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Page 8
I am far from thinking that severity of punishment can have the same
restraining effect as probability of some punishment being inflicted;
but if mildness of penalty is to be superadded to difficulty of
conviction, and both are to be mounted upon laxity in detection, the
pile will be complete indeed. There is a peculiar fitness, perhaps, in
the fact that all these pleas for comfortable punishment should be urged
at a time when there appears to be a general disposition to inflict no
punishment at all. There are, however, still a few old-fashioned persons
who hold it obvious that one who is ambitious to break the laws of his
country will not with so light a heart and so airy an indifference incur
the peril of a harsh penalty as he will the chance of one more nearly
resembling that which he would himself select.
V
After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, dowered with a
new body, and restored to society. The first thing of interest that I
observed was an enormous building, covering a square mile of ground. It
was surrounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon
which armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one face of the wall was a
single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded. While admiring the
Cyclopean architecture of the "reverend pile" I was accosted by a man in
uniform, evidently the warden, with a cheerful salutation.
"Colonel," I said, "pray tell me what is this building."
"This," said he, "is the new state penitentiary. It is one of twelve,
all alike."
"You surprise me," I replied. "Surely the criminal element must have
increased enormously."
"Yes, indeed," he assented; "under the Reform _r�gime_, which began in
your day, crime became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no
longer possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded.
The state was compelled to erect others of greater capacity."
"But, Colonel," I protested, "if the criminals were too bold and
powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons? And how
are they crowded?"
He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing
a doubt of my sanity. "What!" he said, "is it possible that the modern
penology is unknown to you? Do you suppose we practice the antiquated
and ineffective method of shutting up the rascals? Sir, the growth of
the criminal element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and
larger prisons. We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest men
and women of the state. Within these protecting walls they carry on all
the necessary vocations of life excepting commerce. That is necessarily
in the hands of the rogues, as before."
"Venerated representative of Reform," I exclaimed, wringing his hand
with effusion, "you are Knowledge, you are History, you are the Higher
Education! We must talk further. Come, let us enter this benign edifice;
you shall show me your dominion and instruct me in the rules. You shall
propose me as an inmate."
I walked rapidly to the gate. When challenged by the sentinel, I turned
to summon my instructor. He was nowhere visible. I turned again to look
at the prison. Nothing was there: desolate and forbidding, as about the
broken statue of Ozymandias.
The lone and level sands stretched far away.
IMMORTALITY
The desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be
universal--at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted with
Oriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge
is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal
nor even general.
If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to "live always," he has not
succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that
he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what
many of us would care for.
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