse morally
for either.
There are indeed moral forces that can supplement
social laws, forces that for some wield heavy rewards
and punishments. There are men and women who
live lives of honour, honesty, and virtue with as little
reference to the law-books as to any future world.
But, unfortunately, for the less refined but more
tempted masses of the world, all the moral induce
ments to self-control are rendered nugatory by a
sacred system which transfers the sanctions, the
■rewards or penalties, from moral action to a ceremony,
to a motion of the lips, to that last abjectness of
.arrested villainy called repentance.
�6
The voice most authentic to the masses says tothem,—In the name of God we declare to you that
no merits of your own are of any importance in His
eyes. He sees not as man seeth. Your thefts, murders,
adulteries, cruelties, and general baseness, may be to
man of vast importance; but to God the one question
is, do you believe in his Son or not ? If you do, the
crimes, scarlet to men, are to Him white as snow.
Shew by kneeling, praying, accepting Christ as your
' Saviour, that you are all square towards God, and it
matters little what the world says and does to you. What
need one care for men if God is for him, and Jesuswaiting to take him to His bosom ? Fear not them
that kill the body and after that have no more that
they can do, but fear Him who is able to cast both
soul and body into hell fire 1
Those who have been liberally instructed mayimagine
that I am stating too strongly the voice that goes forth
to the masses in the name of religion; but, in truth, I
am stating not only what is largely taught, but what is
the necessary sense of all teaching, however interlarded
with morality, which gives man as his highest end and
aim something unconnected with morality. However
disguised by and for the cultivated, to the masses it
must mean that at last. There is in every mind in the
country which has not out-grown it a formula called
the Plan of Salvation.
It is declared by every
�.7
church, every sect—substantially the same, under
superficial variations—to be a scheme formed by God
for raising man to angelic perfection, divine virtue,
eternal joy. And in this Plan of Salvation no provision
is made for morality. Not one item in it refers to
morality. Morality is not made a condition, nor im
morality a disqualification, for its full enjoyment. Its
conditions are confined to repentance for an ancient
personal offence—not a moral offence—committed by
Adam to his Maker, and an acceptance of a human
and divine sacrifice offered for that sin. It is a corol
lary of that Plan that no amount of crime can prevent
him who uses the charm from summoning the Holy
Ghost to his side, and enjoying all the favours which
God can bestow.
This Plan of Salvation may appear to you so irra
tional and immoral as to excite wonder how any one
can believe it, and doubt whether any human lives are
really practically guided by it. And this, indeed, is
the vital point. Our question is not whether this
notion of Salvation be really true, but whether it is
genuinely believed by those most tempted to evil, and
least surrounded by refined restraints. My own con
viction is that no system could be conceived more
exactly adapted to the rudimentary reason of the
ignorant, to the pauper sense of justice, and none can
so readily explain to the suffering masses the hard lot
�8
in which they are cast. In their hereditary disease
and despair, they have daily proof of hereditary sin;
the pedigree of their sorrow may as well go back to
Adam as to their grandfathers; they suffer for sins
' they never committed. And how shall they be saved?
Is it reasonable to say they can only be saved by being
moral, virtuous, honest, self-denying, truthful? Would
it be just in God to set on Heaven a price they cannot
pay ? By his decree their lot is amid ignorance, vice,
temptation, grossness; how then can he demand a
harvest where he has not sown ? The so-called Plan
of Salvation is an evolution out of ages of superstition
to meet just that low state of mind, that hard lot of
the ignorant and suffering, of which the intelligent and
the happy have little conception. High ethical science
has no meaning for them; but it appeals to their sense
: of right that their Maker should make Heaven as cheap
as earthly happiness is dear. It seems but fair to them
that one of the Godhead should bear the guilt of all
their sins, which grow out of that vile lot which the
Godhead arranged. They did not choose a life down
in the social mire. They do not feel the guilt of the
immoralities besetting that lot; and they listen favour: ably to the preaching which tells them they will go,
: like the penitent thief, straight from the prison or the
scaffold to the side of Jesus, there to be equals of the
proudest and greatest who despised them on earth.
�9
So runs a hymn—
“ Let the world despise and leave me,
Once they left my Saviour, too.”
In the course of its long experience, Roman
Catholicism had found the danger of this notion, and
the necessity of modifying the bold dogma of salvation
by faith alone, and had devised a purgatory. It said
to the evil man that he might be saved eventually,
however wicked, but in proportion to his bad conduct
would be the length and severity of his purification
after death. In the course of time, this dogma of
purgatory lost its value, deliverance from its pains
being offered for money, and Protestantism threw
away not only the theory but the experience of ages
which underlay it Protestantism offered the whole
world of men the indentical salvation, irrespective
of their merits or demerits.
