36 LORD GRIMTHOREE 
was convicted was illegal, “If you choose to do what you 
know to be wrong in the hope that it is not also punishable, 
you have no right to complain if you are disappointed.” One 
cannot but reflect that multitudes of people will some day 
hear the same kind of sentence, and feel that it is just. 
Now that the uniformity of laws of nature is universally 
acknowledged, far more than in ancient times, one may ask 
the deniers of responsibility for actions universally admitted 
to be bad on what ground they can hope to escape bad con- 
sequences any more than they generally do for physical 
excesses or follies, whether jomed with immorality in general 
opinion, or perfectly innocent to other people, and in a 
proper degree innocent to themselves, like excesses in read- 
ing or exercise, or doing work which may even be for the 
good of others. Nature notoriously accepts no excuses. 
One man may indeed escape where most men suffer; but 
escaping is the exception, not the rule; and where laws are 
not simply meshanical like those of nature, but are adminis- 
tered with human discretion, the endeavour always is to 
make their action and effect certain—to make those excep- 
tions as rare as possible. 
Until men can prove that there is no discretionary power 
to govern the universe, it must be irrational to act as if there 
is no power to do that much better which human discretion 
is always trying to do. When they can prove that there is 
none (which agnosticism does not pretend to do) they may 
be justified in running vice against virtue and the laws of 
nature and the world; but even then they generally get the 
worst of it, and find that they have been responsible after 
all, and that their game has been as great a failure as con- 
tinued gambling against a “bank” with the mathematical 
chances in its favour, which must ruin them if they go on 
long enough. 
One of the crazes of modern rectifiers of the world on 
sentimental v. religious principles is that all criminals are 
irresponsible lunatics, and should be treated accordingly ; in 
other words, that imprisonment, perhaps for life, should 
follow every conviction for a serious offence. If that is the 
meaning of being irresponsible, there is not much to dispute 
about; for non-responsibility would then be a great deal 
worse than the ordinary punishment of criminals who are 
still treated as responsible and reasonable by all other 
reasonable beings. Again therefore, the proposition of non- 
responsibility vanishes for all practical purposes; for the 
only remaining alternative is that everybody should be 
——s Pow 
