THE " BRAND OF CAIN."
MR. EDWARD WAKEFIELD'S paper in the Contem- porary Review for November, headed "The Brand of Cain," will, we imagine, surprise a majority of its readers. The charge it brings against the people of the United States of readiness to commit and to condone "murder," is not a new one, for it has been repeated any time this seventy years. It formed the substance of Mrs. Trollope's graver attacks, and runs all through Charles Dickens's lurid though half-comic pictures of life in the States. The " Colonel " who would shoot a man for a remark is his ideal of the American patriot. An idea had, however, begun to prevail in Great Britain that blood-shedding, though still rife in the Union, was confined to the South and the newer and wilder districts of the Far West ; that it had ceased altogether in the North ; and that even in the tainted districts it was beginning to disappear, as the wild animals do, before a thicker population and a more efficient police. Life, it was thought, was as safe in Chicago as in London, and self-defence as needless in New York as in Surrey. It will be new to many, who thought themselves well informed, to be told, as they are told by Mr. Wakefield, that murder is still the dis- tinctive crime of the States ; that if lynchings are included, the average number of deaths by intentional violence is double the average of the most criminal countries of Europe ; that the average increases year by year, the last year being the worst; and that the responsibility does not rest with the foreign population, but with the Americans born. "A carefully pre. pared and thoroughly authentic statement, published not long since by a New Jersey Patriotic Association, shows that crimes of violence in the United States have more than doubled in number in proportion to the population since 1850 ; and last year was the worst year of all The officially authenti- cated figures compiled by the New Jersey Association already referred to prove that the overwhelming proportion of crimes of violence are committed by Americans, and that the foreign population are singularly free from bloodshed." That Ger- mans are good citizens, is admitted by Americans themselves ; the conduct of " Hungarians," who are loathed, has, Mr. Wake- field says, been cleared by investigation ; and as to the Italians in New York, where they are 80,000 strong, they are in- offensive, and anywhere they only commit murder when provoked by oppression. Mr. Wakefield adds, as an illustration, the following astounding, and to us quite incredible, story:— "The Italians have got a bad name lately, but very unjustly. The secret history of the murder of Hennessey is pretty well known in America, and has been partially published. It is widely believed to have been an incident in one of those Irish feuds which have for years existed in New Orleans, as in Chicago and other cities : the same fend in which Hennessey's father and brother were killed. The accusation against the Mafia' was a bold and ingenious device for diverting atten- tion from the true nature and origin of the crime. There was
not a vestige of what in England would be called evidence of the existence of any Mafia in New Orleans ; but several of the most respectable Italian witnesses declared the whole story to be an absurd invention. The jury acquitted the prisoners, whereupon the mob murdered them, and raised the cry that the jury had been bribed. The Committee of Safety,' as the leaders of the assassins were called, instituted a prosecution against Dominick O'Malley, a detective, but the solitary witness they could bring in support of the charge was an Irishman, named McCrystal, himself one of the jury, who was ready to confess having been bribed. The Court refused such a man's evidence, and after a lapse of seven months, during which O'Malley constantly demanded a trial, the indictment against him was abandoned on October 8th. On being dis- charged he published a declaration that the prosecutors knew all along there was no suspicion of wrong-doing' in the Hennessey case, but ' the indictment had to be brought in order to satisfy the people for what was done on March 14th,'—that is, to justify the massacre of the Italian prisoners. He added : I have been asked to keep quiet, and allow the matter to be forgotten ;' but he threatens yet to expose the whole affair." The truth is, says Mr. Wakefield, that life is held cheap through- out the Union, and that " the rule seems to be that killing is no murder, and the law has nothing to do with it, whenever there is provocation enough on either side to make the