A REMEDY FOR BLACKMAIL.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—Your correspondent, Mr. Farquhar, appears to furnish an excellent example of how not to do it. It is fairly evident that floggings and hushed-up trials would diminish the number of blackmailers, but at the cost of substituting for the abuse it was intended to remove another abuse equally bad. One immediate effect would be to transfer the power at present vested in the criminal classes to the police. In this country the police administration is justly credited with a high standard of probity, but even here instances are not unknown of zealous officials of the Criminal Investigation Department, with an eye it may be to future advancement, manufacturing evidence against individuals, especially those whose past will not bear inspection. The Law at the best is a clumsy and creaking piece of machinery, not to be invoked at the earliest and every opportunity, but to be resorted to only as a necessary evil when all other methods have failed. Neither as an art critic nor as a censor ntorum does the policeman particularly excel.
The most lucrative part of the blackmailer's business lies in the exploitation of certain sexual offences, in some of which it is very difficult to draw the line between what is or is not permissible. If the operations of the Law were limited to the protection of the young and the adolescent, and to the maintenance of public decency, two functions which represent the utmost that is required of it, then in nearly all the cases that are deserving of consideration the ground would be cut from the blackmailer's feet. If, moreover, public opinion were to bring a sane and balanced judgment to subtle and difficult problems of sexual morality, instead of manifesting itself in frantic and hysterical outbursts of moral indignation, we should probably soon witness the sure and steady extinction of the blackmailer's activities. Mr. George Ives in his great work The History of our Penal Methods has indicated the lines along which legislation should proceed, and perhaps some day, when time can be spared from the game of party politics, the overhauling of our criminal code, with other matters of equal urgency such as the Reform of our Slaughterhouses, will engage the attention of our Legislators.—I am, Sir, &c., S. CAMERON. Hampden Club. N.W.1.
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