Nay, we cannot disguise from ourselves, however
divines around us may try to disguise it from them
selves and us, that the logic of Protestant Christianity
goes even farther, and necessitates the position that
mere morality is a danger to the soul. The man of
cultivated reason has been found likely to trust his
reason ; the man of good works has a tendency to trust
to his good works ; and such have been proved less
amenable to the plan of trusting solely to the divine
scheme above reason and to the merits of Christ.
Under pressure of this experience, the sects have been
�IO
reduced to the necessity of building up their strength
from those less addicted to reason and to good works,
and have evolved the doctrine that God looks with
special favour on the mind that fancies itself humble
when it is only uninquiring, and the character which
confuses its weakness with dependence on Christ.
This positive discouragement of the formation of
. self-reliant and moral character has, unhappily, found
a means of diffusing itself which theology could not
command,—namely, by hymns. Those especially of |
sects that deal with the masses are pervaded with I
contempt of good works.
The Wesleyans sing—
‘ ‘ Let the world their virtue boast
Their works of righteousness;
*•
I, a wretch undone and lost,
Am freely saved by grace.
Other titles I disclaim ;
I
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This, only this, is all my plea—
I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.”
This special claim to Jesus’s favour—that one. is L
the chief of sinners—has passed to many hymns, from I t
the Bible. Unhappily, there is much in the New
Testament, when detached from its own time and
place, to confirm the faith of the coarse and ignorant
in their miserable conceit. Their teachers have perverted the liberalism of Christ and Paul to these
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meanest ends. Christ, in trying to do away with the
bigotry around him, seeking to expand Jewish minds
so as to include Samaritans, Greeks, Romans, as
children of a divine Father, sought to win them to
charity by sweet parables. He told them of the mer
chant who paid so largely for the pearl ; and what
- pearl was more beautiful than Greece ? He told them
of how the woman rejoiced when she found the lost
coin, the shepherd when he found the lost lamb, the
father when his prodigal son returned. All these
were pictures of the hated Gentiles. They are our
lost sheep, taught Christ, our wandering brother; if
they will mingle with us, let us not repel them—rather
we will kill the fatted calf and make merry, because
the lost is found. And in his enthusiasm he may
have said, 11 There should be more joy in our new
kingdom over one such returning wanderer—one
fraternal Gentile—than over ninety-nine that never
went astray from the true God after images.” When
these poetic metaphors were written down in the
doctrinal period—in the Gospels—Jesus was more
than a hundred years dead, Jerusalem was destroyed,
the parables had lost their special point, and so the
moral was made universal and false by saying,“ There
is joy among the angels over one sinner that repenteth
more than over ninety-nine just persons who went
not astray,” a text either absurd, or a direct encourage
ment of vice.
�12
According to that text the roughs of England may
not only behold in that chief of sinners, who ascended
at Sheffield, a hero bold, who long defied Great
Britain, and, when overpowered, died happy, but they
may also see him causing an equal commotion among
the angels, though one of delight, as they leave the
humdrum souls who never went astray to rejoice over
this dear, daring, sensational fellow, whose salvation
illustrates the potency of divine magic so much better
than that of a mere moral man.
Paul has been put through the same process of per
version as Christ; his admirable statements for one
situation wrested for another, and stereotyped into
dogma. In furthering Christ’s broad inclusiveness j
Paul had to confront the new difficulty that his J ewish
brethren were disposed to insist on the Gentiles sub
mitting to their ceremonial law. They were willing
i
to receive the Gentiles as returning prodigals, but
|
they must consent to obey all the regulations of the
father s house that is, the house of Israel. To this
the Gentiles would not submit; and it cost Paul the
labours of a life, and all his resources of eloquence
and art, to persuade the Jewish wing that a common
faith in Christ was all-sufficient without exacting from
Greeks and Romans the deeds of the law—that is, of
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course, the rites and ceremonial deeds of the Jewish
religion, circumcision and the like. When this argu-
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ment was detached from its point and purpose, when
it was read letter by letter by the eye of bibliolatry—
as little able to see its whole meaning as a fly the
statue over which it creeps—Paul’s “ deeds of the
law” were supposed to be the moral law—English
law; not circumcision and Sabbath, but laws against
theft and violence; and so Paul was brought at last
to sanction the dogma that men are saved by faith in
Christ, without requiring any good deeds, or con
formity with human laws.
