Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887

by Edward Bellamy

  Chapter 19

  In the course of an early morning constitutional I visited Charlestown.Among the changes, too numerous to attempt to indicate, which mark thelapse of a century in that quarter, I particularly noted the totaldisappearance of the old state prison.

  "That went before my day, but I remember hearing about it," said Dr.Leete, when I alluded to the fact at the breakfast table. "We have nojails nowadays. All cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals."

  "Of atavism!" I exclaimed, staring.

  "Why, yes," replied Dr. Leete. "The idea of dealing punitively withthose unfortunates was given up at least fifty years ago, and I thinkmore."

  "I don't quite understand you," I said. "Atavism in my day was a wordapplied to the cases of persons in whom some trait of a remote ancestorrecurred in a noticeable manner. Am I to understand that crime isnowadays looked upon as the recurrence of an ancestral trait?"

  "I beg your pardon," said Dr. Leete with a smile half humorous, halfdeprecating, "but since you have so explicitly asked the question, I amforced to say that the fact is precisely that."

  After what I had already learned of the moral contrasts between thenineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it was doubtless absurd in meto begin to develop sensitiveness on the subject, and probably if Dr.Leete had not spoken with that apologetic air and Mrs. Leete and Edithshown a corresponding embarrassment, I should not have flushed, as Iwas conscious I did.

  "I was not in much danger of being vain of my generation before," Isaid; "but, really--"

  "This is your generation, Mr. West," interposed Edith. "It is the onein which you are living, you know, and it is only because we are alivenow that we call it ours."

  "Thank you. I will try to think of it so," I said, and as my eyes methers their expression quite cured my senseless sensitiveness. "Afterall," I said, with a laugh, "I was brought up a Calvinist, and oughtnot to be startled to hear crime spoken of as an ancestral trait."

  "In point of fact," said Dr. Leete, "our use of the word is noreflection at all on your generation, if, begging Edith's pardon, wemay call it yours, so far as seeming to imply that we think ourselves,apart from our circumstances, better than you were. In your day fullynineteen twentieths of the crime, using the word broadly to include allsorts of misdemeanors, resulted from the inequality in the possessionsof individuals; want tempted the poor, lust of greater gains, or thedesire to preserve former gains, tempted the well-to-do. Directly orindirectly, the desire for money, which then meant every good thing,was the motive of all this crime, the taproot of a vast poison growth,which the machinery of law, courts, and police could barely preventfrom choking your civilization outright. When we made the nation thesole trustee of the wealth of the people, and guaranteed to allabundant maintenance, on the one hand abolishing want, and on the otherchecking the accumulation of riches, we cut this root, and the poisontree that overshadowed your society withered, like Jonah's gourd, in aday. As for the comparatively small class of violent crimes againstpersons, unconnected with any idea of gain, they were almost whollyconfined, even in your day, to the ignorant and bestial; and in thesedays, when education and good manners are not the monopoly of a few,but universal, such atrocities are scarcely ever heard of. You now seewhy the word 'atavism' is used for crime. It is because nearly allforms of crime known to you are motiveless now, and when they appearcan only be explained as the outcropping of ancestral traits. You usedto call persons who stole, evidently without any rational motive,kleptomaniacs, and when the case was clear deemed it absurd to punishthem as thieves. Your attitude toward the genuine kleptomaniac isprecisely ours toward the victim of atavism, an attitude of compassionand firm but gentle restraint."

  "Your courts must have an easy time of it," I observed. "With noprivate property to speak of, no disputes between citizens overbusiness relations, no real estate to divide or debts to collect, theremust be absolutely no civil business at all for them; and with nooffenses against property, and mighty few of any sort to providecriminal cases, I should think you might almost do without judges andlawyers altogether."

  "We do without the lawyers, certainly," was Dr. Leete's reply. "Itwould not seem reasonable to us, in a case where the only interest ofthe nation is to find out the truth, that persons should take part inthe proceedings who had an acknowledged motive to color it."

  "But who defends the accused?"

