New Dispensation

“ There must be, to repeal by implication, a positive repugnancy between the provisions of the new law and those of the old; and even then the old law is repealed only pro tanto, to the extent of the repugnancy. ”

“ It is beyond prediction what the consequences may be, of uncertainty, or hardship, of injustice in deprivation of rights, in windfalls of right to others, in laying on new and wholly unexpected liabilities and in relieving from anticipated ones, if retroactive administrative refashioning becomes the general practice. ”

“ There must be some power of punishment, and, through punishment, of compulsion. Conversely, if the men, having struck this bargain, go back upon their word; if individuals among them or sections among them cease work with a new demand for seven measures instead of six, the Courts must have the power of constraining and of punishing them. Where the bargain is ephemeral or at any rate extended over only reasonable limits of time, it would be straining language perhaps to say that each individual case of constraint exercised against the workmen would be a case of compulsory labour. ”

“ I answer that, Dispensation, properly speaking, denotes a measuring out to individuals of some common goods: thus the head of a household is called a dispenser, because to each member of the household he distributes work and necessaries of life in due weight and measure. Accordingly in every community a man is said to dispense, from the very fact that he directs how some general precept is to be fulfilled by each individual. ”

“ Our social philosophers, however, as I have said, assume that discontent is a legitimate and imperative demand for a remedy. They treat it as a social phenomenon, and the remedies which they propose are societal, that is, they are in the nature of devices and regulations which call for the action of the agencies of society. So far as these social philosophers get their way, we find that it is legislation which is set at work, and this legislation imposes tasks on functionaries and institutions. The net final and certain result is new burdens on taxpayers. Discontent is not diminished ”

“ Reinstatements, unless based on new evidence, are demoralizing to discipline, for the reason that the unworthy employe bumps back to a lower grade some deserving man, whose good service is then reckoned at a discount. ”

“ Such dispensations appear nevertheless to have become at an early period very frequent. In the event of a dispensation not being procured, the want of it might be in some measure remedied by means of the completely free control which every one had over his property during his lifetime. ”

“ And this renders it unnecessary to consider the supposed advantages which would arise from the adopting of a new rule, since, if the wisdom of so doing be arguendo conceded, that concession would not justify the misapplication of the existing rule and the destruction of rights vested in reliance, not only upon its existence, but upon the discharge of the duty to enforce and apply it. ”

“ Whether the regulation be formally made by a legislature, or informally made by society at large—whether the penalty for disobedience be imprisonment, or frowns and social ostracism, he sees to be a question of no moment. ”

“ To enforce these obligations—all new since 1834—upon the individual citizen, experience shows that some other pressure on his volition is required than merely leaving him alone. Hence the community, by the combination of the principles of Curative Treatment, Universal Provision and Compulsion, deliberately 'weights the alternatives,' in the guise of a series of experiments upon volition. The individual retains as much freedom of choice as—if not more than—he ever enjoyed before. ”

“ But, iniquitous as it is, yet when the state has expressly legalized it, and human beings, for generations, have been bought, sold, and inherited under sanction of law, it is another wrong, in abolishing the properly, not to make full compensation. ”

“ The scheme of things is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight, weakness—carelessness—whatever you choose to call it. Well, I don't think I care much about a system that fixes its penalties in that particular way. When I see men every day who violate every natural law and don't pay any heavier penalty than an inconvenience, when I see useless pieces of flesh and bone slapping nature in the face and not getting more than a mild little slap in return, and then when I see the biggest, most useful man I have ever known paying as a penalty his life's work—oh Lord—that's rot! ”

“ And if some give up more than others, in order to obtain this end, there can be no room for complaint. To do otherwise, to require an equal concession from all, if it would create danger to the rights of some, would be sacrificing the end to the means. ”

“ But a great majority of the spectators are so bound up in the interests and the habits of social union that no temptation would be sufficiently strong to induce them to a commission of the enormities to which this penalty is assigned. The more powerful, the richer among them,—and a numerous class of little tradesmen are richer and more powerful than those who are employed by them, and the employer, in general, bears this relation to the employed,—regard their own wrongs as, in some degree, avenged, and their own rights secured by this punishment, inflicted as the penalty of whatever crime. ”

“ Those unwilling to work; (2) those whose character and behaviour are such that no employer will engage them.... It does not seem to us that the maintenance and detention of persons who will not work, or whose recent character and conduct are an inseparable bar to their re-entering industrial life, are within the legitimate functions of a Public Assistance Authority. Detention under disciplinary treatment affords the best hope of their reformation, or of preventing them by their example or conduct from contaminating those with whom they come in contact. ”

“ The Law of Retributive Justice is but a single phase of the great Law of Compensation. That Law is immutable, irrevocable and inexorable. [Pg 184] Whosoever invites its judgments must suffer its penalties. Under its inevitable and relentless decree you stand a guilty and condemned Soul. ”

“ From these considerations, our Anti-Punishment Society reason onward, to the following conclusions: that, whatever the penalty imposed may be, deposition, imprisonment, or death, it is all wrong, radically wrong. For, thereby, the community is deprived, for a time, or forever, of the services of a true penitent. They all become penitent, if a little time be allowed, or they are persecuted innocents, which is better still. ”

“ The Destitution Authority, having no means of ascertaining whether or not situations are available, and no opportunity of experimenting upon the personal willingness of its patients to accept and retain wage-earning employment, can never sift out the voluntary from the involuntary unemployed. ”

