News From Nowhere, Or, an Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance

“Well,” said I, “that is understood, and I agree with it; but how about crimes of violence? would not their occurrence (and you admit that they occur) make criminal law necessary?”

Said he: “In your sense of the word, we have no criminal law either.  Let us look at the matter closer, and see whence crimes of violence spring.  By far the greater part of these in past days were the result of the laws of private property, which forbade the satisfaction of their natural desires to all but a privileged few, and of the general visible coercion which came of those laws.  All that cause of violent crime is gone.  Again, many violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy and the like miseries.  Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman being the property of the man, whether he were husband, father, brother, or what not.  That idea has of course vanished with private property, as well as certain follies about the ‘ruin’ of women for following their natural desires in an illegal way, which of course was a convention caused by the laws of private property.

“Another cognate cause of crimes of violence was the family tyranny, which was the subject of so many novels and stories of the past, and which once more was the result of private property.  Of course that is all ended, since families are held together by no bond of coercion, legal or social, but by mutual liking and affection, and everybody is free to come or go as he or she pleases.  Furthermore, our standards of honour and public estimation are very different from the old ones; success in besting our neighbours is a road to renown now closed, let us hope for ever.  Each man is free to exercise his special faculty to the utmost, and every one encourages him in so doing.  So that we have got rid of the scowling envy, coupled by the poets with hatred, and surely with good reason; heaps of unhappiness and ill-blood were caused by it, which with irritable and passionate men—i.e., energetic and active men—often led to violence.”

I laughed, and said: “So that you now withdraw your admission, and say that there is no violence amongst you?”

“No,” said he, “I withdraw nothing; as I told you, such things will happen.  Hot blood will err sometimes.  A man may strike another, and the stricken strike back again, and the result be a homicide, to put it at the worst.  But what then?  Shall we the neighbours make it worse still?  Shall we think so poorly of each other as to suppose that the slain man calls on us to revenge him, when we know that if he had been maimed, he would, when in cold blood and able to weigh all the circumstances, have forgiven his manner?  Or will the death of the slayer bring the slain man to life again and cure the unhappiness his loss has caused?”

“Yes,” I said, “but consider, must not the safety of society be safeguarded by some punishment?”

“There, neighbour!” said the old man, with some exultation “You have hit the mark.  That punishment of which men used to talk so wisely and act so foolishly, what was it but the expression of their fear?  And they had need to fear, since they—i.e., the rulers of society—were dwelling like an armed band in a hostile country.  But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish.  Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we could only be a society of ferocious cowards.  Don’t you think so, neighbour?”

“Yes, I do, when I come to think of it from that side,” said I.

“Yet you must understand,” said the old man, “that when any violence is committed, we expect the transgressor to make any atonement possible to him, and he himself expects it.  But again, think if the destruction or serious injury of a man momentarily overcome by wrath or folly can be any atonement to the commonwealth?  Surely it can only be an additional injury to it.”

Said I: “But suppose the man has a habit of violence,—kills a man a year, for instance?”

“Such a thing is unknown,” said he.  “In a society where there is no punishment to evade, no law to triumph over, remorse will certainly follow transgression.”

“And lesser outbreaks of violence,” said I, “how do you deal with them? for hitherto we have been talking of great tragedies, I suppose?”

Said Hammond: “If the ill-doer is not sick or mad (in which case he must be restrained till his sickness or madness is cured) it is clear that grief and humiliation must follow the ill-deed; and society in general will make that pretty clear to the ill-doer if he should chance to be dull to it; and again, some kind of atonement will follow,—at the least, an open acknowledgement of the grief and humiliation.  Is it so hard to say, I ask your pardon, neighbour?—Well, sometimes it is hard—and let it be.”