Without Prejudice

times, ages, and sexes.

'I died in the streets,' shouted an old cripple in the background-'round the corner from thy house, in thy wealthy parish-I died of starvation in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and a generation after Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.''

'If I had only known!' I murmured, while my eyes grew moist. 'Why didst thou not come to me?'

'I was too proud to beg,' he answered. 'The really poor never beg.'

'Then how am I responsible?' I retorted.

'How art thou responsible?' cried the voices indignantly; and one dominating the rest added: 'I want work and can't get it. Dost thou call thyself civilised?'

'Civilised?' echoed a weedy young man scornfully. 'I am a genius, yet I have had nothing to eat all day. Thy congeners killed Keats and Chatterton, and when I am dead thou wilt be sorry for what thou hast not done.'

'But hast thou published anything?' I asked.

'How could I publish?' he replied, indignantly.

'Then how could I be aware of thee?' I inquired.

'But my great-grandfather did publish,' said another. 'Thou goest into ecstacies over him, and his books have sold by tens of thousands; but me thou leavest pensionless, to earn my living as a cooper. Bah!'

'And thou didst put my father in prison,' said another, 'for publishing the works of a Continental novelist; but when the novelist himself comes here, thou puttest him in the place of honour.'

I was fast growing overwhelmed with shame.

'Where is thy patriotism! Thou art letting some of the most unique British birds become extinct!' 'Yes, and thou lettest Christmas cards be made in Germany, and thou deridest Whistler, and refusest to read Dod Grile, and thou lettest books be published with the sheets pinned instead of sewn. And the way thou neglectest Coleridge's grave-'

'Coleridge's grave?' interrupted a sad-eyed enthusiast. 'Why, thou hast put no stone at all to mark where James Thomson lies!'

'Thou Hun, thou Vandal!' shrieked a fresh contingent of voices in defiance of the late Professor Freeman. 'Thou hast allowed the Emanuel Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the oaken ceiling of King Charles's room at Dartmouth, and threatened to destroy the view from Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral windows, or scratched thy name on them, hast pulled down Roman walls, and allowed commons to be inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake District with advertisements of pills, and the blue heaven itself with sky-signs; and in thy passion for cheap and nasty pictorial journalism thou art allowing the art of wood-engraving to die out, even as thou acceptest photogravures instead of etchings.'

I cowered before their wrath, while renewed cries of 'Thou art responsible! Thou! Thou!' resounded from all sides.

'A pretty Christian thou art!' exclaimed another voice in unthinking vituperation. 'Thou decimatest savage tribes with rum and Maxim guns, thou makest money by corrupting the East with opium. Thou allowest the Armenians to be done to death, and thou wilt not put a stop to child-marriages in India.'

'But for thee I should have been alive to-day,' broke in a venerable spirit hovering near the ceiling. 'If thou hadst refused to sell poison except in specially shaped bottles-'

'What canst thou expect of a man who allows anybody to carry firearms?' interrupted another voice.

'Or who fills his newspaper with divorce cases?'

'Is it any wonder the rising generation is cynical, and the young maiden of fifteen has ceased to be bashful?'

'Shame on thee!' hissed the chorus, and advanced upon me so threateningly that I seized my hat and rushed from the room. But a burly being with a Blue Book blocked my way.

'Where didst thou get that hat?' he cried. 'Doubtless from some sweating establishment. And those clothes; didst thou investigate where they were made? didst thou inquire how much thy tailor paid his hands? didst thou engage an accountant to examine his books?'

'I-I am so busy,' I stammered feebly.

'Shuffler! How knowest thou thou art not spreading to the world the germs of scarlet fever and typhoid picked up in the sweaters' dens?'

'What cares he?' cried a tall, thin man, with a slight stoop and gold spectacles. 'Does he not poison the air every day with the smoke of his coal fires?'

