A Plea for the Criminal Part 5

From the revelations of the Birth-rate Commission and from other enquiries it is most evident that tubo-ligature would be very largely abused indeed.

But it may be said that it were far better that the woman shrinking maternity should employ this method than that she should use the preventive drugs that she does. This is but to acknowledge the morality, or at least the necessity for the use of preventives and does nothing less than to charge the Deity with having made laws for the governing of the Natural Order which have got altogether out of hand and have involved His creatures in confusion.

Is it not a question whether marriage becomes a necessity when children are to be avoided? The evil to which Dr Chapple's remedy would run, is one in which the moral sentiment of society would be so hardened that the reason for marriage would disappear from the knowledge of man.

There is a great difference between this operation taking place from pathological reasons and its being performed simply as a deliverance from maternal responsibilities. In the latter case it is performed at the will of the woman who thus shows that she has conquered the maternal instinct, and as such she is a monster for she has contradicted her nature. Lombroso declares that these are the women that commit the most hideous crimes and that they are incorrigible.

The Birth-rate Commissioners stated that the use of preventives was having a most injurious effect upon the health of the women who used them.

Clearly then Morality and Nature are both opposed to their use.

If men and women are becoming so selfish as to be determined to live contrary to their nature then Nature will deal with them according to Her terrible manner. If they are in an extremity and find that our social system makes it impossible for them to undertake the responsibilities of parentage, then the reorganization of our social system is a matter for urgent consideration.

But Dr Chapple would only intensify the evil instead of remedying it.

What he practically says is this:--Regard yourselves for the moment as being brute beasts and discuss the question upon that level. Murder the social instinct; murder the compa.s.sionate spirit; disregard the Divine Law and stifle all faith in the Providence of G.o.d; let the mission of life be the enjoyment of pleasure; shrink from the marriage that might be a burden, and dissolve the happy marriage should indications of future burdens present themselves. He would have us compelled to take our betrothed to a medical board and shamelessly confess ourselves.

Confess ourselves under circ.u.mstances which would know no secrecy. He would have us regard our wives from the standpoint of selfishness and l.u.s.t alone. But we are not brutes we are human, and we have instincts which the brutes have not.

NOTE.--Dr. Chapple includes among the defectives not only the criminal but also the lunatic, the epileptic and the pauper. How far tubo-ligature would meet the cases of these defectives seems very uncertain. The information which the Doctor gives us, for the most part, is in direct opposition to him. On pages 74-76 he gives the history of eight families which it will repay to examine.

Cases I.--Cancer, consumption and epilepsy in the family. In the third generation there are seven persons, of whom five married. The only healthy member left five children, three were childless and one who died at 56 left five children. That is to say, twelve children represent the fourth generation.

Case II.--Insanity, idiocy and epilepsy. Of five persons the one sane member only has a family. Nine children, some (how many?) imbecile.

Case III.--Drunkenness, insanity. Seven children, two died of convulsions. One an idiot, one a dement (suicidal), one repeatedly insane. These three are scarcely likely to be chosen in marriage. One peculiar and irritable, one nervous and depressed.

Case IV.--In third generation there are two epileptics and one imbecile--scarcely likely to marry. Seven others are dead. (S. P.)

Case V.--From an insane parent we have three children, one excitable, one dull and one imbecile.

Case VI.--A family of mutes and scarcely relevant.

Case VII.--Drunkenness, epilepsy, etc. In the third generation "family now extinct." No indications of tubo-ligature having been performed.

Case VIII.--Apparently the issue in the second generation is from two parentages. There are fifteen persons accounted for. Seven died in infancy of convulsions. Epilepsy, scrofula, and idiocy can claim one each. One was drowned, and four are healthy. That is, of seven surviving children, four are healthy.

In all from fifteen parents there is the alarming increase of fifty-six persons. Of these eleven are healthy, fourteen are not described, fourteen are defective and seventeen are dead. The total number of living descendants, representing no less than the third generation of seven families, is but thirty-nine. These figures can scarcely be quoted to prove the "fertility of the unfit," but that is the t.i.tle that stands over them. As to the hereditary tendencies that they propagate, more information is required.

It is a well known fact that in cases of hereditary defect there is a tendency for the defect to appear at either an earlier or later stage in life in each successive generation (Mercier). In the first case the family dies out, in the second case it recovers itself. In cases of congenital defect, there is very little to fear. The lunatic is locked up and the epileptic is avoided.

Nature deals most successfully with these cases. She saves where possible and destroys when recovery is hopeless. Very slowly perhaps, but very exactly--never making a mistake, and in her slowness she is but giving man an opportunity to contribute something towards the recovery she aims at.

