Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Read online

  CHAPTER XIX.

  In the course of an early morning constitutional I visitedCharlestown. Among the changes, too numerous to attempt to indicate,which mark the lapse of a century in that quarter, I particularlynoted the total disappearance of the old state prison.

  "That went before my day, but I remember hearing about it," said Dr.Leete, when I alluded to the fact at the breakfast table. "We have nojails nowadays. All cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals."

  "Of atavism!" I exclaimed, staring.

  "Why, yes," replied Dr. Leete. "The idea of dealing punitively withthose unfortunates was given up at least fifty years ago, and I thinkmore."

  "I don't quite understand you," I said. "Atavism in my day was a wordapplied to the cases of persons in whom some trait of a remoteancestor recurred in a noticeable manner. Am I to understand thatcrime is nowadays looked upon as the recurrence of an ancestraltrait?"

  "I beg your pardon," said Dr. Leete with a smile half humorous, halfdeprecating, "but since you have so explicitly asked the question, Iam forced to say that the fact is precisely that."

  After what I had already learned of the moral contrasts between thenineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it was doubtless absurd in meto begin to develop sensitiveness on the subject, and probably if Dr.Leete had not spoken with that apologetic air and Mrs. Leete and Edithshown a corresponding embarrassment, I should not have flushed, as Iwas conscious I did.

  "I was not in much danger of being vain of my generation before," Isaid; "but, really"--

  "This is your generation, Mr. West," interposed Edith. "It is the onein which you are living, you know, and it is only because we are alivenow that we call it ours."

  "Thank you. I will try to think of it so," I said, and as my eyes methers their expression quite cured my senseless sensitiveness. "Afterall," I said, with a laugh, "I was brought up a Calvinist, and oughtnot to be startled to hear crime spoken of as an ancestral trait."

  "In point of fact," said Dr. Leete, "our use of the word is noreflection at all on your generation, if, begging Edith's pardon, wemay call it yours, so far as seeming to imply that we think ourselves,apart from our circumstances, better than you were. In your day fullynineteen twentieths of the crime, using the word broadly to includeall sorts of misdemeanors, resulted from the inequality in thepossessions of individuals; want tempted the poor, lust of greatergains, or the desire to preserve former gains, tempted the well-to-do.Directly or indirectly, the desire for money, which then meant everygood thing, was the motive of all this crime, the taproot of a vastpoison growth, which the machinery of law, courts, and police couldbarely prevent from choking your civilization outright. When we madethe nation the sole trustee of the wealth of the people, andguaranteed to all abundant maintenance, on the one hand abolishingwant, and on the other checking the accumulation of riches, we cutthis root, and the poison tree that overshadowed your societywithered, like Jonah's gourd, in a day. As for the comparatively smallclass of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea ofgain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to theignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and goodmanners are not the monopoly of a few, but universal, such atrocitiesare scarcely ever heard of. You now see why the word "atavism" is usedfor crime. It is because nearly all forms of crime known to you aremotiveless now, and when they appear can only be explained as theoutcropping of ancestral traits. You used to call persons who stole,evidently without any rational motive, kleptomaniacs, and when thecase was clear deemed it absurd to punish them as thieves. Yourattitude toward the genuine kleptomaniac is precisely ours toward thevictim of atavism, an attitude of compassion and firm but gentlerestraint.

  "Your courts must have an easy time of it," I observed. "With noprivate property to speak of, no disputes between citizens overbusiness relations, no real estate to divide or debts to collect,there must be absolutely no civil business at all for them; and withno offenses against property, and mighty few of any sort to providecriminal cases, I should think you might almost do without judges andlawyers altogether."

  "We do without the lawyers, certainly," was Dr. Leete's reply. "Itwould not seem reasonable to us, in a case where the only interest ofthe nation is to find out the truth, that persons should take part inthe proceedings who had an acknowledged motive to color it."

  "But who defends the accused?"

