CHAPTER XXIV[ToC]
SOCIALIST VIEWS ON LAW AND JUSTICE
Most Socialists have a very strong objection to the existing laws. "Law is only a masked form of brute force."[874] "The laws to-day are defences of the foolish rich against the ignorant and hungry poor. The laws to-day, like the laws of the past, make more criminals than they punish. The laws keep the people ignorant and poor, and the rich idle and vicious."[875] "The laws were made by ignorant and dishonest men; they are administered by men ignorant and selfish; they are dishonest laws, good for neither rich nor poor; evil in their conception, evil in their enforcement, evil in their results."[876]
Most Englishmen are proud of the English judges because of their learning, high character, and integrity. To many Socialists the judges are the most contemptible and mercenary of men. The philosopher of British Socialism informs us: "It is an undoubted truth that no judge can be strictly an honest man. The judge must necessarily be a man of inferior moral calibre. A judge, by the fact of his being a judge, proclaims himself a creature on a lower moral level than us ordinary mortals, and this without any assumption of moral superiority above the average on our part. He deliberately pledges himself, that is, to be false to himself. He may any day have to pass sentence on one whom he believes to be innocent. He lays himself under the obligation of administering a law which he may know to be bad on any occasion when called upon, merely because it is a law. He makes this surrender of humanity and honour for what? For filthy lucre and tawdry notoriety. Now, I ask, can we conceive a more abjectly contemptible character than that which acts thus?"[877]
The cause of the hatred with which the British Socialists contemplate the law and the judges is obvious:
They're blocking up the highway; yes, they think to keep us back
By piling barriers of law and falsehood on the track;
We'll break the barriers down, and burn them into cinders black,
As we go marching to liberty.[878]
Come every honest lad and lass!
Too long we've been kept under
By rusty chains of fraud and fear—
We'll snap them all asunder!
That robbers' paction styled the Law
To frighten honest folk, sirs,
We'll set ablaze and fumigate
The country with the smoke, sirs.[879]