It is greatly to the credit of human nature that this
.kind of teaching has not utterly corrupted Christian
society. If human nature had been half as bad as
theology says, the Christian name would to foreigners
have been synonymous with barbarism. But a great
many influences have intervened between the dogmas
and large numbers of the people—the saving grace of
common sense, pictures of virtue and vice on the
stage—these and other forces too complex to be now
considered have supplied some counterpoise to dogmas
that despise human merit. But there is a yet very
large class which may be called the potential criminal
.class—and against that class society is left with no
defence but that of superior force. It is a. war for
■advantages to the burglar, the murderer, in which he
:may be defeated, but in which he does not feel much
/disgrace or guilt, if any. His life is being lived in a
�general way under the necessity that knows no law,
and particular crimes are mere accidents in the
current that masters him. And he will remain somastered—without conscious responsibility or guilt—■
until a will is stimulated within him by some motive
of action stronger than that which tempts him. Now,
what is to stimulate in a person of strong appetites
the will to control those appetites ? Remember, our
problem now is not that of punishing crime, but of
how to keep people from committing crime. Can
Christianity do that ? What are the motives to which
it appeals ? Judgment Day and eternal Hell ? Now,
these would be very strong if they were penalties for
immorality, but Christianity repudiates that idea.
Hell it declares is for those who forget God, or donot believe on his Son. Consequently the criminal
may snap his fingers at the Day of Judgment. Hell
is a mere display of fireworks to the man who is
insured against it by the blood of Jesus. Charles
Peace, on the morning of execution, arose from
pleasant sleep, breakfasted heartily, then sat down and
wrote as follows :—“ To my dear wife and family,—I
tell you this great joy that I could not tell you yesterday.
No fear now, for it is all cleared up as to where I
am going to. I am going to heaven, or to the place
where the good go to that die in the Lord; or where
is the place appointed by God for the good to wait
�i5
until the resurrection of the dead. So do not forget!
Our meeting place is in heaven. So do come at the
last and you will find me there. This letter is wrote25 minutes before I die, so I must say good bye to
all. I am going to heaven.” A few moments after
he is on the scaffold preaching to the reporters, says
he is going to rest with the good till Judgment
Day, forgives his enemies, and says, “ I wish them tocome to the Kingdom, to die as I die.” That is hisbest wish for us all, to die as he died ! And that iswhat Judgment Day and Hell amounted to in the
eyes of this criminal. But what other motives canChristianity arouse now that it has enabled the criminal
to quench Hell with a drop of Christ’s blood? It
may say that it sets before him the life of Christ,—the perfect life,—-and so makes an affecting appeal toall the good in him. Be like Christ, it says. But that
ideal too it destroys by declaring Christ to be God.
The criminal is not a god. The virtues of a god are no
example to him. So far as Christ was a man his expe
riences are not attractive. We are now in Lent, and
Christendom recalls a poor man wandering in a wilder
ness 40 days, cold and hungry, resisting all temptations,
to get his living by evil ways. From a loaf of bread to
the kingdoms of the world, all the temptations were
offered him and resisted. What did he get by it ?*
A gallows. He might, to the criminal mind, he-
�i6
might well envy the happy end of our latest ruffian.
One sacrificed himself for others, and at execu
tion cried, “ My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?”
the other sacrificing others to himself, exclaims, “1
.am going to heaven.” So far as the virtuous, selfsacrificing, human life of Christ is concerned the re
ligion called after him goes into the criminal’s prison,
and in a few moments enables him to show vice tri.umphant, beside virtue agonizing on the cross of its
own Saviour. So it is on earth; and Christianity
.assures the criminal, converted after he can sin no
more, that heaven has the same place and rewards
for the life of crime and the life of virtue. He gets
.after a life of evil just what Christ gets after a life of
moral excellence. There are many Christians who
me moral, many who are wiser than their creed, but
-they cannot alter the remorseless logic of their
system. Either it is the blood of Jesus that saves
men or it is not. If man is saved by the sacrifice
and merits of Jesus, then he cannot be saved by his
-own merits or sacrifices. Consequently, so far as
eternal bliss and blessedness are concerned, he may
do without any merits or morality at all.
And in this claim, the very basis of Christ’s atone
ment, lies the fact that the criminal mind finds in
rthe orthodox system precisely its own method. For
what is the criminal mind ? It is a mind which seeks
�to gain advantages without working for them,—that
.it is, without fulfilling the conditions with which justice-
'di to others surrounds them. The criminal mind seeks
iri nothing that may not be fairly sought. This miser
able man, just executed, wanted beauty in dress, a
He:ai is quite credible when he declared that he never
fit? harmed living creature except when they were inter
fering with his appropriation of things he desired.