“ In respect to this end, the person whose rights have been invaded no longer weighs all the sacrifices and inconveniences which the suit at law draws after it—the end in his eyes is compensation for the means. It is not a mere money-interest which urges the person whose rights have been infringed to institute legal proceedings, but moral pain at the wrong which has been endured. ”

“ Of course there will be concessions, many wise shakings of the head, a profound slumber over tangled legal documents, and then—perhaps—an awakening to the fact that after all a holier-than-thou attitude scarcely pays in these times of human frailty. ”

“ If, at any time, a Dispensation is to be granted in regard thereof, it shall be done Validly, with Mature Deliberation, and Gratuitously. As it is expedient for the public good, to relax at times the fetters of the law, thereby more completely to meet, for the common advantage, the cases and necessities which arise ”

“ Now, we never can annihilate a penalty. We can only divert it from the head of the man who has incurred it to the heads of others who have not incurred it. A vast amount of "social reform" consists in just this operation. ”

“ Such Commissions have been adopted to relieve the people from the hardships of the resumption laws, which affected but a small portion of the community; and you hope it would not be considered unreasonable in you to propose one for the relief of the whole community; for the life and property of no family will be safe an hour, if these classes of offenders by hereditary profession are assured that they may carry on their trade with impunity, as they must be if your agency be withdrawn, and all the prisoners be released. ”

“ Even if it were conceded-a concession to be made only for argument's sake-that it could be made a criminal offense, punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both, for such employees to quit their employment before the expiration of the term for which they agreed to serve, it would not follow that they could be compelled, against their will and in advance of trial and conviction, to continue in such service. ”

“ But a contitutional philosophy which sanctions intervention by the State to fix terms of pay without work may be available tomorrow to give constitutional sanction to state-imposed terms of employment less benevolent. ”

“ It makes me shudder to recollect that out of the twenty-eight States of this Union twenty-seven should still continue the gallows as a part of the furniture of a Christian Government. I hope our own State, dignified already by so many noble acts, will soon rid herself of the stain. Let us try the experiment of abolishing this penalty, if we will, for twenty years, or but ten, and I am confident we shall never return to that punishment. If a man be incapable of living in society, so ill-born or ill-bred that you cannot cure or mend him, why, hide him away out of society. ”

“ For under 'society' what is not included! Sanction society, and you sanction, or at least you admit the possibility of a sanction for every kind of common activity and end; and the motives of men in undertaking these common activities become a matter of comparative indifference. ”

“ And they refer not only to fines, suspension, and expulsion, the usual sanctions imposed by a union, but also to unspecified means by which the union "otherwise discipline [s] " its members.
As a matter of plain language, "discipline" constitutes "punishment by one in authority . ”

“ Difficult, almost impossible, as such discrimination between deserving and undeserving is, it is felt that any genuine reform of our present poor law system demands that some attempt in this direction should be made. ”

“ There should be at the bottom of society a provision for destitution to be earned by honest work, sufficient to deter from beggary and crime. This provision should be meagre but not worse than prison fare. ”

“ That adaptation to newly emerging social forces or ideals, such as takes place through diminution of exploitation and subjection, through legal definition of rights in place of arbitrary interpretation, through increase of the rights and of the shares of goods assigned to the lower classes—such adaptation is not wont, so far as it is a voluntary concession, to find its ultimate purpose in that which is changed by the concession, but rather in that which may be preserved by means of such concession. ”

“ There are no paupers who do not belong to one or other of these five sections. Hence the partial adoption by the community of this Principle of Universal Provision has rendered unnecessary the retention of any Destitution Authority. ”

“ Aside from the economic waste of human energy which a “pension” system may induce, it is likely to lessen individual initiative, to reduce its possible recipients to the condition of petitioners for favors, and hence to weaken the social structure. ”

“ He who, at night, breaks open your doors to take your goods ought to undergo a severe penalty. In vain shall the culpable plead the want of work, poverty, his position so difficult and intolerable, the wants which this position, this condition of a liberated convict, imposes on him. ”

“ When the law has thus created a certain amount of obstacles, and when, to overcome them, humanity has diverted a corresponding amount of labor, you are no longer allowed to call for the reform of the law ”

“ If the former ground is adopted, it admits that a single person may sacrifice another to himself, and a fortiori that a people may. If the latter view is taken, by abandoning punishment when it can no longer be expected to prevent an act, the law abandons the retributive and adopts the preventive theory. ”

“ We have not shrunk in the time of Church-rate discussion from advocating, as the only possible and one desirable compromise, the exemption of Dissenters, coupled, for those who will pay, with the maintenance of the existing system under renewed legal sanction. ”

“ There remains the three inferior ones of reformation, disablement, and compensation.
XV. A seventh property, therefore, to be wished for in a mode of punishment, is that of subserviency to reformation, or reforming tendency. Now any punishment is subservient to reformation in proportion to its quantity: since the greater the punishment a man has experienced, the stronger is the tendency it has to create in him an aversion towards the offense which was the cause of it: and that with respect to all offenses alike. ”

“ Whatever their sex, their age, their health, their character, or their conduct, these "Ins and Outs" come at the crisis of their destitution, and go as soon as they can see their way to some sort of a living outside, choosing their own times and seasons for demanding the maintenance which a Poor Law Authority dare not withhold, and for resuming the liberty which it cannot refuse. ”