And I would tell myself, once more, that the thing must be an
illusion; it was inconceivable that an intelligent nation should
tolerate it.
If you found that you were taking bichlorid of mercury by mistake for a
sleeping draught, would you go on taking it? or would you clamor for an
antidote, waylay doctors for help, and disturb the discreet serenity of
hospitals for succor? But the nation, made up of such as you, continues
its prison nostrum, which slays a million for bichlorid of mercury's
one.
A tragic farce--that is what prisons are. Enclosures of stone and steel
are built, and a handful of armed men are given absolute control over
several hundred beings like themselves. We, as a community, have erected
a system of laws which places us, as a community, in the attitude of
penalizing practises which we, as individuals, do not severely condemn.
Our morality, as publicly professed, is in advance of our morals as
privately exercised. When our neighbor steals or murders, we give him
the jail or the chair; but when you and I are charged with such deeds
and see the prison or the chair in our near foreground, we discover
ourselves to be less convinced than we had imagined of the rectitude of
our penal system. Of course, then, the faster we make laws to punish
crime, and the more we punish criminals, the more criminals are there to
punish.
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