'Pison the air!' repeated a battered, blear-eyed reprobate. 'He pisoned my soul. He ruined me with promiskus charity. Whenever I was stoney-broke 'e give me doles in aid, 'e did. 'E wos werry bad to me, 'e wos. 'E destroyed my self-respeck, druv me to drink, broke up my home, and druv my darters on the streets.'

'This is what comes of undisciplined compassion,' observed the gold-spectacled gentleman, glowering at me. 'The integrity and virtue of a whole family sacrificed to the gratification of thy altruistic emotions!'

'Stand out of the way!' I cried to the burly man; 'I wish to leave my own house.'

'And carry thy rudeness abroad?' he retorted indignantly. 'Perchance thou wouldst like to go to the Continent, and swagger through Europe clad in thy loud-patterned checks and thine insular self-sufficiency.'

I tried to move him out of the way by brute force, and we wrestled, and he threw me. I heard myself strike the floor with a thud.

Rubbing my eyes, instead of my back, I discovered that I was safe in my reading-chair, and that it was the lady novelist's novel that had made the noise. I picked it up, but I still seemed to see the reproachful eyes of a thousand tormentors, and hear their objurgations. Yet I had none of the emotions of Scrooge, no prickings of conscience, no ferment of good resolutions. Instead, I felt a wave of bitterness and indignation flooding my soul.

'I will not be responsible for the universe!' I cried to the ceiling. 'I am sick of the woman question, and the problem of man makes my gorge rise. Is there one question in the world that can really be settled? No, not one, except by superficial thinkers. Just as the comprehensive explanation of 'the flower in the crannied wall' is the explanation of the whole universe, so every question is but a thin layer of ice over infinite depths. You may touch it lightly, you may skate over it; but press it at all, and you sink into bottomless abysses. The simplest interrogation is a doorway to chaos, to endless perspectives of winding paths perpetually turning upon themselves in a blind maze. Suppose one is besought to sign a petition against capital punishment. A really conscientious and logical person, pursuing truth after the manner recommended by Descartes, and professed by Huxley, could not settle this question for himself without going into the endless question of Free-will versus Necessity, and studying the various systems of philosophy and ethics. Murder may be due to insane impulse: Insanity must therefore be studied. Moreover, ought not hanging to be abolished in cases of murder and reserved for more noxious crimes, such as those of fraudulent directors? This opens up new perspectives and new lines of study. The whole theory of Punishment would also have to be gone into: should it be restrictive, or revengeful, or reformative? (See Aristotle, Bentham, Owen, etc.) Incidentally great tracts of the science of Psychology are involved. And what right have we to interfere with our fellow-creatures at all? This opens up the vast domains of Law and Government, and requires the perusal of Montesquieu, Bodin, Rousseau, Mill, etc., etc. Sociology would also be called in to determine the beneficent or maleficent influence of the death-punishment upon the popular mind; and statistics would be required to trace the operation of the systems of punishment in various countries. History would be consulted to the same effect. The sanctity of human life being a religious dogma, the religions of the world would have to be studied, to see under what conditions it has been thought permissible to destroy life. One ought not to rely on translations: Confucius should be read in Chinese, the Koran in Arabic, and the few years spent in the acquisition of Persian would be rewarded by a first-hand familiarity with the Zend Avesta. The Old Testament enjoins capital punishment. On what grounds, then, if one is leaning the other way, may a text be set aside that seems to settle the matter positively? Here comes in the vast army of Bible commentators and theologians. But perhaps the text is of late origin, interpolated. The Dutch and German savants rise in their might, with their ingenious theories and microscopic scholarship. But there are other scientists who bid us not heed the Bible at all, because it contradicts the latest editions of their primers. Is, then, science strictly accurate? To answer this you must have a thorough acquaintance with biology, geology, astronomy, besides deciding for yourself between the conflicting views at nearly every point. By the time you have made up your mind as to whether capital punishment should be abolished, it has passed out of the statute-book, and you are dead, or mad, or murdered.