  "If he is a criminal he needs no defense, for he pleads guilty in mostinstances," replied Dr. Leete. "The plea of the accused is not a mereformality with us, as with you. It is usually the end of the case."

  "You don't mean that the man who pleads not guilty is thereupondischarged?"

  "No, I do not mean that. He is not accused on light grounds, and if hedenies his guilt, must still be tried. But trials are few, for in mostcases the guilty man pleads guilty. When he makes a false plea and isclearly proved guilty, his penalty is doubled. Falsehood is, however,so despised among us that few offenders would lie to save themselves."

  "That is the most astounding thing you have yet told me," I exclaimed."If lying has gone out of fashion, this is indeed the 'new heavens andthe new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,' which the prophetforetold."

  "Such is, in fact, the belief of some persons nowadays," was thedoctor's answer. "They hold that we have entered upon the millennium,and the theory from their point of view does not lack plausibility.But as to your astonishment at finding that the world has outgrownlying, there is really no ground for it. Falsehood, even in your day,was not common between gentlemen and ladies, social equals. The lie offear was the refuge of cowardice, and the lie of fraud the device ofthe cheat. The inequalities of men and the lust of acquisition offereda constant premium on lying at that time. Yet even then, the man whoneither feared another nor desired to defraud him scorned falsehood.Because we are now all social equals, and no man either has anythingto fear from another or can gain anything by deceiving him, thecontempt of falsehood is so universal that it is rarely, as I toldyou, that even a criminal in other respects will be found willing tolie. When, however, a plea of not guilty is returned, the judgeappoints two colleagues to state the opposite sides of the case. Howfar these men are from being like your hired advocates andprosecutors, determined to acquit or convict, may appear from the factthat unless both agree that the verdict found is just, the case istried over, while anything like bias in the tone of either of thejudges stating the case would be a shocking scandal."

  "Do I understand," I said, "that it is a judge who states each side ofthe case as well as a judge who hears it?"

  "Certainly. The judges take turns in serving on the bench and at thebar, and are expected to maintain the judicial temper equally whetherin stating or deciding a case. The system is indeed in effect that oftrial by three judges occupying different points of view as to thecase. When they agree upon a verdict, we believe it to be as near toabsolute truth as men well can come."

  "You have given up the jury system, then?"

  "It was well enough as a corrective in the days of hired advocates,and a bench sometimes venal, and often with a tenure that made itdependent, but is needless now. No conceivable motive but justicecould actuate our judges."

  "How are these magistrates selected?"

  "They are an honorable exception to the rule which discharges all menfrom service at the age of forty-five. The President of the nationappoints the necessary judges year by year from the class reachingthat age. The number appointed is, of course, exceedingly few, andthe honor so high that it is held an offset to the additional term ofservice which follows, and though a judge's appointment may bedeclined, it rarely is. The term is five years, without eligibility toreappointment. The members of the Supreme Court, which is the guardianof the constitution, are selected from among the lower judges. When avacancy in that court occurs, those of the lower judges, whose termsexpire that year, select, as their last official act, the one of theircolleagues left on the bench whom they deem fittest to fill it."

  "There b
eing no legal profession to serve as a school for judges," Isaid, "they must, of course, come directly from the law school to thebench."

  "We have no such things as law schools," replied the doctor, smiling."The law as a special science is obsolete. It was a system ofcasuistry which the elaborate artificiality of the old order ofsociety absolutely required to interpret it, but only a few of theplainest and simplest legal maxims have any application to theexisting state of the world. Everything touching the relations of mento one another is now simpler, beyond any comparison, than in yourday. We should have no sort of use for the hair-splitting experts whopresided and argued in your courts. You must not imagine, however,that we have any disrespect for those ancient worthies because we haveno use for them. On the contrary, we entertain an unfeigned respect,amounting almost to awe, for the men who alone understood and wereable to expound the interminable complexity of the rights of property,and the relations of commercial and personal dependence involved inyour system. What, indeed, could possibly give a more powerfulimpression of the intricacy and artificiality of that system than thefact that it was necessary to set apart from other pursuits the creamof the intellect of every generation, in order to provide a body ofpundits able to make it even vaguely intelligible to those whose fatesit determined. The treatises of your great lawyers, the works ofBlackstone and Chitty, of Story and Parsons, stand in our museums,side by side with the tomes of Duns Scotus and his fellow scholastics,as curious monuments of intellectual subtlety devoted to subjectsequally remote from the interests of modern men. Our judges are simplywidely informed, judicious, and discreet men of ripe years.

