t

g

1

e

e

e

objectors who were really 'conscientious' and those who
pleaded conscience as a cloak for cowardice. Now the
question of the lawfulness of bearing arms, in foro
conscientiæ, is a question between a man and his Maker.
If he thinks it sinful, he must not do it, whatever it costs
him. But no one has accused the really 'conscientious
objector,' so far as I know, of acting sinfully. His action
may not have been sinful at all: of that the State is not
an infallible judge. His action was, however, none the
less criminal; and the best proof of this is that if the men
of Britain had, en masse, followed his example, Britain
would have lost the war, and the State would have
been ruined. Liberty of conscience, as conceded by the
State, does not imply liberty to refuse to do the State's
bidding and yet retain all the privileges of citizenship.
It means that a man is not to be punished merely because
of his private creed, his personal opinions or beliefs; but
if those opinions or beliefs lead him to neglect his duties
as a citizen, whereby the effectiveness of the State is
weakened, he deserves punishment. Had the Huguenots
refused to serve in the armies of Louis XIV, they would
have had no just ground for complaining of the Revoca-
tion of the Edict of Nantes. To whimper at punishment
inflicted by the State, because of a wrong done to the
State, is childish; and to do the conscientious objectors
justice, the best of them did not whimper. But senti-
mentalists were not slow to espouse their cause, and
to condemn as unjust the punishment inflicted upon
them as criminals, pleading that they were 'not bad men.'
No more irrelevant plea could be put forward. They
were punished-let it be said again—not for sin or for
vice but for crime, and for a very grave crime. Many,
indeed, who sacrificed all that they had in the war at
duty's call, believe that the conscientious objector was
dealt with too tenderly in this country; and it is certain
that in France or in America he would have been
subjected to penalties much more severe than were
adjudged his due in Great Britain.

This leads us to notice the curious fact that, no matter
what crime a man has been guilty of, provided that it
has achieved notoriety, there are always to be found
people who would have his punishment remitted. It is
not too much to say that a large part of the trouble that

has come upon Ireland within the last ten years would have been averted, had crime been impartially and steadily given the punishment that was appropriate. I have already referred to the Ulster rebels of 1913, who escaped scot free. A similar thing happened in the case of the Sinn Feiners. The effect of solemnly condemning hosts of men to long terms of penal servitude for treason, as in 1916, and then releasing them, or allowing them to escape, from prison within a short period was demoralising to the political conscience of Irishmen. Either these persons did not deserve their sentences, or their sentences ought to have been served. The consequence of letting them all out of jail in 1917, in deference to pleas of political opportunism, was that the majority of the Irish people were led to believe (as they still believe) that these men were not criminals at all. Their original offence, of rising in rebellion (and the same is true of the Ulster volunteers in 1913), was not regarded by themselves as sinful, nor by their neighbours as vicious; and when the State showed, by its extraordinary and irresolute clemency, that it did not regard them as seriously criminal, it was thus proclaimed urbi et orbi that the State did not consider high treason to be a crime in Ireland. In view of this, it will be very difficult for the Free State Government to convince the Irish people that rebellion against State authority is deserving of punishment by the State; and not the least of the embarrassments by which the Irish Government is now hampered in its dealings with the Republican mutineers, is caused by the fact that the Irish people have been taught by their late English rulers that rebellion is nothing worse than a political eccentricity, and that punishment can generally be evaded, if enough clamour is raised.

The remission of penalty is always hazardous. Many years ago I had an instructive conversation on this subject with the captain of a training ship for the mercantile marine. The boys whom he had to control were very rough lads, some of them from criminal and vicious homes, and I asked the captain if he found it necessary to be severe in his discipline. Yes and no,' he said. 'I do not like giving severe punishment, nor do J find it necessary. But what is essential is that the

punishment shall be swift and inevitable. I never let a boy off. If I did, they would all gamble on the chance of escaping punishment when detected. It is much more important that punishment should be certain than that it should be severe.' The captain knew human nature better than many of our political leaders do, and the consequence of his policy was that his ship was in a high state of discipline, and that it was not regarded as a 'hard' ship even by the rebellious spirits under him.

