“Confound it, man!” roared Dr. Rankin, beating the table, “that’s just what I’ve been trying to tell you. You ought not to care so much for punishing as for deterring. 310 Don’t you know that it’s a commonplace that it isn’t the terrifying quality of the penalty that acts as a deterrent to crime, but it’s the certainty of the penalty! If a horse thief knows that there’s merely a chance the community will get mad enough to hang him, he’ll take that chance in hopes this may not be the time. If, on the other hand, he knows that every time he steals a horse he’s going to be caught and fined even, he thinks a long time before he steals it.”
“All that’s true, Doctor,” said Danny, “as theory; but now I’m coming to bat with a little practice. Here’s the camp of Italian Bar in the year 1849. What would you do?”
“Elect the proper officers and enforce the law,” answered the doctor promptly.
“Who would you elect?”
“There are plenty of good men here.”
“Name me any one who would take the job. The good men are all washing gold; and they’re in a hurry to finish before the rains. I don’t care who you’re about to name–if anybody; this is about what he’d say: ‘I can’t afford to leave my claim; I didn’t come out here to risk my life in that sort of a row; I am leaving for the city when the rains begin, and I don’t know that I’ll come back to Italian Bar next season!’”
“Make it worth their while. Pay them,” insisted the doctor stoutly.
“And how’s the money to pay them to be collected? You’d have to create the officers of a government–and pay them.”
“At the election, who would take interest to elect a decent man, even if you could get hold of one? Not the other decent men. They’re too busy, and too little interested. But the desperadoes and hard characters would be very much interested in getting some of their own stripe in office. The chances are they would be coming back to Italian Bar next season, especially if they had the legal machinery for keeping themselves out of trouble. You’d simply put yourself in their power.”