THE CAUSES OF PERSECUTION 



judicial torture, that have done away with the 

 horrors of Bedlam and the " stone-hold " of 

 Newgate, and that have embodied in the Con- 

 stitution of the United States the injunction 

 that " cruel and unusual punishment " must not 

 be inflicted upon criminals. 



Now, this general increase in humanity which 

 is discernible throughout the most advanced 

 regions of Christendom during the past three 

 centuries, and which has become especially con- 

 spicuous in our own time, is undoubtedly con- 

 sequent upon the vast increase of industrial at 

 the expense of military activity which has char- 

 acterized the same period. With the gradual 

 aggregation of men into great and stable com- 

 munities, and with the accompanying increase 

 in the complexity of social life and in the num- 

 ber of wants which labour is required to satisfy, 

 the sphere of industry has become immensely 

 enlarged and the sphere of warfare has become 

 correspondingly restricted. I do not forget that 

 great and terrible wars still occur, but it remains 

 none the less true that fighting has ceased to be 

 recognized as the principal, or even as a very 

 considerable, part of the business of society. 

 Private warfare, once universal and incessant 

 throughout western Europe, has become ex- 

 tinct, and in the Northern States of the Ameri- 

 can Union it has never existed. Brigandage 

 survives only in out of the way corners of the 

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