Political crime

“ Because of the fear of a possible mistake political criminals should not be given the opportunity to escape; indeed towards political crime we will show no mercy. If, in exceptional cases, it may seem possible to allow the investigation of motives which have led to ordinary criminal offences, there is no excuse for those who attempt to deal with matters which no one can understand except the government. Moreover, not even all governments are capable of understanding the right policy. ”

“ But, if a simple citizen, for any ordinary crime, receives immediate punishment, if it is so difficult to reach a political crime, is it not necessary that extraordinary laws ... intimidate the rebels and reach the culpable? ”

“ To those of you who owe your seats to your money, and who have bribed the miserable shopkeepers and beer-sellers who gave you in return your position as temporary legislators, I declare that you are worse criminals than the thieves whose offences are recorded in our ordinary calendars of crime. The educated scoundrels of rank and fashion, who corrupt and degrade the political vitality of a nation by bribing voters, ought to be subjected to the most severe and degrading punishments. ”

“ The punishments are so considerable, the means of investigation so active, and the public watchfulness so keen, both on account of the party hostility and by virtue of a sensational press, that it would be hardly comprehensible psychologically, if political crime in the lowest strata of city or state were to be really anything but the exception. ”

“ It is, I think, a maxim of government, that the importance of the political inconveniences, arising from the impunity of a crime, are directly as the injury to the publick, and inversely as the difficulty of proof. ”

“ On the other hand, the mere fact that a crime was committed for a political purpose may well be without any importance in comparison with its detestability and heinousness. Attempts on heads of States, such, for example, as the murders of Presidents Lincoln and Carnot or of Alexander II. of Russia and Humbert of Italy, are as a rule, and all anarchistic crimes are without any exception, crimes of that kind. Criminals who commit such crimes ought under no circumstances to find protection and asylum, but ought to be surrendered for the purpose of receiving their just and appropriate punishment. ”

“ Suppose a legislature appointed to prepare a code of civil law, to be dissolved upon a supposition that the work was perfected. If crimes and evasions, unforeseen and unprovided against, should occur, who would contend that it would ruin the nation, should it appoint another legislature to correct these crimes and evasions? Criminals and sophists. Ought nations to hallow guilt or errour by suffering the evils they cause?
The temptations to violate political law are greater, and the danger of punishment less, than in the case of civil law. In one case, wealth and power are solicitors for crime ”

“ Instead of distinguishing crimes, I think we ought to distinguish between ordinary and political criminals, according to their determining motives, and the social bearings and historical moment of their acts. At the same time, whilst our criminal laws retain this distinction, I think it is useful to keep the jury for the trial of political crimes and offences, and for those connected with the press and with society as a whole ”

“ If political power shall be lost because of such denial, not imposed because of participation in rebellion or other crime, it is to be hoped that political interests may work in the line of justice, and that the end will be the impartial enfranchisement of all citizens not disqualified by crime. ”

“ Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you'll be a murderer!"
To be sure, what the robber demanded of me-my money was my own, and I had a clear right to keep it; ”

“ In most countries in transition, the elites (the political- managerial complex) make use of the state and its simulacrum institutions in close symbiosis with the criminal underworld. The state is often an oppressive mechanism deployed in order to control the populace and manipulate it. Politicians allocate assets, resources, rights, and licences to themselves, and to their families and cronies. Patronage extends to collaborating criminals. ”

“ Meanwhile the Revolutionary Institutional Party, the political arm of organized crime and drug traffickers, went into its most acute phase of decomposition, by resorting to assassination as the method of solving its internal conflicts. ”

“ It is easy indeed to suppose that born and habitual criminals do not generally commit political crimes and offences, nor offences connected with the press, nor against freedom of worship, nor in corruption of public functionaries, nor misuse of title or authority; nor calumny, making false attestations or false reports; nor adultery, incest, or abduction of minors; nor infanticide, abortion, or palming of children; nor betrayal of professional secrets; nor bankruptcy offences, nor damage to property, nor violation of domicile, nor illegal arrests, nor duels, nor defamation, nor abuse. ”

“ The theoretical distinction of the classical school between ordinary and political crimes is not very precise, for the so- called political crimes are either not crimes (as when they are confined to the manifestation of an idea) , or they are common crimes which spring from a lofty and social passion in individuals, who have the characteristics of the criminal by passion, or, in other words,—are but quasi-criminals ”

“ Besides these two kinds of political crimes, which are plainly collective in their nature, there are cases of crimes committed by individuals which for the most part are attempts upon the life of the monarch or of one of his representatives. ”

“ In order to arrest the President an order of the Assembly was necessary; we should replace the order of the Assembly by an act of violence of the Left. A scaling and a burglary; an assault by scaling-ladders on the constituted authority, a burglary on the Law. Now let us suppose resistance; we should shed blood. The Law violated leads to the shedding of blood. What is all this? It is a crime. ”

