The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays, Ambrose Bierce [scary books to read txt] 📗

rioter or lyncher is a high kind of mercy. Suppose that twenty-five years ago (the longer ago the better) two or three criminal mobs in succession had been exterminated in that way, "as the law provides." Suppose that several scores of lives had been so taken, including even those of "innocent spectators"--though that kind of angel does not abound in the vicinity of mobs. Suppose that no demagogue judges had permitted officers in command of the "firing lines" to be persecuted in the courts. Suppose that these events had writ themselves large and red in the public memory. How many lives would this have saved? Just as many as since have been taken and lost by rioters, plus those that for a long time to come will be taken, and minus those that were taken at that time. Make your own computation from your own data; I insist only that a rioter shot in time saves nine.

You know--you, the People--that all this is true. You know that in a Republic lawlessness is villainy entailing greater evils than it cures--that it cures none. You know that even the "money power" is powerful only through your own dishonesty and cowardice. You know that nobody can bribe or intimidate a voter who will not take a bribe or suffer himself to be intimidated--that there can be no "money power" in a nation of honorable and courageous men. You know that "bosses" and "machines" can not control you if you will not suffer then to divide you into "parties" by playing upon your credulity and senseless passions. You know all this, and know it all the time. Yet not a man has the courage to stand forth and say to your faces what you know in your hearts. Well, Messieurs the Masses, I don't consider you dangerous--not very. I have not observed that you want to tear anybody to pieces for confessing your sins, even if at the same time he confesses his own. From a considerable experience in that sort of thing I judge that you rather like it, and that he whom, secretly, you most despise is he who echoes back to you what he is pleased to think you think and flatters you for gain. Anyhow, for some reason, I never hear you speak well of newspaper men and politicians, though in the shadow of your disesteem they get an occasional gleam of consolation by speaking fairly well of one another.



CRIME AND ITS CORRECTIVES

I.


SOCIOLOGISTS have been debating the theory that the impulse to commit crime is a disease, and the ayes appear to have it--not the impulse but the decision. It is gratifying and profitable to have the point settled: we now know "where we are at," and can take our course accordingly. It has for a number of years been known to all but a few back-number physicians--survivals from an exhausted _regime_--that all disease is caused by bacilli, which worm themselves into the organs that secrete health and enjoin them from the performance of that rite. The medical conservatives mentioned attempt to whittle away the value and significances of this theory by affirming its inadequacy to account for such disorders as broken heads, sunstroke, superfluous toes, home-sickness, burns and strangulation on the gallows; but against the testimony of so eminent bacteriologists as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their carping is as that of the idle angler. The bacillus is not to be denied; he has brought his blankets and is here to stay until evicted, and eviction can not be wrought by talking. Doubtless we may confidently expect his eventual suppression by a fresher and more ingenious disturber of the physiological peace, but the bacillus is now chief among ten thousand evils and it is futile to attempt to read him out of the party.

It follows that in order to deal intelligently with the criminal impulse in our afflicted fellow-citizens we must discover the bacillus of crime. To that end I think that the bodies of hanged assassins and such persons of low degree as have been gathered to their fathers by the cares of public office or consumed by the rust of inactivity in prison should be handed over to the microscopists for examination. The bore, too, offers a fine field for research, and might justly enough be examined alive. Whether there is one general--or as the ancient and honorable orders prefer to say, "grand"--bacillus, producing a general (or grand) criminal impulse covering a multitude of sins, or an infinite number of well defined and several bacilli, each inciting to a particular crime, is a question to the determination of which the most distinguished microscopist might be proud to devote the powers of his eye. If the latter is the case it will somewhat complicate the treatment, for clearly the patient afflicted with chronic robbery will require medicines different from those that might be efficacious in a gentleman suffering from constitutional theft or the desire to represent his District in the Assembly. But it is permitted to us to hope that all crimes, like all arts, are essentially one; that murder, arson and conservatism are but different symptoms of the same physical disorder, back of which is a microbe vincible to a single medicament, albeit the same awaits discovery.

In the fascinating theory of the unity of crime we may not unreasonably hope to find another evidence of the brotherhood of man, another spiritual bond tending to draw the various classes of society more closely together.

