swer to us for their insanity, and we
imprison them in what we call an asylum (that modern sanctuary!) if we do
not like their answers. This is a strange kind of irresponsibility. What
we ought to say is that we can afford to be satisfied with a less
satisfactory answer from a lunatic than from one who is not mad, because
lunacy is less infectious than crime.

We kill a serpent if we go in danger by it, simply for being such and
such a serpent in such and such a place; but we never say that the
serpent has only itself to blame for not having been a harmless creature.
Its crime is that of being the thing which it is: but this is a capital
offence, and we are right in killing it out of the way, unless we think
it more danger to do so than to let it escape; nevertheless we pity the
creature, even though we kill it.

But in the case of him whose trial I have described above, it was
impossible that any one in the court should not have known that it was
but by an accident of birth and circumstances that he was not himself
also in a consumption; and yet none thought that it disgraced them to
hear the judge give vent to the most cruel truisms about him. The judge
himself was a kind and thoughtful person. He was a man of magnificent
and benign presence. He was evidently of an iron constitution, and his
face wore an expression of the maturest wisdom and experience; yet for
all this, old and learned as he was, he could not see things which one
would have thought would have been apparent even to a child. He could
not emancipate himself from, nay, it did not even occur to him to feel,
the bondage of the ideas in which he had been born and bred.

So was it also with the jury and bystanders; and--most wonderful of
all--so was it even with the prisoner. Throughout he seemed fully
impressed with the notion that he was being dealt with justly: he saw
nothing wanton in his being told by the judge that he was to be punished,
not so much as a necessary protection to society (although this was not
entirely lost sight of), as because he had not been better born and bred
than he was. But this led me to hope that he suffered less than he would
have done if he had seen the matter in the same light that I did. And,
after all, justice is relative.

I may here mention that only a few years before my arrival in the
country, the treatment of all convicted invalids had been much more
barbarous than now, for no physical remedy was provided,