CHAP. VIII.] PAMPHLET ON GARROTTERS. 87 



Injury Argument. 



9. If we believe the doctors, who are always dogmatical, we shall hear 

 that cases of personal violence leave traces for life. Dr. Forbes Winslow 

 may say that insanity is often traced to blows on the head inflicted years 

 before. The brain doctors tell us that epilepsy, apoplexy, and with females, 

 the most severe and terrible hysteria, are brought on by a shock to the brain. 

 We hear oculists declare that vision is often impaired. Aurists tell us that 

 persons are rendered deaf. Some persons are deprived of smell, others of 

 taste, and innumerable cases of stiff joints and lameness are produced by 

 personal violence arising from resistance to the demands of the garrotter 

 for his victim to give up his personal property, or to the burglar from 

 entering his house. It is, thereupon, argued that garrotters and burglars 

 are so savage and relentless in their course, that death by the gallows should 

 be their doom. Can anything be more foolish ? for a damaged man is a 

 patient for life, a certain annuity to the doctor. Under these circumstances, 

 medical men have no cause for grumbling ; but, on the contrary, ought 

 rather to rejoice that the garrotte and house-breaking have so deep a hold 

 upon our social system. 



The Expense Argument. 



10. Mean hardhearted citizens consider that, as they work for their 

 living, they have no right to keep hundreds in idleness and greater luxury 

 than their own workpeople. Nothing can be more futile than this argu- 

 ment, although it must be confessed that it is very hard to drive it out of 

 their heads, that it is not right to give a garrotter meat when the workmen 

 live on bread and cheese. He argues, naturally enough for a mere counting- 

 house man, that the criminal should not be better off than the honest work- 

 man. The more comprehensive mind will discover that the criminal is the 

 pet of pets of a certain section of the thinking community, and the honest 

 man may go to the wall. 



Outbreak Argument. 



11. All experience shows that it is no easy matter to keep a number of 

 burglars and garrotters, used to every kind of cruelty and violence, in due 

 subjection. With the greatest care caged murderers will do violence to 

 the gaoler. Used to every brutality, they stand very badly the slight re- 

 straint imposed upon them by a prison life. What can be greater proof of 

 the folly of catching them, when, by convicting them of a murder, you 

 induce them to commit two or three more ? As a matter of fact, wouldst 

 thou like a house-breaker or murderer to live in thy family ? and if thou 

 wouldst not like him in thy house, is it fair and equitable to expose the 

 warders to his influence ? 



The War Argument. 



12. In warfare how many brave men sacrifice themselves simply as a 

 matter of duty to their country, or a sense of manly feeling to protect their 

 wives and families. When in battle we see thousands of the good and just 

 fall in a single day, unthinking people inquire why should millions of 

 Englishmen be kept in terror by one or two score of worthless, degraded 

 reprobates. But the fact is that neither the garrotter nor burglar is a brave 



