And that same vicious principle of belief in punishment only for others mounts up and up through every communal interest that has established itself in our midst on a unity of feeling closer than that which obtains generally. Every class-interest, every trade-interest, every party-interest that stands combined for its own benefit does all it can to evade the punishment of its members by the larger and more impersonal authority of the State. Scandals are hushed up in the police; scandals are hushed up in the Army; scandals are hushed up in the Cabinet; everything possible is done to prevent our penal code from acting equally on the vested interests in which we specially are concerned.
And yet we say that we believe in punishment!
But if we do honestly believe in punishment, ought we not then to insist not merely that the administration of our law-courts should be impartial and judicial, but that the source and promotion of our State-prosecutions should be impartial also? Probably most unreflecting people think that they are. But again and again the Government, when it chooses or refuses to put the law into motion and prosecute, though nominally the accuser, is really the accused, using its powers for the saving of its own skin, to keep the case out of court—sometimes even in spite of the protests of the magistracy itself. Again and again the judicial scales have been fraudulently weighted
