For eighty years the law makers have been told by their own experts what their workhouses were, and why they ought to be abolished and the fact that the greatest sufferers from the iniquity are poor children who cannot voice their complaints, and exist in dumb ignorance of the wrongs that are done to them, does not make our position as the wrong-doers any less deserving of damnation.
CHAPTER XV
REMEDIES OF TO-DAY
| Ring out the feud of rich and poor; Ring in redress to all mankind. Tennyson: “In Memoriam.” |
When Absalom cried out in a loud voice, “Oh, that I were made judge in the land that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!” he was, as we should say nowadays, playing to the gallery. Yet, sincerely uttered, what a noble wish it was. Let it stand as an expression of the still unfulfilled ideal of judicial duty and public service which we owe to-day to the poor of this country. Every man has not as yet a judicial system that does justice to every man.
And I fear that Absalom’s fine saying was only an election cry in his campaign against his father, recalling to the voters perhaps David’s inconsistency in the theory and practice of justice in the matter of Uriah and his wife. In those days the King, the Lawgiver, and the Judge were but one person, so that to be made Judge was to be made Lawgiver and King, and you not only administered the laws but made them as you went along. Absalom was only an office seeker, but his election address contained a noble sentiment.
Nowadays the Judges are merely servants of the law, like policemen and bailiffs and the hangman. Nor does the King make the laws, nor are there in theory any professional Lawgivers. The people—or at least so many of the people as get on the register and trouble to vote—make their own laws, or are supposed to do so. At least they have the power of choosing their representatives and servants to make what laws they want.
If, therefore, a sufficient number of men in the street greatly desired amendment of the law in this or that direction, I have no doubt it would come about. But very few of the problems that trouble me come before the eyes of the average man in the course of his daily life, and he is scarcely to be blamed for not trying to mend that which he has not observed is broken and worn out.