NERVES AND PUNISHMENT.

A LEADING article in the Nation last week was a very curious and striking illustration of the effect which the thought of physical suffering has on some minds. The article was from beginning to end a fervid lamentation, an agonized wringing of hands, prompted by the consent which the House of Commons has given in the Criminal Law Amend- ment Bill to the use of the lash for the punishment of male procurers. The heart of the writer of the article quailed and turned to water at the thought of the suffering of any man under the lash. His nerves gave way. One might think no more about the matter, for any man's nerve may play him tricks now and again, were it not that the exaggeration of the evils of physical pain, and in some cases an entire inability to face the thought of pain, have become habitual in a certain group of thinkers. These mental conditions inform a large part of the creed that is loosely called humani- tarian. It is characteristic of this creed to shrink from the immediate spectacle of suffering, without any serious con- sideration for the ultimate and larger volume of suffering that the immediate punishment is designed to prevent. The humanitarian, similarly, cannot tolerate the thought of allowing people to fight, even though most of the principals in a quarrel may not mind sacrificing themselves—are perhaps actually burning to do so, like the Bulgarians— and even though the cause of one side may be the rescue of thousands of innocent victims of oppression. Similarly, again, humanitarians cannot bear the thought of capital punishment ; they see in imagination the haunted hours of the convict, the merciless pinioning, and the grim final scene. It is well that they should have pity. It

would be infinitely better if they had more pity for the victims of dastardly and pitiless crimes. No sane person wants criminals to be hanged out of vindictiveness. We who approve of banging do so because it is a proved deter- rent in the case of men with criminal tendencies who need to be fortified by a great dread against the naturally unbridled elements of their character. All lonely and unpro- tected people are the potential victims of a murderer. The humanitarians are philosophers, but they ignore what is taught by all respectable philosophies, that the ills of the flesh are not the worst ills of life.

The Nation says of the flogging clause :—

"If we had written on the matter a fortnight ago, we should have said, with confidence, that so gross an example of the spirit and temper of reaction would not have gained a score recruits from the party that still holds the names of Bomilly and Mackintosh in honour. The glory of the achievement rests with Mr. McKenna, and we do not suppose that one of his colleagues will ever seek to deprive him of one leaf of the laurels that wreathe his brow. But if he bears a special part in the destruc- tion of an historic Liberal tradition, the disgrace of Friday's decision rests also on the whole House of Commons. If at this hour of the day it is necessary to tell a Liberal Parliament that torture is not a civilised form of punishment, we have hardly succeeded in conveying one breath of Liberal feeling from the constituencies to the House of Commons."

Mr. McKenna no doubt will continue to hold his head up, conscious that he has the honour of guiding through the House of Commons the most beneficial piece of legislation which has been offered shelter by the present Government. Mr. McKenna knows that the offence which the lash is intended to punish is one of the most cold and calculating offences against women which it is possible to commit. If it were proposed to inflict the lash for crimes of passion we might stand with the Nation, or nearly so. But it is not. The trade of the procurer is a strategy of mean cunning, long thought out. The procurer lives on the ruin of women, without the excuse that he has yielded to a sudden over- whelming stroke of temptation. He is a coward. None but a coward could carry on such a despicable commerce. Being a coward he probably fears physical pain more than anything

in the world. When once he knows that the law provides for flogging, and that the judges will administer the law, it will probably happen that there will be very few candidates indeed for the lash. That was the experience of the country in 1863, when flogging was inflicted for the prevalent offence of garrotting. We are well aware that humanitarians deny that garrotting was brought to an end by flogging, but their opinion is in contradiction of that of the judges who imposed the punishment.

