Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/169

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THE STATE PROTECTS NEITHER LIFE NOR PROPERTY.
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frequently than in civilized communities. Acts of violence are almost always committed under the influence of passion, and this is entirely beyond the control of our restraining laws. Passion is a relapse into the primitive condition of mankind. It is the same in the highly cultured cosmopolitan as in the Australian native. A man under the influence of passion, will commit violence, and kill, without the slightest thought of the laws and authorities. And it does not benefit much the dead man to have his murderer arrested and punished for the crime—and even this is not always the case, for the jury is very apt to acquit any one who committed an act of violence when impelled by passion or emotional insanity as it is called in the courtroom. And even this feeble and as we have seen, practically insignificant consolation, that the murderer will be obliged to pay the penalty of his crime, is equally the right of the savage and is far more liable to be realized in his case, because the vengeance of the family and tribe is much more difficult to escape from than the pursuit of the detectives, notwithstanding the descriptions and rewards published in the newspapers. Next to the crimes caused by passion come the cold-blooded and premeditated crimes. These are decidedly more frequent in civilized than in savage communities. They are principally the work of a certain class of human beings which owes its origin and development to civilization alone. Science has proved that habitual criminals are degraded organizations, descended from drunken or licentious parents, and usually cursed with epilepsy or other diseases of the nervous system. The extreme poverty of the lowest classes in the large cities stunts both the physical and mental growth to such an extent that the pathological condition of habitual criminality ensues. All the laws in the world are powerless to prev-