TYRANNY.
TT'is the custom to assert, with Bishop Butler, that there is no
such thing in human nature as the love of evil for the sake of evil. But whether or not there be any such depravity originally, it does seem difficult to account for the exces- sive and perfectly aimless cruelties we sometimes read of in the police reports,—aimless, we mean, on any other hypo- thesis than the one that they are enjoyed for their own sake,—except on the assumption that whether men are originally furnished with a love of evil or not, such a love of evil developes itself at last from the artificial condi- tions of thoroughly selfish lives. Take the case of the two Sudlows, of Woolstanton, in Staffordshire, reported in Wednes- day's Times, who were committed for gross cruelty to two pauper children boarded out with them for 3s. 10d. a week each, a sum intended to include school fees, which were never paid, the children never having been sent to school. We are not going for a moment, of course, to assume as true the statements of the witnesses on whose evidence these two persons were com- mitted for trial, except so far as the prisoners seemed to admit them to be true. But the report states that the brother, Richard Sudlow, declared, "I will own the truth, I never gave her [one of the pauper children] anything but the stick ;" while the woman, as it is stated, "answered to the same effect." If the evidence given be supported on the trial, "the stick" was one of the least pain- ful of the small tortures applied to these unfortunate children,— aged only twelve and nine years—whose physical condition appears to be frightful. The allegations—which may, however, not be sustained on the trial, though there was no attempt to break them down before the magistrates—were that the injuries con- sisted not chiefly in such cruelty as would save the prisoners' money, but in perfectly spontaneous torture, like pinching little bits out of one of the poor children's noses, rubbing her face with filth, and taking her out naked into the snow to roll her there. If such evidence is confirmed, what pretence can there be for saying that such acts as these were the mere extravagances of the love of power, —a passion in itself not intrinsically evil? Love of power, no doubt, is not in itself wicked, but then it is much easier to gain power by giving people pleasure than by giving them pain, and quite as easy to use it in that way when it is gained. Doubtless there is something more striking, more conspicuously illustrative of power, in making others do what their will vehemently resists, than in making them do what they wish to do. In the former case, you override their resistance before you have your way, and so show your power as the man who snaps an iron bar before your eyes shows it. But just as the power exerted in moulding an iron bar is far greater, and a kind of power of which the possessor is far more habitually conscious, than the power exerted in breaking it, so the power exerted in making a child do willingly what you wish it to do is much greater, and one of which the possessor is far more habitually conscious, than the power exerted in making it suffer what it cannot prevent. In fact, we cannot believe that true cruelty is really due to the mere delight in power, or even in its striking display at all. There may, of course, be a certain element in it due to that delight, just as the child's pleasure in making his schoolfellow start by running a pin suddenly into him, is probably mainly due to some such cause, together with that enjoyment of surprises and grotesque movements, which is so deep in children. But it is clear that the true love of power as such, must be at least as much gratified by the symptoms of what may be called pleasurable dependence, as by the symptoms of reluctant or even horror-struck dependence. Indeed, the pure love of power should be more gratified by a dependence which is complete and lasting than by one which is imperfect and temporary. if to be able to break the will of another gratifies it,—to be able to impel the will of another as you please, must certainly gratify it more, since the latter is far the greater exercise of power of the two. Clearly if there be any pleasure in overcoming the resistance itself, beyond the pleasure attaching to your own complete ability to overcome it, that is not due to the love of power solely, but to something else that is quite different from it in kind. You may easily distinguish true love of power from the malicious tyranny sometimes mistakenly supposed to indicate it, just by this,—that whoever has the former, enjoys most the greatest exercise of power, whether that be gained, as it usually is, by winning the devotion of others, or on the other hand, by beating down their resistance. The man who can make a crowd think with him has infinitely more power than the man who can make a single person who differs from him, suffer for that differ- ence. But the true tyrant prefers the latter process to the former. He does not care for power as such, but for that particular manifestation of power which pains and degrades his foes. Tyranny is the love not of power, but of destructive power. It does not love to husband and store its resources for effecting great changes in the world, but to exhibit them to the deep horror and grotesque dismay of those who are crushed by them. The best apology that can perhaps be made for human nature, in