viduals move harmoniously in their
various orbits without outside control. The governing power of a perfect
order in its last analysis must be within the individual. A perfect
system probably will never come. Men are too imperfect, too weak, too
ignorant and too selfish to accomplish it. Still, if we wish to go
toward perfection, there is no other road.

One of the favorite occupations of legislatures is changing punishments
in obedience to the clamor of the public. In times of ordinary
tranquility a penalty may even be modified or reduced, but let the
newspapers awaken public opinion to crime by the judicious use of
headlines and a hot campaign, let the members feel that there is a
popular clamor and that votes may be won or lost, and the legislature
responds. This is generally done without reference to the experience of
the world, without regard to the nature of man, with no thought of the
victim, and with no clear conception of how the legislation will really
affect the public.

The demand is constantly made that such crimes as kidnapping, train
robbing, rape and robbery should be punished with death, or at least
with imprisonment for life. Irrespective of its effect on the criminal,
what is the effect on the victim of the criminal? A man is held up on a
lonely highway; the robber does not intend to kill. His face is exposed.
If the penalty for robbery is life imprisonment, he kills to avoid
detection. If it is death, he kills even before he robs. The same thing
operates in rape, in burglary, and in other crimes. In all property
crimes not only is no killing intended or wanted, but precautions are
taken to guard against killing. All laws to make drastic penalties
should really be entitled: "An Act to Promote Murder."

Making penalties too drastic destroys the effect meant to be produced.
Public clamor does not last forever. Men grow tired of keeping their
tongues wagging on the same subject all the time. A state of frenzy is
abnormal and when it subsides the temperature not only goes back to
normal, but as far below as it has been above. When the fury has spent
itself jurors regain some of their human feeling and refuse to convict.
History has proved this over and over again, and still politicians
always seek to ride into power on the crest of the wave; when the wave
moves back, they can easily go back with it. Even if the severe
punishments should be continued without abatement, these soon lose their
power to ter