  "I should not fail to speak of one important function of the minorjudges," added Dr. Leete. "This is to adjudicate all cases where aprivate of the industrial army makes a complaint of unfairness againstan officer. All such questions are heard and settled without appeal bya single judge, three judges being required only in graver cases. Theefficiency of industry requires the strictest discipline in the armyof labor, but the claim of the workman to just and consideratetreatment is backed by the whole power of the nation. The officercommands and the private obeys, but no officer is so high that hewould dare display an overbearing manner toward a workman of thelowest class. As for churlishness or rudeness by an official of anysort, in his relations to the public, not one among minor offenses ismore sure of a prompt penalty than this. Not only justice but civilityis enforced by our judges in all sorts of intercourse. No value ofservice is accepted as a set-off to boorish or offensive manners."

  It occurred to me, as Dr. Leete was speaking, that in all his talk Ihad heard much of the nation and nothing of the state governments. Hadthe organization of the nation as an industrial unit done away withthe states? I asked.

  "Necessarily," he replied. "The state governments would haveinterfered with the control and discipline of the industrial army,which, of course, required to be central and uniform. Even if thestate governments had not become inconvenient for other reasons, theywere rendered superfluous by the prodigious simplification in the taskof government since your day. Almost the sole function of theadministration now is that of directing the industries of the country.Most of the purposes for which governments formerly existed no longerremain to be subserved. We have no army or navy, and no militaryorganization. We have no departments of state or treasury, no exciseor revenue services, no taxes or tax collectors. The only functionproper of government, as known to you, which still remains, is thejudiciary and police system. I have already explained to you howsimple is our judicial system as compared with your huge and complexmachine. Of course the same absence of crime and temptation to it,which make the duties of judges so light, reduces the number andduties of the police to a minimum."

  "But with no state legislatures, and Congress meeting only once infive years, how do you get your legislation done?"

  "We have no legislation," replied Dr. Leete, "that is, next to none.It is rarely that Congress, even when it meets, considers any new lawsof consequence, and then it only has power to commend them to thefollowing Congress, lest anything be done hastily. If you willconsider a moment, Mr. West, you will see that we have nothing to makelaws about. The fundamental principles on which our society is foundedsettle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which in yourday called for legislation.

  "Fully ninety-nine hundredths of the laws of that time concerned thedefinition and protection of private property and the relations ofbuyers and sellers. There is neither private property, beyond personalbelongings, now, nor buying and selling, and therefore the occasion ofnearly all the legislation formerly necessary has passed away.Formerly, society was a pyramid poised on its apex. All thegravitations of human nature were constantly tending to topple itover, and it could be maintained upright, or rather upwrong (if youwill pardon the feeble witticism), by an elaborate system ofconstantly renewed props and buttresses and guy-ropes in the form oflaws. A central Congress and forty state legislatures, turning outsome twenty thousand laws a year, could not make new props fast enoughto take the place of those which were constantly breaking down orbecoming ineffectual through some shifting of the strain. Now societyrests on its base, and is in as little need of artificial supports asthe everlasting hills."

  "But you have at least municipal governments besides the one centralauthority?"

  "Certainly, and they have important and extensive functions in lookingout for the public comfort and recreation, and the improvement andembellishment of the villages and cities."

  "But having no control over the labor of their people, or means ofhiring it, how can they do anything?"

  "Every town or city is conceded the right to retain, for its ownpublic works, a certain proportion of the quota of labor its citizenscontribute to the nation. This proportion, being assigned it as somuch credit, can be applied in any way desired."