“ Tyrannical governments had immemorially utilized dictatorial criminal procedure and punishment to make scape goats of the weak, or of helpless political, religious, or racial minorities and those who differed, who would not conform and who resisted tyranny. ”

“ Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime. ”

“ In the worst periods there was not a crime imaginable that could not be, and was not, committed openly and with impunity by anybody on the right side of the so-called "government"; and the "government" was nothing but an organised crime in itself. ”

“ Is it possible that it has come to this, that, in the city of Washington, where the President has been murdered, that when under the form of law, and before a court and jury of twelve men, an investigation is made to ascertain whether the prisoner is guilty of this great crime, that the government are to be charged as seeking his blood, and its officers as lapping their tongues in the blood of the innocent? I quote the language exactly. It is a shocking thing to hear. What is the purpose of a government? What is the business of a government? ”

“ Thus the entire arsenal of government—laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons,—is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the most antagonistic elements in society.
The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. ”

“ For crimes of a dark political hue, which, by their tendency to subvert the government or destroy the institutions of the country, necessarily assume a character highly dangerous to the safety and well-being of the state, it might be difficult to say what degree of punishment would be excessive or unusual. ”

“ To discredit starving men on strike, to defeat socialists in an election, to promote a political intrigue, to throw the entire legislature into the hands of the reaction, to conceal corruption, or to take the public mind from too intently watching the nefarious schemes of a political-financial conspiracy—for all these and a multitude of other purposes thousands of secret police agents are at work. ”

“ It seems that one principal reason of this lenity is that the government is too weak to support its judges; and that the ministers of justice are actually intimidated by threats mysteriously conveyed to witnesses and authorities, that, if such or such a criminal is executed, his friends have sworn to avenge his death, and are on the look-out, every man with his knife ready. To political offences the same mercy is extended. ”

“ Activity here charged to be criminal is conspiracy -- that defendants conspired to teach and advocate, and to organize the Communist Party to teach and advocate, overthrow and destruction of the Government by force and violence. There is no charge of actual violence or attempt at overthrow. ”

“ The anarchist and his accomplices are caught, tried and executed as murderers. Another anarchist kills the chief of the state, or the minister, under whose government the trial and the executions have taken place. ”

“ A report has been spread abroad for this week past, that that part of the National Assembly which approves the concurrence of the royal will, in the exercise of the right of peace and war, has incurred the guilt of parricide against public liberty. Rumors of perfidy, of corruption, are disseminated; popular vengeance is invoked to aid the tyranny of opinion. One might assert that there can not, without a crime, exist two opinions upon one of the most delicate and most difficult questions of civil organization. ”

“ No community can afford to have it known that the officers who are charged with the preservation of the public peace and the restraint of the criminal classes are themselves the product of fraud or violence. The magistrate is then without respect and the law without sanction. The floods of lawlessness can not be leveed and made to run in one channel. The killing of a United States marshal carrying a writ of arrest for an election offense is full of prompting and suggestion to men who are pursued by a city marshal for a crime against life or property. ”

“ Fully as guilty and even guiltier, are the “highly respectable” receivers of the stolen goods, the instigators and principal beneficiaries of the public robbery, who use the corrupt politicians as their tools in plundering the city or the State or the Nation; who, in order to fill their own pockets, contrive to debauch legislatures and executive officers; who, if they can, will buy up the bar and the bench to protect them from the exposures and punishments they deserve ”

“ It seemed, too, as if the dominant party made use of the occasion afforded by the real guilt of a few desperate and imprudent men, in order to persecute or disable the whole body of their political opponents. A great number of perfectly innocent individuals were thrown into prison, and suffered in person, property, and character. The whole body of reformers were subjected to suspicion, and to harassing proceedings, instituted by magistrates whose political leanings were notoriously adverse to them. ”

“ This way, we can steadily constrict the space where crime can operate. The challenge is clear: crime can only come under full control when criminals -- in or out of government -- know we're going to catch them, convict them, and jail them. ”

“ Without underrating the influence exercised by great men upon the course of events, and leaving aside speculations as to what possibly might have happened had the bloody deeds in question been committed at different periods or under different circumstances, and taking into consideration only the facts as they are recorded, it may be said that the murders of political potentates, for the accomplishment of whatever ends they may have been designed, were, as a rule, mere ineffectual atrocities. ”

“ Your broad republican domain is a hunting-ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. ”

“ But worst of all is the practice which the police is resorting to, of bringing charges involving moral turpitude against prominent political workers simply with a view to lower them in the estimation of the public, knowing full well that they would not, according to the principles of Non-co-operation, produce any defense or even cross-examine the prosecution witnesses. ”

“ In these invasions, with the entire subversion of all security in this Territory, the plunder of the ballot-box, and the pollution of the electoral franchise, I show simply the process in unprecedented Crime. If that be the best government where injury to a single citizen is resented as injury to the whole State, what must be the character of a government which leaves a whole community of citizens thus exposed? ”

“ But as new-fangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the convention have, with great judgment, opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author. ”