  "If he is a criminal he needs no defense, for he pleads guilty in mostinstances," replied Dr. Leete. "The plea of the accused is not a mereformality with us, as with you. It is usually the end of the case."

  "You don't mean that the man who pleads not guilty is thereupondischarged?"

  "No, I do not mean that. He is not accused on light grounds, and if hedenies his guilt, must still be tried. But trials are few, for in mostcases the guilty man pleads guilty. When he makes a false plea and isclearly proved guilty, his penalty is doubled. Falsehood is, however,so despised among us that few offenders would lie to save themselves."

  "That is the most astounding thing you have yet told me," I exclaimed."If lying has gone out of fashion, this is indeed the 'new heavens andthe new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,' which the prophetforetold."

  "Such is, in fact, the belief of some persons nowadays," was thedoctor's answer. "They hold that we have entered upon the millennium,and the theory from their point of view does not lack plausibility. Butas to your astonishment at finding that the world has outgrown lying,there is really no ground for it. Falsehood, even in your day, was notcommon between gentlemen and ladies, social equals. The lie of fear wasthe refuge of cowardice, and the lie of fraud the device of the cheat.The inequalities of men and the lust of acquisition offered a constantpremium on lying at that time. Yet even then, the man who neitherfeared another nor desired to defraud him scorned falsehood. Because weare now all social equals, and no man either has anything to fear fromanother or can gain anything by deceiving him, the contempt offalsehood is so universal that it is rarely, as I told you, that even acriminal in other respects will be found willing to lie. When, however,a plea of not guilty is returned, the judge appoints two colleagues tostate the opposite sides of the case. How far these men are from beinglike your hired advocates and prosecutors, determined to acquit orconvict, may appear from the fact that unless both agree that theverdict found is just, the case is tried over, while anything like biasin the tone of either of the judges stating the case would be ashocking scandal."

  "Do I understand," I said, "that it is a judge who states each side ofthe case as well as a judge who hears it?"

  "Certainly. The judges take turns in serving on the bench and at thebar, and are expected to maintain the judicial temper equally whetherin stating or deciding a case. The system is indeed in effect that oftrial by three judges occupying different points of view as to thecase. When they agree upon a verdict, we believe it to be as near toabsolute truth as men well can come."

  "You have given up the jury system, then?"

  "It was well enough as a corrective in the days of hired advocates, anda bench sometimes venal, and often with a tenure that made itdependent, but is needless now. No conceivable motive but justice couldactuate our judges."

  "How are these magistrates selected?"

  "They are an honorable exception to the rule which discharges all menfrom service at the age of forty-five. The President of the nationappoints the necessary judges year by year from the class reaching thatage. The number appointed is, of course, exceedingly few, and the honorso high that it is held an offset to the additional term of servicewhich follows, and though a judge's appointment may be declined, itrarely is. The term is five years, without eligibility toreappointment. The members of the Supreme Court, which is the guardianof the constitution, are selected from among the lower judges. When avacancy in that court occurs, those of the lower judges, whose termsexpire that year, select, as their last official act, the one of theircolleagues left on the bench whom they deem fittest to fill it."

  "There
being no legal profession to serve as a school for judges," Isaid, "they must, of course, come directly from the law school to thebench."

  "We have no such things as law schools," replied the doctor smiling."The law as a special science is obsolete. It was a system of casuistrywhich the elaborate artificiality of the old order of societyabsolutely required to interpret it, but only a few of the plainest andsimplest legal maxims have any application to the existing state of theworld. Everything touching the relations of men to one another is nowsimpler, beyond any comparison, than in your day. We should have nosort of use for the hair-splitting experts who presided and argued inyour courts. You must not imagine, however, that we have any disrespectfor those ancient worthies because we have no use for them. On thecontrary, we entertain an unfeigned respect, amounting almost to awe,for the men who alone understood and were able to expound theinterminable complexity of the rights of property, and the relations ofcommercial and personal dependence involved in your system. What,indeed, could possibly give a more powerful impression of the intricacyand artificiality of that system than the fact that it was necessary toset apart from other pursuits the cream of the intellect of everygeneration, in order to provide a body of pundits able to make it evenvaguely intelligible to those whose fates it determined. The treatisesof your great lawyers, the works of Blackstone and Chitty, of Story andParsons, stand in our museums, side by side with the tomes of DunsScotus and his fellow scholastics, as curious monuments of intellectualsubtlety devoted to subjects equally remote from the interests ofmodern men. Our judges are simply widely informed, judicious, anddiscreet men of ripe years.