view of the assumption that such a tendency exists, is that, as a matter of fact, it is oftenest displayed towards those who are felt to have some right to the kind- ness or goodness of the tyrant, and seems, in such cases, a sort of revenge for the mute claims which conscience urges on their behalf. A man who tyrannises over his uncomplaining wife simply because she is uncomplaining, is often merely resenting the claim which his conscience puts in on her behalf, and revenging himself on a repressed and neglected element in his own nature. And these Sudlows, who gave the children, for each of whom they received 3s. 10d. a week, "nothing but the stick," probably selected them for the exercise of their cruelty partly because their presence re- minded them of what they had engaged to give, but did not choose to give, as an equivalent for the allowance. But even that explanation will hardly account for anything like the whole horror of such cases as these, for such a resentment of a moral claim implies so much activity of the conscience in asserting that claim, that such activity would surely by fits and starts make itself felt in the right way, as well as in the wrong. There must clearly be a great deal of hardened indifference to anything like a moral claim upon a man, to admit of such unvarying cruelty as we often hear of ; and if the conscience is altogether silent, then there is no plausibility in representing these paroxysms of cruelty as reactions against its mute appeals. It must be admitted, we think, that it is absolutely hopeless to explain the superfluous and redundant cruelty of which we sometimes hear,—the records of some of the worst Vivisectionists are full of such cases—either as the mere gratification of the love of power, or as the resent- ment created by the stings of conscience. It is something quite different from both, because it appears in men who never take any pleasure in any exercise of power which is agreeable to those on whom it is exerted, and who show far too little sense of
humiliation and shame when their craelty is known, to render it pos- sible that we should explain it as a sort of retaliation on their own moral nature for its disquieting suggestions. Doubtless one great secret of tyranny is fear. Half the tortures of small tyrants are precautionary, and intended to frighten the victim into silence about, or acquiescence in, previous injuries. There is some evidence in the case of these unhappy little paupers that a few of the sufferings inflicted on them were terrorising ex- pedients against possible complaint or rebellion. And the horrors of the most barbarous Oriental tyranny are of the same kind,— namely, inflicted as samples of what may be done in future, if their victims do not show patience as to the past. But even this will not account for the pleasure so often exhibited in torturing animals which cannot be thus influenced, nor, we think, for the superfluity and redundancy of torture even in cases like that on which we have based our remarks, for such superfluity of naughti- ness must obviously involve so much extra danger of discovery, that it could hardly be wholly due to a wish to avoid that danger.
We think there is evidence of the existence of a real delight not merely in the possession and exercise of power, but separately in the possession and exercise of injurious and destructive power,— of power to disappoint, disturb, disorganise, and dismay all that can compete with or resist it. There is to be found in many, perhaps in most at some part of their lives, a pleasure in crushing, which is quite distinct from the pleasure in creating. The latter, as we have said before, is far the greater exercise of power of the two, and of course, far the nobler ; but it is not half as delightful to many persons who would be properly called ambitious, and is never delightful at all to the genuine tyrant. Even the most thoughtful and benevolent may oc- casionally discover in themselves a kind of irritation at the exist- ence of things independent of themselves, and coming in their way,—an irritation which, if yielded to, would soon develope into a desire to extinguish these obstacles to the free development of their own personality. Cruelty results sometimes from intense annoyance at other creatures for having wishes and aims so little subservient to those of the tyrant. Damn you!' said the dis- appointed gambler, who had just lost heavily, to the man who was tying his shoe on the staircase, " you are always tying your shoe !" That gambler expressed grotesquely the annoyance which it often causes a selfish man to find some one else occupied in doing what is entirely foreign to his own subjects of interest, instead of centring, as he thinks everything ought to centre, in his own wishes and feelings. When people in grief express their sense of the unfeelingness of nature, that is a very mild and excusable form of the same feeling. The selfish man, in all moods of mind, is irritated at that which is not obviously conducing to his own benefit, and enjoys punishing it for its entire independence of his wishes. Punishing that which is not agreeable to you, for failing to be agreeable to you, is of the very essence of tyranny. And this tendency is certainly not due to the love of power, but to the disgust which men's selfish preoccupation excites in them at all which ignores or defies it.
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