=The Case of the Epileptic.=--The number of epileptics in whom the disease may be traced to hereditary causes is estimated to be about 33 per cent. of the whole. This is indeed a very large percentage. It does not, however, follow that in all the cases or in by any means a large proportion of them, the parents were also epileptics. Authorities are not agreed as to the influence of heredity as a predisposing cause; but it is recognised by all that the children of insane, neurotic, hysterical or neuralgic parents are liable to become epileptics. Also that alcoholism in the parents conveys a predisposition to the child.

The hereditary cases are therefore to be divided amongst all these causes. In what proportion it would be difficult to estimate; but very few persons in whom epilepsy has developed marry, and as 75 per cent. of the cases are said to begin under the age of 20 years, and very few after 25 years (cases of hereditary epilepsy have been known to develop at so late an age as 65 and 70 years) it limits the number of epileptics who marry to a very narrow margin. For even these few, marriage should, however, be entirely out of the question. In cases, where from syphilis or shock epilepsy is developed in the married adult we should expect to find treatment imposing a restriction upon the freedom of the patient somewhat similar to that provided for lunatics.

In almost every rank of society the developed epileptic would be excluded from marriage by the law of s.e.xual selection, and as the great majority develop epilepsy before coming to a marriageable age, few epileptic children can claim a developed epileptic ancestry.

The number of cases, where epilepsy results from an epileptic ancestry, is estimated by Sir Wm. Gowers at 22 per cent. of the whole. These cases are to be distributed between the developed form and the pet.i.t mal. As the pet.i.t mal often escapes observation Dr Chapple's method would only apply to those cases of the marriage of persons who were afflicted with the major form of epilepsy, which means that perhaps not more than 10 per cent. of the number of epileptics could be prevented from coming to birth. If a ten per centum reduction is to be considered as solving the problem in the case of epileptics what will the 86 per cent. of reforms among criminals be valued at?

=The Case of the Pauper.=--Paupers may be divided into two cla.s.ses, those whose poverty is due to misfortunes and those whose poverty is due to vicious idleness. Those whose poverty is due to drink or crime are not properly to be cla.s.sified as paupers. Society regards them as primarily drunkards and criminals. Of these two cla.s.ses the first are generally to be found making a courageous fight against adverse circ.u.mstances and feel their position keenly. They are deserving of the compa.s.sion of society. Their families, it is true, are a burden upon private and inst.i.tutional charity, but only a temporary one and after a while become the very means of recovering the broken fortunes of their parents. Very large sums are spent in relieving the necessities (often in providing the luxuries) of the undeserving poor, but this fact should not be made the basis of a charge against the deserving but helpless poor. My own acquaintance with the poorest parts of one of our largest cities leads me to believe that very little charity ever reaches the truly deserving poor. They battle on and keep their sad condition as far from public observation as possible. The undeserving are very clamorous.

These two incidents are by no means uncommon, they are fairly typical.

(a) I was called one night to baptise a dying child. The mother stated that she was too poor to buy a few necessaries ordered by the doctor. I purchased these myself and brought them to the mother. The next morning she sent to say the child was dead and would I lend her money to wire to the father. As he was in work I thought a collect telegram was more suitable. In the evening a request came for monetary a.s.sistance to provide the child with a coffin and to purchase a plot in the cemetery.

A clergyman who does that sort of thing might as well keep a private cemetery, undertaker and monumental mason of his own. I refused to do it and came in for a good deal of abuse. The mother appeared at the funeral in a new black silk dress!

(b) A crippled woman who earned her living by ironing. She made on an average 10s per week. I suggested to her the advisability of applying for an old age pension and proceeded to fill in her papers. When she discovered that she was two months under the age of 65 she was horrified at what she thought an attempt on her part to swindle the Government.

These cases speak for themselves. People seem afraid to refuse to give alms for fear of being called uncharitable, yet they have not the charity to investigate the cases brought before their notice and see that their relief is intelligently bestowed upon worthy persons. Some religious societies are cruel sinners in this respect. The consequence is that a premium is put upon professional begging and we have plenty of it. Society will never murmur against the burden of the deserving poor.

Concerning the life of the poor, however, Korosi gives these statistics:--The average age of the rich is 35 years, of the well-to-do 20.6 years, of the poor only 13.2 years. These statistics are supposed to hold good for all large towns. The average life of the pauper (that is the vicious pauper) will be shorter still seeing that in his idle, vicious life the parent refuses to acknowledge his responsibilities towards his children and makes no effort to save them from perishing through want and proper healthful conditions. The numbers of the pauper may increase, but it is seen then that they do not live to any great length of life. The pauper has, however, a certain rate of increase and his children are brought up in pauper habits. To the criminal population they add about 2 per cent. of the whole. They const.i.tute a burden, not very great, but one which society resents. To adopt tubo-ligature might relieve both society and the pauper, but its moral effect would be that the pauper would regard his vice as acknowledged and approved by society. To say that there are no other remedies, remedies which would compel the pauper to earn his living, is an appalling confession of failure on the part of society.

