DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS: 



A CRITICISM OF MORALITY. 



The State is the actually existing realised moral life. For it is the unity of the universal 

 essential Will with that of the individual, and this is " Morality." HEGEL. 



A CRIMINAL is literally a person accused accused, and in the mod- 

 ern sense of the word convicted, of being harmful to Society. But 

 is he there in the dock, the patch-coated brawler or burglar, really harmful 

 to Society ? is he more harmful than the mild old gentleman in the wig 

 who pronounces sentence upon him ? That is the question. Certainly 

 he has infringed the law : and the law is in a sense the consolidated pub- 

 lic opinion of Society : but if no one were to break the law, public opin- 

 ion would ossify, and society would die. As a matter of fact Society 

 keeps changing its opinion. How then are we to know when it is right 

 and when it is wrong ? The Outcast of one age is the Hero of another. 

 In execration they nailed Roger Bacon's manuscripts out in the sun and 

 rain, to rot crucified upon planks his bones lie in an unknown and un- 

 honored grave yet to-day he is regarded as a pioneer of human thought. 

 The hated Christian holding his ill-famed love-feasts in the darkness of 

 the catacombs has climbed on to the throne of S. Peter and the world. 

 The Jew money-lender whom Front-de-Bceuf could torture with impunity 

 is become a Rothschild guest of princes and instigator of commercial 

 wars ; and Shylock is now a highly respectable Railway Bondholder. 

 And the Accepted of one age is the Criminal of the next. All the glories 

 of Alexander do not condone in our eyes for his cruelty in crucifying the 

 brave defenders of Tyre by thousands along the sea-shore ; and if Solomon 

 with his thousand wives and concubines were to appear in London to- 

 morrow, even our most frivolous circles would be shocked, and Brigham 

 Young by contrast seem a domestic model. The judge pronounces sen- 

 tence on the prisoner now, but Society in its turn and in the lapse of 

 years pronounces sentence on the judge. It holds in its hand a new 

 canon, a new code of morals, and consigns its former representative and 

 the law which he administered to a limbo of contempt. 



It seems as if Society, as it progresses from point to point, forms ideals 



just as the individual does. At any moment each person, consciously 



or unconsciously, has an ideal in his mind toward which he is working 



(hence the importance of literature). Similarly Society has an ideal in its 



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