Ambrose Bierce
San Francisco Examiner/February 11, 1900
WASHINGTON, February 10.—News comes from Vienna that because of the failure of a new labor-saving device, employed by the public executioner—whereby the festivities were unduly prolonged, though without added discomfort to the lady engaged in being removed to another and better world—there is a general movement against the death penalty. “Down with the gallows!” (says the dispatch) “Is the cry of the press and the people of Austria.” As the unfortunate lady had experienced the mischance of assisting to put her living child into the kitchen stove in order to get the insurance money on its existence, a more reasonable cry would seem to be, “Down with the kitchen stove!”—Lord Lytton to the contrary, notwithstanding, one can get on without cooks, but in a community which imperfectly respects the rights of insurance companies the death penalty is one of the necessaries of life.
“Down with the gallows!” is a cry not unfamiliar in these parts. There is always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle of “a life for a life”—to represent it “a relic of barbarism,” “a usurpation of the divine authority,” and the rotten rest of it. The law making murder punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without provocation. Even the most brainless opponent of “capital punishment” would do that if he knew enough. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning to abstain from crime—if those protesting roosters and tabbies will have the goodness to admit that the killing of the innocent Is a crime, as well as the killing of the killer. Society says by that law: “If you kill one of us you die,” just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is attacked says: “Desist or be shot.” To be effective the warning in either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly reasoner among the gallows-downing unfortunates would hardly expect to frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course, these queer illogicians cannot be made to understand that their position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of aggression, and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if, as Christians, they frankly and consistently took that ground, we should be under the miserable necessity of respecting them.
The actual practical effect of the death penalty in preventing murder is too large and intricate a matter to be fully gone into here. Certainly we have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in this country is due to the shameful fact that we do not execute our laws, that the death penalty is threatened but not inflicted, that the pistol is not loaded. In civilized countries, where there is enough respect for the laws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man is still as full of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking, we shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists, and assassins and persons with a private system of lexicography who define hanging as murder and murder as mischance, and many another disagreeable creation, but in all this welter of crime and stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the human hand.
It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and punishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the lives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a public good, without reference to the crimes that disclosed their deserts. If we could discover them by other signs than their bloody deeds they should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death as evidence. The scientist who will tell us how to recognize the potential assassin and persuade us to kill him will be the greatest benefactor of his century.
What would these enemies of the gibbet have?—these lineal descendants of the drunken mobs that pelted the hangmen at Tyburn Tree; this progeny of criminals, which has so defiled with the murdered of its animosity the noble office of public executioner that even “in this enlightened age” he shirks his high duty, entrusting it to a bidden or unnamed subordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether its punishment by death is just or not? Nobody needs to incur it. Men are not drafted for the death penally; they volunteer. “Then it is not deterrent,” mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather pelted the hangman. Well, as to that, law which is to accomplish more than a part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it is somewhat deterrent—it deters the person hanged. A man’s first murder is his crime; his second is ours.
“Lay down your arms!” brave Otis cried
To Aguinaldo, making speed.
“You’d find them useless,” he replied;
“My legs are what you really need.”
Rear-Admiral Philip, the logician who considered the slaughter of Cervera’s sailors too sad a thing to cheer about, and at the same time a signal proof of the existence of a benevolent Deity, has been uttering his funny mind anent the Hay-Pauncefote canal treaty. Naturally, he thinks well of it, particularly the part forbidding us to fortify the canal. “If the United States Government,” quoth he, “does not deem it wise to fortify the harbors of New York and Brooklyn, is it likely that we will ever wish to fortify two hundred miles of canal?” If this unearthly observer does not know that the United States Government does wish to fortify “the ports of New York and Brooklyn,” has fortified and is fortifying them, what under the sun does he know? As to the canal, his notion seems to be that canals are fortified by erection of ramparts along their entire length on both banks—which is about as accurate a conception of matters on land as that of the sailor who when riding a protesting horse which caught its hind foot in the stirrup exclaimed, “Hello shipmate; if you are going to get on I’ll get off!” Did this distinguished officer ever go ashore?