Chapter VI.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF SOCIETY TOWARDS THE WEAK.

The last century is admittedly one in which was witnessed the greatest advances in civilization that the world has ever made. All cla.s.ses in society may be said to have benefited. The rich have been given greater opportunities for the enjoyment of their riches and an enlarged sphere of usefulness opened to them. The poor have had their lot so greatly ameliorated, that given health, very few men in these colonies at all events, are poor except it be their own fault. The art of healing can now restore to health millions who, had they lived in an earlier century, would have suffered agonies. A universal education has opened the doors of colleges and universities and made it possible for those born in the humblest conditions of life, to attain to the most distinguished positions in the land. The private has become the general; the office boy the judge; the peasant boy the President; the full-blooded aboriginal has graduated through our universities and been called to the Bar; and no man can urge cla.s.s distinction as being the cause of his failure in any ambition that he has faithfully pursued. All cla.s.ses have benefited; almost all cla.s.ses have advanced.

Undeniably this advance has brought greater happiness into the world; whether it will continue will entirely depend upon what basis it is intended to secure this advance.

With an increase of wealth and leisure there is the danger of demoralisation. Our society may subst.i.tute a false aim for its true one.

Already there are an illimitable number of social reformers who are prepared to describe in very definite terms what is the state of perfected society and what laws are necessary for immediate enactment in order that we might rapidly reach that state. We all acknowledge the existence of the prophetic vision, but we limit its range and regard him most audacious who declares that he can describe the heaven in which society shall finally shelter itself securely from all that prey upon her. Advance as quickly as we may, there is a limit to our speed, and the future being all unknown we scarcely like to take it at a plunge.

Nevertheless, these social reformers do a good work--their schemes are at least suggestive, and moreover they point out signs of the times.

They show us unmistakably that with our advance there is a tendency to become more and more selfish and to regard with less true charity the condition of the weak. One social reformer will say that there will not be any suffering because therapeutics will have overtaken every disease that the flesh is heir to, or better still, that some new discovery will have made it possible to heal all sicknesses without the tedious work of surgeons and nurses. Healing will become a pastime like table-turning.

Neither will there be any criminals because the whole social state will be so happy, contented, and knit together that inducement to crime will cease. Others will treat the criminal "scientifically," ensuring reforms at the rate of 100 per cent. with lightning-like rapidity. Which all practically amounts to this, that the problem concerning the future of the weak is shelved. To study it deeply would spoil our best theories and therefore it must be got rid of. Dr Chapple has done nothing more than shelve it, for as we have seen his remedy is both practically and morally impossible. Like all others it betrays the selfish spirit. Like them it regards the weak as if they were nothing less than an intolerable incubus on society, a grit in its bearings. It may be that our social advancement will account for this. In old time when communities were small and fixed, the burden of nursing the helpless necessarily fell upon those who were immediately related by ties of blood or neighbourhood, but now the many changes in the method of living and treatment, has made this to a large extent impossible. Inst.i.tutions have everywhere sprung up, and it is invariably to the advantage of our sick and afflicted that we should commit them to these inst.i.tutions, which practice has engendered the belief that all our social obligations can be discharged by monetary payment. Not for one moment need we entertain the idea that this belief will ever become a dominating one.

Charitable influences are more powerful. Nor must we charge the authors of selfish systems with being as uncharitable as their systems. They give expression to a fairly strong and somewhat universal sentiment, a sentiment which we would perhaps disown at once upon its being unmasked and which many refuse to obey upon its appeal to them to act in accordance with its principles. This indicates that society sees many of its a.s.sailants in but a half-light. It observes neither their malice nor strength but only a dark ugly form which irritates us and which we would if we could banish by an act of will.

This being impossible we must meet our a.s.sailants in a clearer light and destroy them. How can this be done, since it would mean the destruction of evil and the powers of evil? Then it cannot be done, but since evil feeds itself upon its victims we can greatly diminish its power and influence by rescuing all who fall within its grasp. Many we know we cannot rescue for there are certain types of disease mental and bodily which defy our skill and some of all types of moral disease also defy our effort. Still it would be better to say that we do not rescue them, than that we cannot, for what was incurable yesterday is curable to-day, and the most deadly diseases are giving clear evidence that their powers to baffle science are fast giving out. That they will give out, scientific men confidently hope. Neither is this hope groundless for past success warrant it and there again point to another a.s.surance, almost a guarantee. The miracles of healing which Our Lord wrought were not only to confer relief upon the suffering, not only to give evidence of His Divinity, but also to promise the triumph which would reward the efforts of man seeking to a.s.sist his afflicted brother. We will never heal by a word, neither will we raise the dead, for in these works of might we have peculiar evidence of the Divine Providence; but Christ's miracles seem to promise that He, the Light of the World, will yet grant the fullness of that illumination by which the works of healing are done.

