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

“You think that enough?” said I.

“Yes,” said he, “and moreover it is all that we can do.  If in addition we torture the man, we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he would otherwise feel for his wrong-doing is swallowed up by a hope of revenge for our wrong-doing to him.  He has paid the legal penalty, and can ‘go and sin again’ with comfort.  Shall we commit such a folly, then?  Remember Jesus had got the legal penalty remitted before he said ‘Go and sin no more.’  Let alone that in a society of equals you will not find any one to play the part of torturer or jailer, though many to act as nurse or doctor.”

“So,” said I, “you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which requires no body of criminal law to deal with it?”

“Pretty much so,” said he; “and since, as I have told you, we are a healthy people generally, so we are not likely to be much troubled with this disease.”

“Well, you have no civil law, and no criminal law.  But have you no laws of the market, so to say—no regulation for the exchange of wares? for you must exchange, even if you have no property.”

Said he: “We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the markets, varying according to the circumstances and guided by general custom.  But as these are matters of general assent, which nobody dreams of objecting to, so also we have made no provision for enforcing them: therefore I don’t call them laws.  In law, whether it be criminal or civil, execution always follows judgment, and someone must suffer.  When you see the judge on his bench, you see through him, as clearly as if he were made of glass, the policeman to emprison, and the soldier to slay some actual living person.  Such follies would make an agreeable market, wouldn’t they?”

“Certainly,” said I, “that means turning the market into a mere battle-field, in which many people must suffer as much as in the battle-field of bullet and bayonet.  And from what I have seen I should suppose that your marketing, great and little, is carried on in a way that makes it a pleasant occupation.”

“You are right, neighbour,” said he.  “Although there are so many, indeed by far the greater number amongst us, who would be unhappy if they were not engaged in actually making things, and things which turn out beautiful under their hands,—there are many, like the housekeepers I was speaking of, whose delight is in administration and organisation, to use long-tailed words; I mean people who like keeping things together, avoiding waste, seeing that nothing sticks fast uselessly.  Such people are thoroughly happy in their business, all the more as they are dealing with actual facts, and not merely passing counters round to see what share they shall have in the privileged taxation of useful people, which was the business of the commercial folk in past days.  Well, what are you going to ask me next?”

CHAPTER XIII: CONCERNING POLITICS

Said I: “How do you manage with politics?”

Said Hammond, smiling: “I am glad that it is of me that you ask that question; I do believe that anybody else would make you explain yourself, or try to do so, till you were sickened of asking questions.  Indeed, I believe I am the only man in England who would know what you mean; and since I know, I will answer your question briefly by saying that we are very well off as to politics,—because we have none.  If ever you make a book out of this conversation, put this in a chapter by itself, after the model of old Horrebow’s Snakes in Iceland.”

“I will,” said I.

CHAPTER XIV: HOW MATTERS ARE MANAGED

Said I: “How about your relations with foreign nations?”

“I will not affect not to know what you mean,” said he, “but I will tell you at once that the whole system of rival and contending nations which played so great a part in the ‘government’ of the world of civilisation has disappeared along with the inequality betwixt man and man in society.”

“Does not that make the world duller?” said I.

“Why?” said the old man.

“The obliteration of national variety,” said I.

“Nonsense,” he said, somewhat snappishly.  “Cross the water and see.  You will find plenty of variety: the landscape, the building, the diet, the amusements, all various.  The men and women varying in looks as well as in habits of thought; the costume far more various than in the commercial period.  How should it add to the variety or dispel the dulness, to coerce certain families or tribes, often heterogeneous and jarring with one another, into certain artificial and mechanical groups, and call them nations, and stimulate their patriotism—i.e., their foolish and envious prejudices?”