CORRESPONDENCE.
SUICIDE.
"Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls, And give them furloughs for another world;
But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand
In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour."
—DRYD&N.
[TO IRE EDITOR 07 T88 " SPECTATOR"] Sir.,—The most recent statistics of crime in Great Britain show that, in proportion to the population, the convictions for crime are now only about one half of what they were fifty years ago. In regard to any particular form of crime statistics are not to hand. But it will not be doubted that, while crime in general has decreased by fifty per cent., there is one form of crime which during the same period has increased by at least a hundred per cent. That one form of crime is suicide. In fifty years crime in general has been reduced by one half and the crime of suicide has been doubled. What is the reason of this?
The diminution of crime is due, no doubt, to the growing force of religious influence and (what is much the same thing) to the increasing wholesomeness of public sentiment. Wherever crime increases, the increase appears to be due to increase of laxity in that twofold force. When suicide increases, therefore, we are bound to inquire whether religion and public sentiment can be shown to have become injuriously tolerant in regard to that particular form of crime.
To test this I will advance the statement that suicide is murder in a most hideous form. The readers of this letter are wholly drawn from the class which is under the influence of religion and of wholesome public sentiment. I wish I could ascertain to what extent they will resent the statement I have made ; for then I should have a definite measure of the relaxation of moral judgment which I have assumed. If no such resentment arises, then my argument will fall to the ground, and it will be necessary to look elsewhere for the explanation of the increase in this form of crime. I wish I could hope that any such thing is likely to happen. But I fear that in reality many excellent people are less shocked at self-murder (considered merely as a crime, and apart from its painful but adventitious associa- tions) than they are at crime of any other sort. Suicide is a most painfully shocking form of calamity, but even petty larceny is regarded as a more shocking form of crime. It has come to pass at last that a man's reputation is less injured by the crime of suicide than by the crime of robbing a cash-box. Nay, it is even doubted whether suicide is really a crime at all.
The glaring unreason of this attitude becomes evident by noting the contrast between the odium attaching to suicide and to attempted suicide respectively. A would-be suicide, who fails in the attempt because his knowledge of physiology is imperfect, or because his nerve fails him somewhat, is rightly regarded as a criminal, and is often (though by no means always) sent to prison sans phrase. But a man who knows exactly where his heart is, and deliberately stabs it, becomes a sort of martyr. Coroners' juries will always attribute to him a fictitious insanity which the same men as a jury in a Criminal Court would never dream of alleging in the same man's case had the attempt not been successful. Newspapers will write about him with maudlin sentimentality, and it will go hard if the minister at the funeral does not go out of his way to add to the Burial Service some well-meant but utterly needless and misguided condonation of the suicide in his own words. If the man who has put an end to his life happens to have been a man of any note, in the literary world for example, the most reputable journals, instead of ignoring the event in dignified silence, will write of the man quite in the same way as if he had come to a natural end, and will perhaps add that he was infelix opportunitate mortis, just as though he had been killed in a railway accident. These are the undeniable and commonplace facts.
It seems to be high time that somebody should give himself the pain of trying to point out some other unwelcome but most certain facts. One is that a man who deliberately commits suicide is at best either an arrant coward or an unmitigated fool. Usually he is both. He imagines, in thi face of all religious teaching and of all age-long human instincts, that he is going to put an end to his troubles by putting an end to his life. He assumes that there is no here• after in which he will have to face, his sin and folly afresh. He takes a leap which is not even a leap in the dark. And in seeking relief in this foolhardy fashion from his own troubles he knows that he is leaving them tenfold worse for his unfortunate wife and children to face when he is gone. No more callous and cowardly hard-heartedness can be imagined than that of a man who seeks the mere possibility of relief for himself by creating an unspeakable burden to be borne by his family for the rest of their lives. What has become of the old English fortitude in face of adversity P The time was when a man took pride in facing the ills of life resolutely and living them down ; and all the more deter. mined was he if he had a wife and children looking to him as their natural protector. It is a sure sign of decadence when not even the love of home will stimulate a man to bear himself courageously.
Even in the case where a man has no one dependent upon him—and such cases are almost non-existent--the stiffening of wholesome public opinion might do much to keep him from cowardly desperation. It might at all events so influence him as to make it harder for him to contemplate posthumous execration than to bear his present burden. On the other hand, when a man knows that if only he can succeed in murdering himself he will become the object of fulsome com- miseration, the temptation becomes too great for a naturally cowardly man. Current public opinion is what holds the balance for such a man, and inclines him either to patient fortitude or to cowardly suicide. And public opinion is to that extent responsible for the recent alarming increase of this crime. If public opinion were as tolerant of murder in general as it is tolerant of self-murder, who can doubt that murder in general would increase in like manner P Of course there is a sense in which the murderer of himself is temporarily insane. Every murderer is temporarily insane. Sin is the culmination of insanity. When the murderer of another is justly punished for his insane sinfulness, why should the murderer of himself be condoned with foolish and unwholesome sentiment ? Murderers of themselves are no oftener insane than murderers of other people. Coroners' juries know that perfectly well, and if Coroners' juries would hearten themselves to say so, they would thereby render an incalculable service to public morality.
The feelings of surviving relatives have to be considered, it will be said. That is quite true. But the relatives of ordinary murderers have their feelings also, and are some- times estimable people who are entitled to our most tender sympathy. But sympathy in these latter cases does not go the length of condoning crime. Not yet at all events. Besides, it is obvious that the great majority of these sur- vivors of suicides would never have been in need of our sym- pathy if Coroners' juries had done their duty in previous cases. Prevention of the calamity would have been a much better thing than sympathy after the calamity has happened. Coroners' juries may assure themselves that if they do but form the habit of giving honest verdicts they will thereby be saving families in the future from the very suffering they are trying to alleviate. Let them add to their honest verdicts whatever expression of sympathy with the survivors they deem most likely to comfort them in their sorrow ; but let them no longer pave the way for further sorrows in other families. No one would advocate a return to the old barbarity of the cross-roads and the stake; but even that would be less unwholesome, and far less injurious to public morality, than the present false and maudlin attitude towards murderers of
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