The sick, it is true, receive greater compa.s.sion from their fellowmen than the abnormal, the insane and the criminal. But these latter also demand our consideration if for no other reason than that they menace society. To exterminate them is impossible. A persecution with that end would defeat itself, and the persecutors would become morally infinitely worse than the persecuted.

Secondly: their consideration is demanded from the fact that society has produced the evil plight of very many of them. In the great advance, they have fallen and been trampled on. Their right to fall may be denied, but whose right was it to trample on them? To declare it to have been inevitable that they should be trampled on, simply excuses guilt but not obligation. And the obligation is to make reparation as far as possible.

Thirdly: because what should be a valuable a.s.set to society, contributing substantially to her strength, becomes a hostile power weakening her and hindering her progress. Any of these three considerations received separately is sufficient to convince us of our obligations to this uglier section of the weak, when combined their force is very great. But when we speak to them of peace do they not make them ready to battle? No, their case is not so hopeless as that. David lived under the Mosaic Dispensation, and Moses could give but the law whereas Christ has given His Life. Our method will determine everything.

Good advice, good books, good laws will do but little; good work will accomplish all. "The greatest good of the greatest number" is a false ideal and absolutely unworthy either of our charity or our science. "The ultimate good of all" is the end society is destined to accomplish, and anything less is too little for her, anything more is impossible even to conceive.

In working towards this ideal, which we cannot describe with greater definiteness, we are bound to recognise that GOODNESS is our safe and only guide. The general direction of our advance in the past we can easily trace, but the purpose of the devious paths through which we were led is too difficult to understand. Our present puzzles us, our future sometimes appals us. Some rush ahead to see what lies before us and come back injured and pa.s.s away as pessimists, others hesitate to advance at all. We cannot outstrip our guiding pillar of light; but following it we are safe to advance. And in following, one of the first convictions that comes home to us is that we must allow no waste, neither in the lives of others nor in the energies of ourselves. With this conviction soon comes the startling fact that the energies we are allowing to waste are identically those which were given to us to save the lives of others which are wasting. A wonderful independence exists among us. The social system is bound together by ties of nature, and not merely by those of commerce or benefit. Man is social, not merely gregarious. He enters into the life of his fellow-man and establishes relations which we are bound to call spiritual. Through the media of these relations, influences traverse which are of the most profound we know. These relations when established compel us to acknowledge our duties to one another and give us a delight in discharging them. This delight in turn becomes the power, which opens the eyes to the realization of the great principle of self-sacrifice. Egoism and altruism are not to be mutually exclusive. To seek our own happiness is not to be indifferent to the happiness of society. For what is happiness? not pleasure, but self-realization, and we cannot realise self without realising society.

This interdependence which exists between man and man, and which makes it possible for us to influence one another so powerfully for good or for evil, points out to us that the true aim of every man, namely, to unite his work with that of his fellow-man in a grand co-operative undertaking for the advancement and betterment of society regarded as a whole and with regard for its units. We cannot realise self if engaged in compet.i.tion man against man in order to satisfy private ambition. Our object should be to unite and our hostility be provoked, not against one another, weak or strong, but against the powers which attack us individually and collectively.

Necessity then lays the obligation upon us to give our first attention to the rescue of the weak. It was the recognition of this obligation which sent the Christian-Maidens into the suburbs of Rome seeking the exposed offspring of unnatural parents. To say that they would have been better dead, is to speak with that facility which requires neither mental nor moral perception.

It is the recognition, in part, of this obligation which accounts for hospitals, asylums and other charitable inst.i.tutions. Hence also we endeavour to shelter those born deficient in mental or moral power. Dr Chapple seems to think that the result of all this is that we have made a pretty mess of society. He says, of these weaklings, that Nature has decreed that they should die. A most unscientific statement. Are these charitable efforts to be regarded as profane interference with the sacred decrees of Nature? Nature's decrees are inviolate and none can disturb them. Because these weak, if left unaided, would perish, is that to say that Nature has decreed that they should die? If so, we must say of a man, stricken with typhoid fever, that Nature has decreed that he should die, and that any effort to save him would be but a profane interference on our part with Nature.

What does Nature say of these that they do not live, they cannot live, or they must not live?

History has shown that in the past they do not live.

But in order to discover the decree of Nature we must make a full and exhaustive enquiry into the possibilities which exist under the laws of Nature. So far as this enquiry has advanced it has been made quite clear that the charitable effort of man will recover many that would otherwise perish. The whole science of therapeutics is based upon this discovery.