Let us look at the matter closer, and see whence crimes of violence spring. By far the greater part of these in past days were the result of the laws of private property, which forbade the satisfaction of their natural desires to all but a privileged few, and of the general visible coercion which came of those laws. All _that_ cause of violent crime is gone. Again, many violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused over-weening jealousy and the like miseries. Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman being the property of the man, whether he were husband , father, brother, or what not. _That_ idea has of course vanished with private property, as well as certain follies about the `ruin' of women for following their natural desires in an illegal way, which of course was a convention caused by the laws of private property.""Another cognate cause of crimes of violence was the family tyranny,m which was the subject of so many novels and stories of the past and which once more was the result of private property. of course that is all ended, since families are held together by no bond of coercion, legal or social, but by mutual liking and affection, and everybody is free to come or go as he or she pleases. Furthermore, our standards of honour and public estimation are very different from the old ones;success in beating our neighbours is a road to renown now closed, let us hope for ever. Each man is free to exercise his special faculty to the utmost and every one encourages him in so doing. So that we have got rid of the scowling envy, coupled by the poets with hatred, and surely with good reason; heaps of unhappiness and ill-blood were caused by it, which with irritable and passionate men--_i.e._, energetic and active men--often led to violence."I laughed, and said:"So that you now wihdraw your admission, and say that there is no violence amongst you?""No," said he, "I withdraw nothing; as I told you, such things will happen. Hot blood will err sometimes. A man may strike another, and the stricken strike back again, and the result be a homicide, to put it at the worst. But what then? Shall the neighbours make it worse still? Shall we think so poorly of each other as to suppose that the slain man calls on us to revenge him, when we _know_ that if he had been maimed, he would, when in cold blood and able to weigh all the circumstances, have forgiven his maimer? Or will the death of the slayer bring the slain man to life again and cure the unhappiness his death has caused? ""Yes," I said, "but consider, must not the safety of society be safeguarded by some punishment?""There, neighbour!" said the old man, with some exultation. " You have hit the mark. That _punishment_ of which men used to talk so wisely and act so foolishly, what was it but the expression of their fear?
And they had no need to fear, since _they--i.e._, the rulers of society--were dwelling like an armed band in a hostile country. But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we could only be a society of ferocious cowards. Don't you think so neighbour?""Yes, I do, when I come to think of it from that side,"said I.
"Yet you must understand," said the old man, "that when any violence is committed, we expect the transgressor to make any atonement possible to him, and he himself expects it. But again, think if the destruction or serious injury of a man momentarily overcome by wrath or folly can be any atonement to the commonwealth? Surely it can only be an additional injury to it."Said I: "But suppose the man has a habit of violence--kills a man a year, for instance?""Such a thing is unknown," said he. "In a society where there is no punishment to evade, no law to triumph over, remorse will certainly follow transgression.""And lesser outbreaks of violence," said I "how do you deal with them?
for hitherto we have been talking of great tragedies, I suppose?"Said Hammond: "If the ill-doer is not sick or mad (in which case he must be restrained until his sickness or madness is cured) it is clear that grief and humiliation must follow the ill-deed; and society in general will make that pretty clear to the ill-done if he should chance to be dull to it; and again,, some kind of atonement will follow,--at the least, an open acknowledgement of the grief and humiliation. Is it so hard to say, I ask your pardon, neighbour?--well, sometimes it is hard--and let it be.cq.
"You think that enough?" said I.
"Yes," said he, "and moreover it is all that we _can_ do. If in addition we torture the man, we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he would otherwise feel for _his_ wrongdoing is swallowed up by a hope of revenge for _our_ wrongdoing to him. He has paid the legal penalty, and can `go and sin again' with comfort. Shall we commit such a folly, then? Remember Jesus had got the legal penalty remitted before he said `Go and sin no more,' Let alone that in a society of equals you will not find any one to play the part of torturer or jailer, though many to act as nurse or doctor.
"So," said I, "you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which requires no body of criminal law to deal with it?""Pretty much so," said he; "and since, as I have told you we are a healthy people generally, so we are no likely to be much troubled with _this_ disease.""Well, you have no civil law, and no criminal law. But have you no laws of the market, so to say--no regulation for the exchange of wares? for you must exchange, even if you have no property."Said he: "We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the markets varying according to the circumstances and guided by general custom. But as these are matters of general assent which nobody dreams of objecting to, so also we have made no provision for enforcing them: therefore I don't call them laws. In law, whether it be criminal or civil, execution always follows judgment, and some one must suffer. When you see the judge on his bench, you see through him, as clearly as if he were made of glass, the policeman to emprison and the soldier to slay some actual living person. such follies would make an agreeable market, wouldn't they?""Certainly," said I, "that means turning the market into a mere battlefield, in which many people must suffer as much as in the battlefield of bullet and bayonet. And from what I have seen, i should suppose that your marketing, great and little, is carried on in a way that makes it a pleasant occupation.""You are right, neighbour," said he. "Although there are so many, indeed by far the greater number amongst us, who would be unhappy if they were not engaged in actually making things, and things which turn out beautiful under their hands,--there are many, like the housekeepers I was speaking of, whose delight is in administration and organization to use long-tailed words; I mean people who like keeping things together, avoiding waste, seeing that nothing sticks fast uselessly. Such people are thoroughly happy in their business, all the more as they are dealing with actual facts, and not merely passing counters round to see what share they shall have in the privileged taxation of useful people which was the business of the commercial folk in past days. Well, what are you going to ask me next?"