A political tragedy of two years ago shows how wholesome may be a consistent policy of firmness in dealing with crime. The late Lord Mayor of Cork, Mr MacSweeny, was a man much esteemed by his friends, and, so far as any public evidence goes, he was a man of blameless private life. He found himself in prison, as a consequence of treasonable and seditious speech. There was no doubt as to his crime, nor can it be denied that from the point of view of the State he deserved punishment. But his advisers unwisely (and wickedly) encouraged him to refuse to recognise the law. He went on 'hunger strike,' and died-as sad a case of suicide as could be produced. It was a melancholy illustration of the lengths to which political prejudice will lead men, and the eulogies of Mr MacSweeny's private life and religious devotion, which were put forth as a proof of the malice of the British Government, were as irrelevant as human speech can be. No one accused him of being a vicious man, and at any rate he showed that he was a brave one. But the law must be respected, by good men and bad men alike, and if it is defied they must all pay the penalty. However, the significance of the whole unhappy story from the point of view of the State was that hunger striking practically ceased in British prisons. Miss Sylvia Pankhurst was candid enough to avow immediately that the weapon of a hunger strike had been rendered useless for her purposes. It was made plain that punishment could not be evaded by a criminal, because he, personally, did not regard himself as either sinful or vicious, by the simple procedure of refusing food while in prison. It was one of the few strong things that can be placed to the credit of the Cabinet of 1920, in respect of their Irish policy; and-despite the shrieks and threats of the wild Irish

women who protested-the action of the Government was not misunderstood in Ireland by the more intelligent of Mr MacSweeny's political associates. It is as well understood in Ireland as anywhere else that if refusal to take food in prison were to lead to release from prison, there would be an end of all government, whether in England or Ireland, for the criminal law would be deprived of its sanctions.

Probably, many of the protests against the punishment of criminals are inspired by an erroneous conception of the purpose of punishment, from the point of view of the State. It is, primarily, to deter the offender from repeating his offence, and to deter others from following his bad example. Its purpose is deterrent, and the measure of its severity is determined, in the main, with this in view. Undue laxity, or weak remission of penalty, may serve rather to encourage crime than to diminish it. Let us take an instance of a simple kind. To poach a grouse moor is very profitable, if the poacher is not caught. It is a delightful and adventurous way of combining profit with amusement. I have known poachers who were charming fellows. And if the penalty for poaching be either very light or very uncertain, that is, if sentiment is allowed to prevail, poaching will undoubtedly increase, to the detriment of sport, to the injury of the private owner of the moor, and to the disadvantage of his poorer neighbours who make profit, directly or indirectly, out of the visitors who come for the game. A poacher is punished, and ought to be punished, sufficiently to make his sport so risky that it is not worth while. If penalty, or the fear of penalty, deters our young friend from poaching, so much the better for him from the moral point of view, as well as for the State from the point of view of the public welfare. But it must be insisted on, that it is not the beneficial effect on the poacher's character that the State has primarily at heart in fining him or sending him to jail. The State is not concerned with the sinful aspects of his theftthat is the Church's business-but with the fact that he has committed a crime by breaking the law. In short, State punishment is primarily deterrent, and only secondarily remedial in its purpose.

It is a matter of grave importance that, where

t

possible, the punishment inflicted by the State should be such that it does not debase the criminal's character, and that it should give him opportunity for amendment of life in future. Those who watch our convict system must have been gratified a few months ago when a criminal on being sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour asked the judge to give him instead three years' penal servitude, that he might have a chance of learning a trade, and so of living an honest life when he was released. The judge very wisely-if one who is not a lawyer may offer an opinion-granted the request; and the incident shows that the remedial element in State punishment is not ignored. Our convicts are not treated vindictively; the State does not avenge itself upon them. But they are punished, for all that, primarily and chiefly because the State desires in the interests of the community to check the progress of crime, by making it dangerous and its consequences unpleasant.

More, however, may be said than this about the new doctrine that punishment ought to be solely remedial and educational. This doctrine is not only politically dangerous; it is ethically unsound. Certainly, the incidence of pain in the natural order gives no countenance to it. In the field of nature, defiance of her laws is always punished. Nature never forgives. She exacts the last farthing of penalty. Only the fittest, those who adapt themselves best to their environment, survive; the rest die. There is nothing remedial about that law. It is all in the interest of the race, but not of the individual members of the race who have transgressed. Were the transgressor not punished, the race would suffer. Now it may be said -it has been said--that nature is here not our true guide. The individual man is an 'end in himself,' to use Kant's fine phrase; it is wrong to treat him as if his wellbeing were wholly subsidiary to the welfare of mankind at large. The progress of civilisation has been brought about, it is urged, not by following the inexorable teaching of nature, but by repudiating it and by substituting the Law of Love for the Law of Competition. And it is assumed in the argument that the Law of Love' forbids punishment as a deterrent! Here is a grave fallacy, and a mischievous one. If the criminal ought to be regarded in virtue of the dignity of his humanity, as an ‘end in