No man loves crime for itself. But the moral law>
says you must seek these things by patiently working
reft for them, not by snatching in a moment that for5
W which others have toiled, enriching yourself throughiiil the merits of others, or by sacrificing their lives to
ey your own happiness. But the criminal may point to
M a law holier than morality; to every Christian creed
iw which is on his side. Just as he gets his neighbour’smljewellery without toil, so is he to get paradise. Without
)fn| money and without price is he to attain the bliss of
eternity. By a great human sacrifice he is enabledj Oil to dispense with all toilsome conditions and
enjoy
jibj the celestial raiment and rubies that represent theheaven of every criminal’s dream—everything pretty
ms and pleasant, and no work to obtain them.
I
The essential superstition represented by the crimiteiil nal’s ascension to the right hand of God, by divine
aig grace, is as gross as anything among the Zulus. When
Sfi neat wagonette and horses, violins, and money.
�i8
'the chaplain, said, “Lord Jesus, receive his soul,” it
either meant that the vulgarest and meanest murderer
was a fit companion for Christ; or else it meant that
■a miracle was to be then and there wrought, and
villainy at once transmuted to perfection. The ascen
sion of the dead body through prison walls would be
no greater miracle than the ascension of that evil
mind to any realm of purity.
It is a superstition to suppose that animal had any
soul. Nevertheless, he might have had one had he
been born in a world that had made the best instead
■of the worst of him. From first to last his “ career,”
■as he grandly called it, reflects the unreason which
from the past has come to bind the present. A pre
tended religion turns his earthly life to a transient
trifle under the eternity to come ; and tells him that
his good or evil deeds here are equally unimportant;
•that heaven is had for the asking. Had religion told
him the truth, that this life is the only one he is sure
of, and that it is the only possible life he could have,
unless he developed moral powers useful elsewhere,
he might have ascended from animalism to manhood.
When this solemn sanction of his indolence and
worthlessness have borne their evil fruit, the law pro
ceeds to make him a hero, the sensation of months.
Biographies of him, reminiscences of him, myths and
legends, accounts of his down-sitting and up-rising;
�19
and all because he is slain like some formidable
prisoner of war. “ I want you, sir,” he said to the
clergyman, “to preach a special sermon over my case
. . . to hold me and my career up as a beacon ”—
such is his grand phraseology—“ that all who see may
avoid my example.” But is that the effect of his emi
nence ? Thousands of the wretched around us now see
how their obscure lives may achieve fame. As the
Saturday Review said, no statesman, author or artist
could hope to receive such obsequious attention at
death. Whereas it had been easy to put that man in
a particoloured dress with a chain gang, paving roads
for honest men, and make him a living witness to the
criminal’s disgrace and degradation, as he now is of
the criminal’s glory and ascension. He said, “ I hope
God will give me strength to go like a hero to the
scaffold. I had much rather die than live in penal
servitude.” Why not, when death meant ascension
to glory, and the other meant just that hard work it
was the aim of his life to avoid. Years ago he at
tempted suicide to escape a term of hard labour. I have
no sentiment about the death of such people, except
that I believe such death too good for them. My ob
jection is not sentimental, but scientific. It is a terrible
error for society to suppose that swift death is the
severest punishment. The Bible represents Satan as
believing that all that a man hath he will give for his
�20
life; but that was written by a people who believed
in no future life, and it was said about a man who had
a great deal to lose. But our criminals come of classes
to whom earth means poverty and misery, and heaven
means luxurious idleness. It is a great error to believe
that death is the chief deterrent to these. The main
terror of it fled when theology allowed salvation to alL
That was the practical abolition of hell. It has pro
claimed to the scoundrel world that it may cheat men
in this life, and then cheat the devil in the next. It
has added to the criminal’s morbid satisfaction in
creating a sensation, the assurance of ascension to
heaven by a more painless death than Charles Peace
had twice sought by his own act.
Waterlew & Sons Limited, Printers, London Wall, London.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The criminal's ascension : a discourse given March 2nd 1879
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 20 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2.
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[Waterlow and Sons]
Date
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[1879]
Identifier
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G3344
Subject
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Crime
Evil
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The criminal's ascension : a discourse given March 2nd 1879), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Crime and Punishment
Crime-Religious Aspects-Christianity
Good and Evil
Morris Tracts
Salvation
Social Problems