From time to time it is said that a "wave" of some kind of crime is sweeping the country. It is all nonsense about "waves" of crime. Occasionally occurs some crime notable for its unusual features, or for the renown of those concerned. It arrests public attention, which for a time is directed to that particular kind of crane, and the newspapers, with business-like instinct, give, for a season, unusual prominence to the record of similar offenses. Then, self-deceived, they talk about a "wave," or "epidemic" of it. So far is this from the truth that one of the most noticeable characteristics of crime is the steady and unbroken monotony of its occurrence in certain forms. There is nothing so dull and unvarying as this tedious uniformity of repetition. The march of crime is never retarded, never accelerated. The criminals appear to be thoroughly well satisfied with their annual average, as shown by the periodical reports of their secretary, the statistician.

A marked illustration occurs to me. Many years ago in London a well-known and respectable gentleman was brutally garroted. It was during the "silly season"--between sessions of Parliament, when the newspapers are likely to be dull. They at once began to report cases of garroting. There appeared to be an "epidemic of garroting." The public mind was terribly excited, and when Parliament met it hastened to pass the infamous "flogging act"--a distinct reversion to the senseless and discredited methods of physical torture, so alluring to the half instructed mind of the average journalist of today. Yet the statistics published by the Home Secretary under whose administration the act was passed show that neither at the time of the alarm was there any material increase of garroting, nor in the period of public tranquillity succeeding was there any appreciable diminution.


II.


By advocating painless removal of incurable idiots and lunatics, incorrigible criminals and irreclaimable drunkards from this vale of tears Dr. W. Duncan McKim provoked many a respectable but otherwise blameless person to throw a catfit of great complexity and power. Yet Dr. McKim seemed only to anticipate the trend of public opinion and forecast its crystallization into law. It is rapidly becoming a question of not what we ought to do with these unfortunates, but what we shall be compelled to do. Study of the statistics of the matter shows that in all civilized countries mental and moral diseases are increasing, proportionately to population, at a rate which in the course of a few generations will make it impossible for the healthy to care for the afflicted. To do so will require the entire revenue which it is possible to raise by taxation--will absorb all the profits of all the industries and professions and make deeper and deeper inroads upon the capital from which they are derived. When it comes to that there can be but one result. High and humanizing sentiments are angel visitants, whom we entertain with pride and pleasure, but when _fine_ entertainment becomes too costly to be borne we "speed the parting guest" forthwith. And it may happen that in inviting to his vacant place a less exciting successor--that in replacing Sentiment with Reason--we shall, in this instance, learn to our joy that we do but entertain another angel. For nothing is so heavenly as Reason; nothing is so sweet and compassionate as her voice--


"Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,"


Is it cruel, is it heartless, is it barbarous to use something of the same care in breeding men and women as in breeding horses and dogs? Here is a determining question: Knowing yourself doomed to hopeless idiocy, lunacy, crime or drunkenness, would you, or would you not, welcome a painless death? Let us assume that you would. Upon what ground, then, would you deny to another a boon that you would desire for yourself?


III.


The good American is, as a rule, pretty hard upon roguery, but he atones for his austerity by an amiable toleration of rogues. His only requirement is that he must personally know the rogues. We all "denounce" thieves loudly enough, if we have not the honor of their acquaintance. If we have, why, that is different--unless they have the actual odor of the prison about them. We may know them guilty, but we meet them, shake hands with them, drink with them, and if they happen to be wealthy or otherwise great invite them to our houses, and deem it an honor to frequent theirs. We do not "approve their methods"--let that be understood; and thereby they are sufficiently punished. The notion that a knave cares a pin what is thought of his ways by one who is civil and friendly to himself appears to have been invented by a humorist. On the vaudeville stage of Mars it would probably have made his fortune. If warrants of arrest were out for every man in this country who is conscious of having repeatedly shaken hands with persons whom he knew to be knaves there would be no guiltless person to serve them.

I know men standing high in journalism who today will "expose" and bitterly "denounce" a certain rascality and tomorrow will be hobnobbing with the rascals whom they have named. I know legislators of renown who habitually in "the halls of legislation" raise their voices against the dishonest schemes of some "trust magnate," and are habitually seen in familiar conversation with him. Indubitably these be hypocrites all. Between the head and the heart of such a man is a wall of adamant, and neither organ knows what the other is doing.

If social recognition were denied to rogues they would be fewer by many. Some would only the more diligently cover their tracks along the devious paths of unrighteousness, but others would do so much violence to their consciences as to renounce the disadvantages of rascality for those of an honest life. An unworthy person dreads nothing so much as the withholding of an honest hand, the slow inevitable stroke of an ignoring eye.

For one having knowledge of Mr. John D. Rockefeller's social life and connections it would be easy to name a dozen men and women who by a conspiracy of conscription could profoundly affect the