When humanitarian nerves give way they go with a crash, as is the case of other things that are badly out of balance. We should hardly have believed, if we had not read it, that the Nation actually prefers branding to flogging. It says :— " If, indeed, Bishops and Judges and Parliamentary moralists really think that vile men should be vilely punished, lot them not stop at that elementary weapon of human passion, the lash. The flogging clause in the Criminal Law Amendment Bill was com- mended by the Home Secretary in the name of the police. There is a far more effectual means than the lash, both of signifying the national horror of these people, and of effectually preventing a repetition of their offence. Let them be conspicuously branded. Their career will then be at an end. There will still be prostitutes and procurers, for Christian society will continue to find a place for both. But not those particular procurers. The police and the British jury will see to that; for no procurer, wearing the brand of the British Government, can ever hope to run the ordeal of a public triaL As for the Statute Book, it will be no more disgraced by this mark of re-barbarisation than by the special stigma which Mr. McKenna has put upon it."

An extraordinary suggestion indeed! But one never feels safe when the humanitarian mind is most active. History repeats the same lesson again and again—that the mind which embraces all the rights of man turns in a panic to cruel Jacobinical excesses. If a man be flogged he will not be any the worse a short time afterwards. Even if an innocent man were flogged—which we sincerely trust would never happen—he would even then be fortified by his innocence. The talk about the permanently degrading effect of flogging is a morbid myth. The degradation is not in being flogged, but in being guilty of the vile offence which calls for flogging. But if a man be branded—that is irremediable. It does not

bear thinking of. The lowest of scoundrels may reform; it is the essence of all humane penal systems that they should never lose sight of that possibility. A reformed character

should have as good a chance of living a useful and respected life as the man with a perfectly blameless record. But that means nothing to a humanitarian in a panic. Rather than

let his nerves endure the contemplation of a flogging scene he would be willing to condemn a fellow-being to perpetual

ignominy and social sterility.

The humanitarian has yet another argument against flogging.

He says truly that most of the procurers are women, not men, and the Bill does not provide for flogging women. Perhaps he means—for the advocates of branding might mean anything —that he would rather have women flogged than put up with an illogicality. But there is no real illogicality. Women have the privilege of their sex, and no one supports their privileged position more resolutely than the convinced anti- Suffragist. The function of legislation is vested in men, because with man lies the physical power of coercion. For that very reason men will never dream, we hope, of inflicting on women a physical punishment against which women, as a class, have no physical power of response. If this is a paradox, it is the paradox of Nature. The remedy is not given to us.

The Nation of last week was so tingling -with nerves that we may take yet another example. Two convicts were wounded by shots when trying to escape from Dartmoor. The Nation remarks :— "What is the formal and Parliamentary authority for this use of the rifle ? Decency apart (and the traitor on the field of battle suffers no worse death than shooting), is it in any way necessary A convict in the livery of prison and with his hair cropped to the skull has scarcely a chance in a million of making good his flight. In the old French " l3agne " (successor of the galleys), where the art of prison-breaking touched perfection, the unpremeditated burst from the docks, the timber-yard, or the guard. room had no place in the unwritten rules of evasions. It was the desperate device of the tyro, it was despised, and it almost always failed. To-day it fails as surely, but the convict has little other hope. These men, it may be supposed, are mostly town-bred criminals, as helpless in country wilds as a toy spaniel would be."

-What the Nation ought to do is to try to remove the merciless rules of nature, such as that fire burns, and water drowns, and that men who jump from a great height are killed. There is

no need for convicts to be wounded. There is a rule that he who runs away may be shot at. The convict knows that perfectly well, and sometimes thinks that it is worth while to take the risk. Were the warders not armed it would be almost impossible to allow the convicts to work outside the prison. Permission to work outside is a general boon purchased at the cost of the stern provision that the individual who abuses it

may be shot at. The warders' action must be swift, as the attempt to escape is frequently made in a mist. To say that warders might be armed but should never use their arms would be to reduce them to impotence and condemn them to hopeless ridicule. It is nearly as bad to ask them to run continually to the nearest house of hiding to inquire for lost convicts. The result of such a charitable system would be that, the convict population would be kept much closer than before within bounds. But we dare say that the Nation would agree to that rather than have its nerves shattered again by the thought that a bolting convict had suffered a

physical pain as bad as that which has been inflicted on Mr. Roosevelt for holding certain political opinions.