other party angry." He gives two stories in illustration of this, which he holds to be the more conclusive because no life was actually taken :—" A member of a well-known club in New York, who prided himself on his pedigree, wished another member to read a book on the subject, and left it for him with the ball-porter. Returning some days later, he found the gentleman had not taken the book, but had made some excuse, and left it with the hall-porter as before. The man of ancient lineage was very wroth at this, and, meeting the other member at the club door, charged him with the slight. The other again excused him- self, and ended by saying plainly that he was not interested in the subject of the pedigree. This was an unbearable insult. The next moment a shot was fired, and the scorner of pedigrees only saved his life by running into the street and getting under a waggon. His assailant, after a long delay, was arrested, but released on trifling bail, and no further proceedings were taken. Another instance happened to myself. I had been travelling in a railway carriage in the South, in company with two very pleasant men who chanced to be seated opposite to me at the end of the crowded car, and had got out to buy a lunch,' as they say, at a station, my two fellow-passengers having pro- mised to keep my seat for me. When I returned to the car I found a tall, gaunt man, in a broad slouch hat, apparently about to take my seat, but yet not actually taking it. A glance at my acquaintances opposite showed me why he hesitated. Each of them was holding a cup of coffee to his mouth with his left hand, while his right grasped a revolver covering the intruder. Time being short, they were drinking their coffee while they 'kept the Britisher's seat.' The tall stranger politely retired on my appearing, the others put their revolvers in their hip-pockets without any remark, and we resumed our journey. What amused me most of all though was a glimpse I got of a solemn-looking old man about half-way down the car, who had drawn out from somewhere an enormous, anti- quated, ivory-handled six-shooter, and was holding it up with his finger on the trigger, ready to take a hand in any little festivity that might arise. He looked so disappointed when it all ended in nothing that I felt quite sorry for him.' Every lawyer, says Mr. Wakefield, keeps a revolver in a pigeon-hole of his desk, and any insult to a woman is held to justify her friends in the immediate execution of the insulter.
There is, we have no doubt, much exaggeration in all this. Millions of Americans pass through life without ever seeing a revolver drawn, or having one, unless they live in lonely houses, in their own possession ; and there are wide districts where a wilful homicide would be hunted as he would be in Kent or Normandy. Mr. Wakefield is not careful enough about his statistics, believing, for instance, that a majority of American citizens are foreign-born, whereas 80 per cent. of the people of the Union were born on American soil; and he does not sufficiently distinguish between one section of the country and another. But no one can read any good American newspaper without seeing that part of the charge is true ; that quarrelling leads to bloodshed in a number of cases beyond all European precedent ; that female dignity as well as honour is constantly defended with the pistol, without duel or other for- mality ; and that, though murder for gain is detested and punished much as it is in Europe, homicide from any other motive is regarded with a leniency, or in the case of personal insult with an approval, which seems to good men in all other countries absolutely inexplicable. In the West, indeed, if we may believe the editor of the Fortnightly Review, who writes from personal observation, the man who does not instantly avenge an impertinence by killing the impertinent is hope- lessly disgraced, and either boycotted or practically forced into an unequal duel in the street ; and to refuse a challenge except upon the ground of religious opinions—Mr. Harris does not mention that exception, but we can quote instances where it was held valid—is considered proof of cowardice disentitling the recusant to the treatment of a human being. American fiction is full of instances of personal vengeance exacted for what seems to Europeans inadequate reason; for example, as punishment for fraud; and in five cases out of ten, the language of ordinary reporters betrays in such cases either a secret admiration, or a full sense that the murderer is only a lawbreaker, and that the victim brought his fate upon himself.
