iliation. Is it so hard to
say, I ask your pardon, neighbour?--Well, sometimes it is hard--and let
it be."

"You think that enough?" said I.

"Yes," said he, "and moreover it is all that we _can_ do. If in addition
we torture the man, we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he
would otherwise feel for _his_ wrong-doing is swallowed up by a hope of
revenge for _our_ wrong-doing to him. He has paid the legal penalty, and
can 'go and sin again' with comfort. Shall we commit such a folly, then?
Remember Jesus had got the legal penalty remitted before he said 'Go and
sin no more.' Let alone that in a society of equals you will not find
any one to play the part of torturer or jailer, though many to act as
nurse or doctor."

"So," said I, "you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which
requires no body of criminal law to deal with it?"

"Pretty much so," said he; "and since, as I have told you, we are a
healthy people generally, so we are not likely to be much troubled with
_this_ disease."

"Well, you have no civil law, and no criminal law. But have you no laws
of the market, so to say--no regulation for the exchange of wares? for
you must exchange, even if you have no property."

Said he: "We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning
when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the
markets, varying according to the circumstances and guided by general
custom. But as these are matters of general assent, which nobody dreams
of objecting to, so also we have made no provision for enforcing them:
therefore I don't call them laws. In law, whether it be criminal or
civil, execution always follows judgment, and someone must suffer. When
you see the judge on his bench, you see through him, as clearly as if he
were made of glass, the policeman to emprison, and the soldier to slay
some actual living person. Such follies would make an agreeable market,
wouldn't they?"

"Certainly," said I, "that means turning the market into a mere battle-
field, in which many people must suffer as much as in the battle-field of
bullet and bayonet. And from what I have seen I should suppose that your
marketing, great and little, is carried on in a way that makes it a
pleasant occupation."

"You are right, neighbour," said he. "Although there are so many, indeed
by far the greater number amongst us, who would be unhappy if they were
not engaged in actually making things, and things