"No one can tell the result, my dear Sir," answered Chandos. "I feel deeply grateful for your kindness in coming over to see me; but I can assure you I have the cord and the gibbet before my eyes as the very probable termination of what you call a whim, but which I cannot help thinking may deserve a better name."
"The cord and the gibbet!" exclaimed General Tracy; "nonsense! I for one feel certain of your innocence; and I trust that the time of judicial murders is past."
"Judicial, but not juri-dical, if I may make a sorry jest in sorry circumstances," answered Chandos. "Do you think, General, that there are no innocent men hanged in England even in the present day?"
"God forbid that I should be such a fool," replied General Tracy. "Juries have now-a-days a great leaning to the side of mercy: they hang very few men comparatively, but it is always the wrong men. So far I agree with you--your innocence is decidedly against you; but still let us hope that if the case is very glaring the judge will recommend you to mercy. But, as you say, these are sad, bitter jests, my young friend. All that I see before me, around me, is painful, and I must be serious. Our method of treating prisoners before trial is a disgrace to a civilized age and a civilized nation. We have, in the first place, no regular law to rule the whole system. We have a regular principle which the law recognises, but which it breaks from the very beginning. 'Every man is to be considered innocent till he is found guilty,' says the law; but, whatever he is considered, he is treated as guilty of something, till he is found innocent of the charge on which he is committed. Every bench of magistrates varies its doctrine as it thinks best; but they all agree in taking measures for a prisoner's safe custody which the object does not require or justify, and in punishing him for being accused, before it is ascertained whether he is criminal or not. The very deprivation of liberty is an injustice towards an innocent man, for which the country that requires it should make compensation the moment he is acquitted; and every aggravation of that great hardship, inflicted by one or more magistrates, ought to be punishable as a misdemeanour. Here I had the greatest possible difficulty in getting an order to see you, and till that order was obtained the prison doors were shut against me. What an aggravation is this of the loss of liberty! Not only are you debarred the free use of your limbs, of your ability, of your will; but you are deprived of the comfort of sympathy, of the words of friendship, and affection, of the very sight of loved faces and familiar tones. Better far, as has been practised in several nations, to shut you up in a cage and let all your friends, if they would, come and speak to you through the bars."
"I fear," answered Chandos, "that the state of society requires a great many safeguards, which inflict innumerable individual hardships. To prevent a prisoner's escape, to prevent his suborning testimony, and arranging a factitious tale with those without, may justify many precautions."
"Does society take as much pains to prevent the subornation of evidence against him?" asked General Tracy; "does it take pains to prevent or punish the light and wanton, or the ignorant and stupid committal of an honest man to the same infliction of imprisonment and privation which is assigned by the law to a convicted rogue. No, no, Chandos Winslow, it does not. Society is full of evil conventionalities, and the cases of individual hardship are so numerous, that I much doubt whether the benefits of society in its present state compensate for the evils. Nor is this all, my good friend: its operations are all iniquitous--iniquitous in their benefits as well as in their wrongs. One man is as unjustly exalted as another is abased, with a few splendid exceptions, just sufficient to prove the general rule. Society is, in fact, the concentration of the whole world's selfishness. But one sort, even of conventional virtue, is successful at any time, and it is extolled beyond all praise, rewarded beyond all discrimination; but one class of vices is punished, and it is persecuted rather than chastised. The very charge of one of the proscribed sins is sufficient to entail upon a man a punishment fit for a heinous offence, and in every other sort of wickedness, a sinner within convention may revel at his will."
"Nay, you are too severe, General," replied Chandos; "I suffer; but yet I do not think that society inflicts more hardships upon individuals than is perhaps inevitable."
"You say so because you have been accustomed to look at these things under one aspect alone," answered General Tracy. "Now, think how many committals take place in the course of the year in proportion to the convictions. Those can easily be ascertained; for the reports are published. Then, again, consider how many of the innocent are condemned, and you will find that an amount of punishment has been inflicted upon people who do not deserve it, which is more than should be necessary to chastise proved crime in any well organized state of society for a population of double the extent of that of Great Britain."
"But you assume," rejoined Chandos, "that all who are not convicted are innocent, which perhaps may not be exactly the case."
"I assume what the rule of society justifies, and no more," replied General Tracy. "Every man must be considered innocent till he is proved guilty."