Passing Thoughts [2]

The Object of Government

It is the habit of men to blind themselves by customary trains of associated thought, to come to look on the means as an end and honour it with a superstitious reverence as a wonderworking fetish. Government and its great formulas, law and order, efficiency, administration, have been elevated into such a fetish. The principle of good government is not merely to keep men quiet, but to keep them satisfied. It is not its objective to have loyal servants and subjects, but to give all individuals in the nation the utmost possible facilities for becoming men and realising their manhood. The ideal of a State is not a hive of bees or a herd of cattle shepherded by strong watchdogs, but an association of freemen for mutual help and human advancement. The mere fact of a government doing what it does well and firmly, is nothing in its favour. It is more important to know what it does and where it is leading us.

The European Jail

The European jail is a luminous commentary on the humanitarian boasts of the Occident and its pious horror at Oriental barbarities. To mutilate, to impale, to torture, how shocking, how Oriental! And we are occasionally reminded that if we had independence, such punishments would again be our portion. England forgets that to half hang a man, draw out his entrails and burn them before his eyes was an English practice in the eighteenth century. France has forgotten the wheel and the galleys. But these things have gone out. What of the penal system? It strikes us as a refined and efficient organisation of the methods of savages against their enemies, savages who have indeed progressed and have learned that the torture of the soul

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is a more terrible revenge than the torture of the body, to murder the human nature a greater satisfaction than to slay the animal frame. Ancient nations punished their enemies by death, slavery, torture, humiliation and degradation. The jail system is an organisation of these four principles. Physical death has been reduced to a minimum; it is now only a punishment for murder and rebellion. A century or more ago every crime, almost, was punished with death in England. The principle was, Your life for my shilling, your life for my handkerchief! It is now, Your life for the life you have taken, your life for the mortal fear you put me into of the loss of my powers, emoluments and pleasures! The organisation of penal slavery is the first principle of the system. I take my enemy, put him on a dog's diet, load him with chains, set guards to beat and kick him into obedience and diligence and make him work for my profit for a period fixed by myself, careless whether his nature is brutalised or his life shortened in the process, -for he is my slave to do my will with and, if I do not kill him for taking my shilling or my handkerchief, it is because I am civilised and merciful, not a barbarous Oriental. For the same reason, I do not inflict physical torture on him, unless he is unwilling or unable to do the amount of daily work I have fixed for him, or either deliberately or accidentally remembers that he was a human being, or else behaves like the brute I have successfully laboured to make him. Even then I torture him according to his physical capacity and take care not to maim or kill this serviceable animal. Degradation and humiliation are as well organised as the slavery. It is not done once in a way, but driven in daily, hourly, momently, in every detail of dress, food, conduct, discipline. In every possible way I brand in upon my victim's soul that he is no longer such an one, no longer possessed of the name, rights or nature of humanity, but my slave, beast and property and the slave, beast and property of my servants. It is my object to wipe out every trace of the human in him and I stamp my foot daily on anything in him that may remind him of such human qualities as modesty, culture, self-respect, generosity, fellow-feeling. If everything else fails, I have the exquisite rack of mental torture called solitary imprisonment  

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to shake his reason or destroy his manhood. And if in the end I have not succeeded, if he comes out a man and not a brute or an idiot, it is not my fault but his; I have done my best. This is the European prison system and it is inflicted on all alike with machinelike efficiency. The curious thing is that it is inflicted in part even on under-trial prisoners who may be perfectly innocent. This also is probably dictated by the finer feelings of Europe and intended mercifully to prepare their gentle and easy descent into the Inferno around them.

European Justice

The European Court of Justice is also a curious and instructive institution. Under a civilised disguise it is really the mediaeval ordeal by battle; only, in place of the swords or lances of military combatants, it is decided by the tongues of pleaders and the imagination of witnesses. Whoever can lie most consistently, plausibly and artistically, has the best chance of winning. In one aspect it is an exhilarating gamble, a very Monte Carlo of surprising chances. But there is skill in it, too, and it satisfies the intellect as well as the sensations. It is a sort of human game of Bridge combining luck and skill, or an intellectual gladiatorial show. The stake in big cases is a man's property or his soul. Vae victis! Woe to the conquered! If it is a criminal case, the tortures of the jail are in prospect, be he innocent or be he guilty. And as he stands there, -for to add to the pleasurableness of his case the physical ache of long standing is usually added to the strain on his emotions, -he looks eagerly, not to the truth or falsehood of the evidence for or against him, but to the skill with which this counsel or the other handles the proofs or the witnesses and the impression they are making on the judge or jury. One understands, as one watches, the passion of the Roman poet's eulogy of the defence lawyer, praesidium maestis reis, a bulwark to the sorrowful accused. For in this strange civilised game of pitch and toss where it is impossible to be certain about guilt or innocence, one's sympathies naturally go to the sufferer who may be innocent and yet convicted. If one  

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could eliminate this element of human pity, it would be a real intellectual pleasure to watch the queer semi-barbarous battle, appraise the methods of the chief players, admire, in whatever climes, the elusiveness and fine casualness of Indian perjury or the robust manly downrightness of Saxon cross-swearing. And if one were to complain that modern civilisation eliminates from life danger and excitement, one could well answer him, "Come into the Courts and see!" But, after all, praise must be given where it is due, and the English system must be lauded for not normally exposing the accused to the torture of savage pursuit by a prosecuting judge or the singular methods of investigation favoured by the American police. If the dice are apt to be loaded, it is on both sides and not on one.  

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