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, constituted a trinity under whose protection society might feel secure.
In addition to these, nations have relied on confiscation and degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, and exposures to public ridicule and contempt. Connected 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 civilization—for the protection of virtue, and the well-being of states. Curiously 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 necessary to add to this penalty of death, and consequently, 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 sea, to be drowned by the slowly rising tide—and every means by which human nature can be overcome slowly, painfully and terribly, was conceived and carried into execution. And yet the number of so-called criminals increased. Enough, the fact is that, no matter how severe the punishments were, the crimes increased.
For petty offences men were degraded—given to the 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 maimings and brandings, and the result was that those 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 thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and headsmen—and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities and crimes have accomplished 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 degradation 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.
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?