d
extremes. When people fail under this law, or rather this fact,
of the survival of the fittest, they endeavor to do by some illegal
way that which they failed to do in accordance with law. Persons
driven from the highway take to the fields, and endeavor to reach
their end or object in some shorter way, by some quicker path,
regardless of its being right or wrong.

I have said this much to show that I regard criminals as unfortunates.
Most people regard those who violate the law with hatred. They do
not take into consideration the circumstances. They do not believe
that man is perpetually acted upon. They throw out of consideration
the effect of poverty, of necessity, and above all, of opportunity.
For these reasons they regard criminals with feelings of revenge.
They wish to see them punished. They want them imprisoned or
hanged. They do not think the law has been vindicated unless
somebody has been outraged. I look at these things from an entirely
different point of view. I regard these people who are in the
clutches of the law not only as unfortunates, but, for the most
part, as victims. You may call them victims of nature, or of
nations, or of governments; it makes no difference, they are victims.
Under the same circumstances the very persons who punish them would
be punished. But whether the criminal is a victim or not, the
honest man, the industrious man, has the right to defend the product
of his labor. He who sows and plows should be allowed to reap,
and he who endeavors to take from him his harvest is what we call
a criminal; and it is the business of society to protect the honest
from the dishonest.

Without taking into account whether the man is or is not responsible,
still society has the right of self-defence. Whether that right
of self-defence goes to the extent of taking life, depends, I
imagine, upon the circumstances in which society finds itself
placed. A thousand men on a ship form a society. If a few men
should enter into a plot for the destruction of the ship, or for
turning it over to pirates, or for poisoning and plundering the
most of the passengers--if the passengers found this out certainly
they would have the right of self-defence. They might not have
the means to confine the conspirators with safety. Under such
circumstances it might be perfectly proper for them to destroy
their lives and to throw their worthless bodies into the sea. But
what society has the right to do