sketched much more briefly, can be
found in this general fact: that the definition of almost every crime
has become more and more indefinite, and spreads like a flattening and
thinning cloud over larger and larger landscapes. Cruelty to children,
one would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusual
and appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover
almost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only
distinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the
poor, who generally can't help them, and not in the rich, who
generally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The
point here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on
the bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being
attributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the
Temple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind
mother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children
had no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an
illegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the
horror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to
parricide, could now be used against any son who had done any act that
could colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so
affected his health. Few of us would be safe.

Another case out of hundreds is the loose extension of the idea of
libel. Libel cases bear no more trace of the old and just anger
against the man who bore false witness against his neighbour than
"cruelty" cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that
hated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of
the less athletic rich--a variation on _baccarat_, a game of chance. A
music-hall actress got damages for a song that was called "vulgar,"
which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my
handwriting "rococo." A politician got huge damages because he was
said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that
seductive topic would corrupt their virtue, like an indecent story.
Sometimes libel is defined as anything calculated to hurt a man in his
business; in which case any new tradesman calling himself a grocer
slanders the grocer opposite. All this, I say, is Anarchy; for it is
clear that its exponents possess no power of distinction, or sense of
proportion, by which they can draw the line between calling a woman a
popular singer an