  "I should not fail to speak of one important function of the minorjudges," added Dr. Leete. "This is to adjudicate all cases where aprivate of the industrial army makes a complaint of unfairness againstan officer. All such questions are heard and settled without appeal bya single judge, three judges being required only in graver cases. Theefficiency of industry requires the strictest discipline in the army oflabor, but the claim of the workman to just and considerate treatmentis backed by the whole power of the nation. The officer commands andthe private obeys, but no officer is so high that he would dare displayan overbearing manner toward a workman of the lowest class. As forchurlishness or rudeness by an official of any sort, in his relationsto the public, not one among minor offenses is more sure of a promptpenalty than this. Not only justice but civility is enforced by ourjudges in all sorts of intercourse. No value of service is accepted asa set-off to boorish or offensive manners."

  It occurred to me, as Dr. Leete was speaking, that in all his talk Ihad heard much of the nation and nothing of the state governments. Hadthe organization of the nation as an industrial unit done away with thestates? I asked.

  "Necessarily," he replied. "The state governments would have interferedwith the control and discipline of the industrial army, which, ofcourse, required to be central and uniform. Even if the stategovernments had not become inconvenient for other reasons, they wererendered superfluous by the prodigious simplification in the task ofgovernment since your day. Almost the sole function of theadministration now is that of directing the industries of the country.Most of the purposes for which governments formerly existed no longerremain to be subserved. We have no army or navy, and no militaryorganization. We have no departments of state or treasury, no excise orrevenue services, no taxes or tax collectors. The only function properof government, as known to you, which still remains, is the judiciaryand police system. I have already explained to you how simple is ourjudicial system as compared with your huge and complex machine. Ofcourse the same absence of crime and temptation to it, which make theduties of judges so light, reduces the number and duties of the policeto a minimum."

  "But with no state legislatures, and Congress meeting only once in fiveyears, how do you get your legislation done?"

  "We have no legislation," replied Dr. Leete, "that is, next to none. Itis rarely that Congress, even when it meets, considers any new laws ofconsequence, and then it only has power to commend them to thefollowing Congress, lest anything be done hastily. If you will considera moment, Mr. West, you will see that we have nothing to make lawsabout. The fundamental principles on which our society is foundedsettle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which in your daycalled for legislation.

  "Fully ninety-nine hundredths of the laws of that time concerned thedefinition and protection of private property and the relations ofbuyers and sellers. There is neither private property, beyond personalbelongings, now, nor buying and selling, and therefore the occasion ofnearly all the legislation formerly necessary has passed away.Formerly, society was a pyramid poised on its apex. All thegravitations of human nature were constantly tending to topple it over,and it could be maintained upright, or rather upwrong (if you willpardon the feeble witticism), by an elaborate system of constantlyrenewed props and buttresses and guy-ropes in the form of laws. Acentral Congress and forty state legislatures, turning out some twentythousand laws a year, could not make new props fast enough to take theplace of those which were constantly breaking down or becomingineffectual through some shifting of the strain. Now society rests onits base, and is in as little need of artificial supports as theeverlasting hills."

  "But you have at least municipal governments besides the one centralauthority?"

  "Certainly, and they have important and extensive functions in lookingout for the public comfort and recreation, and the improvement andembellishment of the villages and cities."

  "But having no control over the labor of their people, or means ofhiring it, how can they do anything?"

  "Every town or city is conceded the right to retain, for its own publicworks, a certain proportion of the quota of labor its citizenscontribute to the nation. This proportion, being assigned it as so muchcredit, can be applied in any way desired."