The strangest thing about the whole question is the obvious perversion of opinion. We have read a great mass of American literature, and more American newspapers than we could justify if time is regarded as a trust, but we can recall no reasoned defence of the American practice of exacting private vengeance. Elaborate arguments are put forward for tolerating Lynch-law, most of them resolving themselves into the plea, sometimes true, sometimes utterly false, that in no other way can crime be prevented from becoming rampant, or even ruling certain sections of the country ; but we never re- member, in a serious book or a work of fiction a grave argu- ment for the personal appeal to the revolver. It is always accepted as right or wrong or dubious under the circumstances, which are expected to secure with all Americans their own full justification, or it may be condemnation, or in a few cases perplexed consideration. The European idea that, except in a duel, no man has a right to take an untried man's life, is as completely though silently rejected, as the English idea that killing in a duel is homicide, it may be with extenuating cir- cumstances differentiating it from murder, but still in all cases homicide. That proves a special condition of opinion, and we should greatly like to be able to satisfy ourselves how it has arisen. It has certainly not been produced by any malignant temper in the race. The testimony of all men, except perhaps Spanish-Americans, to the universal kindliness of North Americans, is unanimous, and is certainly confirmed by all that is known of the numbers who enter our society. Their conspicuous foible is tolerance for the intolerable, not malignity of temper. Nor is it mere indifference to human life, such as Mr. Rider Haggard, two or three times over in his books, makes Zulus attribute to themselves. There is no more lenient body of law in the world than the American—of course with the exception of the old laws to restrain slaves—and no population so anxious, anxious even beyond reason, as was shown in the Guiteau case, that a prisoner on trial for his life should have the fullest defence, and the benefit of every legal loophole for escape. The very men who have secretly deter- mined to lynch a prisoner would be shocked if his lawyers failed to advance every technical plea producible on his behalf. It certainly is not any question of creed, for though there are plenty of disbelievers in America, and plenty of men who attack every general conviction, the validity of the im- pression of existence included, the immense majority are either Christians of what we should call the Nonconformist type, or Roman Catholics much more faithful to their Church than, say, most Frenchmen or Italians. Why, then, among this kindly, law-abiding, and to all appearance Christian population, is the elementary Christian dogma that man-slaying is wicked, comparatively so feeble? We presume that the first cause is the exaggerated self-confidence which Republican institutions seem as yet to stimulate, the idea that opinion, as it makes human law, is entitled also to make moral law, an idea which is spreading fast in France and among ourselves, and invariably results in the notion—the real source of the tolerance in some countries both of duelling and suicide—that that which is not generally disapproved is right. The early circumstances of America made self-defence even in private quarrels almost a necessity, there being, in fact, no law sufficiently operative ; the tradition of approval for it has lasted for generations; and it has gradually worn away part, not all by any means, of the instinctive reverence for human life. The individual, it is conceived, must do battle with the foeman, and among the first of foemen is reckoned the insulter, who, if he passes a certain limit, may even be put to death. It is a creed utterly inconsistent with Christianity, repudiated by every Church and defended by no religious man; but then, so also is the Continental opinion in favour of duelling, which sprang from the right of private war, and has on this point worn away the general, if not the universal conscience. Of course the effect of this attrition is increased by the weakness of the law to which it has given birth. Law is not the source of conscience, as so many affirm, but it is its strongest buttress, and the steady execution of every mur- derer soon develops the natural horror of murder into an abiding peacefulness. Punishment, however, in the States for anything but "mean" crimes, such as theft, is exceedingly uncertain and exceedingly tardy, the lawyers insisting on an antiquated procedure which protracts trials for months, while the rights of the separate States incessantly em- barrass the action of a police which, except in some great cities, is insufficiently large. The murderer whom the populace hate is hunted sharply enough, but the murderer about whom it is indifferent has many chances of escape, even after trial and condemnation. There must, however, be some cause at work beyond the one we have assigned, and we incline to believe it is, first, the nervous tension in Americans produced by climate and habit of hurried life—a tension visible in the astonishing frequency of sudden deaths from overwork and emotion—and secondly, the intense American fear of opinion which, so to speak, causes self-love, amour-propre, the sense of personal dignity, to remain per- manently raw. Anything which " belittles " an American, even a bitter joke, seems to him to involve the loss of the respect of his fellow-men, and therefore to be unendurable. He is excessively quick, and very intelligent ; he sees the result of an action in a moment ; and if it tends to lower him, he will go any length to set himself right, and be respected again by exacting condign vengeance. It is a strange sensitivenesss to be felt by a people which is not only Teutonic for the most part in blood, but is humorous, and when moved in that direction, merciful to a quite exceptional degree ; but it exists also in France, where also there is humour, though there an immoveable tradition insists that vengeance shall;be exacted only under the control of strict formalities. The only remedy other than a rigid execution of the law, which if persisted in for years would make even enraged men pause, is a change of opinion, and changes of opinion in the direction of a necessity for self-restraint, though they do arrive at last, are fearfully slow in corning. The Catholic Church has for ages condemned duelling as mortal sin ; yet in France, Austria, Italy, Catholic Germany, and Spanish America, men who are the sincerest of believers cannot bring themselves to refuse a challenge, or to reprehend killing in duels unless the killer has violated the unwritten duelling code. It will be long, we fear, before homicide ceases to be the great American sin, the only ground for hopefulness being this, that the more religious a local community grows, the more decided grows also its abhorrence alike of assassination for vengeance, duelling, and suicide.
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