“That’s my opinion. If a man’s innocent and hasn’t deserved any punishment, I should like to know why I should ill-use him?”
“Very true,” remarked a shopkeeper, who was sitting with a bottle of beer.
“On the other hand,” continued the steward, “if we come across a regular scoundrel, then most certainly the law should be obeyed.”
“Of course it should. There’s no need to pity a scoundrel.”
“Then, again, you see, to punish a man is easy enough, there’s nothing very clever in that; you just take him and put him in the lock-up, or give him a thrashing—you don’t need much work for that, or much brains either.... But, first of all, you must find out, and go into the matter, and get to the root of it, and find out whether the man really is guilty or not; that’s the great thing. Supposing you’ve flogged or locked up a man, and afterwards it turns out that he was innocent, what then? It’s a bad business, that. But once you’ve made it out, and know all about it, then bury him alive if you like; that’ll be all fair and lawful.... But to go and ill-use a man before you know what it is about yourself—any fool can do that. That’s what I think. Will you have a sandwich?”
The plate of sandwiches was held out towards the two officers who were sitting next to the bar.
“I don’t mind,” half-reluctantly said one of them, adding, after a moment, “By the by, just pour me out a glass of that stuff in the green bottle; I’ll try what it’s like.... Won’t you have some?”
“Well, I don’t care if I do,” said the other officer, still more reluctantly; “you can give me a glass.”
For want of anything else to do, they began to eat and drink. The steward, for his part, started on some operation on a piece of ham, beginning by blowing on it, and continued—
“One ought to look into these matters, and not go into them at random.... Why, there are cases when, if you judge a matter properly, the man that everybody thought was a villain can prove his innocence. Before you go into it, you think he ought to be hanged; and then you go into it, and think about it, and he’s done no wrong at all. But to go and punish a man without ever knowing what it’s about—I say there’s no justice in that at all! Why do they have law courts, and trials, and judges, and all that sort of thing? Why, because any jackass knows how to knock a man about for nothing; but you have to go into it first, and then say what’s to be done.... Why, there’s a lad that serves on this very steamer. He’s been in trouble—he killed a man. Now, what’s the law for that? Why, a halter, or underground mines!... That’s so, isn’t it? And yet the fellow’s all right and straight. And why is that? Because they went into the matter, and made it all out.... There, I’ll call the man himself, and he shall tell you about it”