The Subterranean Brotherhood

by Julian Hawthorne

It is engendered, most often, by a successful outward morality—conformity to the letter of the Commandments—the whitening of the outside of the sepulcher. But the stench of the interior loathsomeness oozes through. The only person unaware of that stench is the man himself. There is but one cure for it—what we call Regeneration; which makes us sensible of that deadly odor, and drives us freely and sincerely to detest ourselves in dust and ashes and bitter humiliation, to pity, succor and love our brethren, and to wrestle with the angel of the Lord for mercy. But we prefer to seek salvation from evil in the building of prisons.

Now, this crime may survive even in prisons; but it is rarer there than in any other aggregation of human beings. Therefore, there is a wonderful sweetness in the prison atmosphere. It is a sweetness which is perceived amid all the dreariness, stagnation and outrage, and it rises above the vapors of physical crime, for it is a spiritual sweetness. There men are locked in their cells, but the whited sepulcher is shattered, and its sorry contents are purified by the pure light of humiliation, confession and helplessness; there are no hypocrites there, no masks, no holier-than-thou paraders. Their crimes have been proclaimed, and branded upon their backs; pretenses are at an end for them. It was wonderful to look into a man's face and see no disguise there. "I am guilty—here I am!" This experience took the savor out of ordinary worldly society for me. I go here and there, and everywhere there is masquerading—the weaving of a thin deception which does not deceive. We were sincere and humble in prison; but that is a result which the builders of prisons hardly foresaw.

There was one more step toward compromise—to take the prisoner out of his cell and send him outdoors without guards or precautions, nothing but his promise that he would return when the work to which he was assigned was done.

I read the other day an agreeable account of this "honor system." The men were employed on road making chiefly, enjoyed the benefit of free air and the outdoor scene, and kept order and faith among themselves. But the prison walls were still around them, though unseen. They were told that any attempt to escape would be punished by deprivation thenceforth of all liberties—any attempt! and if the escape were successful, the fugitive would know that the chances of recapture were a thousand against one. Moreover, it was laid down that the escape or attempt of any member of the gang would react upon the liberties of all.

This made the men guards over one another; it was not honor but self-preservation that was relied on. And in any event, there was the prison at last; the chain might be lengthened to hundreds of miles, but it held them still. They were convicts; when their terms were up, they would be jail birds. Society had set them apart from itself; they were a contamination. "You are not fit to mingle with us on an equal footing." Society might condescend to them, be friendly and helpful to them, but—admit them of its own flesh and blood?—well, not quite that! "We forgive you, but on sufferance; it is really a great concession; you must show your gratitude by good works."

Oh, the Pharisees! the taint of it will not come out so easily; and until it does come out, to the last filthy trace of it, prisons will continue to be prisons, and compromises will be vain.

I repeat—the evil of prisons is the imprisonment. You must not deprive a man of his liberty. His liberty is his life. He may, and probably he will, use his liberty to the endangering of your property or comfort; but has your own career been wholly free from infringement upon the rights of your neighbor? If you send him to prison, you ought to link arms with him and go there, too. You have not been convicted by a court, but your own secret self-knowledge convicts you. When the prison doors close upon you, you will discover that you have suffered an injustice—that you are the victim of a blind stupidity. Not in this way can you be reformed. All genuine reformation must proceed from within you—it cannot be compelled by locks and bars; freedom is essential to it. Locks and bars arouse only the impulse to break through them, and this primal and righteous impulse leaves you no leisure to think of relieving your soul from stains of guilt.

The only imprisonment to which a man can properly be subjected is that imprisonment of good in him which evil-doing operates automatically and spontaneously; any outside meddling with that operation hinders, confuses, or defeats it. Crime weakens and shackles you; to put shackles on the body is no way to remove shackles from the spirit. It is the gross blunder of a brutal and immature era, but we have continued it down to the present day. Jail is still the remedy.

The newspapers the other day told of a man who had been sentenced to forty years in jail for an assault. A woman, hearing the verdict, said, "Well, that's better than nothing; but he ought to have got life!" We are told in the Bible that we must not let the sun go down upon our wrath. The wrath of this lady could not be appeased with forty years. Think of what that culprit will be after forty years in jail. Assuming for the sake of argument the extreme absurdity that he is alive by that time, picture to yourself a fellow creature of his—and a woman—saying, "I won't forgive you yet." I pity her more than I do him, whose troubles in this world will probably soon be over. But when her time comes, with what face, on what plea, shall she ask forgiveness?

But if there are to be no prisons, what shall we do to be saved from crime?