The Nicaragua Canal will need, fortifications at its mouths, only; without them it will virtually belong to the strongest naval power. If we should happen to be at war with that power it would cut our navy in two and destroy it one-half at a time. No guarantee of its neutrality would serve. When nations fight all treaties are suspended. If we were at war with Great Britain, she would indubitably, and very sensibly, take possession of that canal if she dared; and what she dares in the character of a belligerent has recently been seen off Delagoa Bay. Moreover—for who can read the future?—we may be fighting not a single one of the guaranteeing powers, but a combination of them—so many that the others cannot keep their pledges if they would. If we have not the courage to make that canal without reviving the most odious feature of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty—if we have not the sense and strength to do what we will with it and when made—let us have the patience to wait. Perhaps in a generation or two we shall have been conquered by the Americans, who will make It themselves.
A correspondent whose unaided civility will hardly secure him a contested appointment as Lord Refiner of Deportment to the Mufti of Moosh, would be charmed to know the cause of my disfavor to Count Boni de Castellane, otherwise Mr. Anna Gould. Envy, man—naked and unashamed envy. He is a prosperous imposter—is not a Count, and in his own country would be nobody In particular if he were; yet here in this Republic, whose great founders sternly denied the validity of all hereditary rank, and consecrated their swords and souls to the cause of human equality, he indulges himself in a distinction credentialled by the hardihood of a thieving ancestor who stole a title long extinct. The man who dares to set up such a claim in such a land—albeit, inhabited by political degenerates upon which their sires look dawn from heaven and weep—attracts envy as a hawk attracts the scolding jay. The success of his imposture is as fuel to the flame. In the small affairs of life I trust I have myself a certain boldness and address in humbugging my fellow-men; but in contemplation of the hardy and impenitent audacity of this measureless imposter I am consumed with jealousy and broken by despair!
In the civil war now raging In New York between Col. Bryan and Tammany Hall, the troops of the latter are visibly distressed by their leader’s absence in England. They want him to come home and take the responsibility of command. But that wily chieftain finds no lack of reasons for remaining in his laager. He has by no means exhausted his resources, and if hard pressed has another leg to break. Meantime the gallant Colonel is carrying all before him except his back.
I have intimated that in his own country the Castellane-person would not cut much of a figure; even if his title were not spurious. French nobility is purely vestigial. Under the republic it has no legal status; it survives the kingdom and the empire by courtesy only. A duke there is a duke merely because his neighbors continue to beduke him, just as here a man may be a knight because by joining some fool “order” he has knighted himself, or, more ambitious, may qualify himself for the blue ribbon of the monarchs of Glory and be addressed as “your badgesty.” As to the French Count—the real Count of the old days, not the present “relic of a paleozoic age”—his social rank was about that of an American Justice of the peace. His successor, the courtesy Count of our day and generation, is not even so high in dignity as that. But what he lacks in honors he makes up in number. There is an incalculable multitude of him, a formidable quantity, an exhaustless abundance. He is thicker than flies, and, as a rule, hungrier. In justice to Monsieur Le Comte de Castellane, though, let it be said that he is a good provider.
From all over the country come letters from persons apparently seeking light in good faith, requiring me to answer myself the suggestive questions that I asked in a recent issue of this paper regarding the British and the Boers and their ante-bellum political relations in South Africa. I cannot do that. I should have to repeat all the questions, and the list is too long. But I can put my correspondents in the way of answering for themselves. Surely they cannot think me so great a fool as to ask questions whose answers would make against my own position. Take in each case the answer that is most discreditable to the Boers. This is the truest one.
The Macrum has come and gone, and the mystery of his leaving Pretoria is as deep and dark as ever. The nation clutches vainly at a vanishing clew, the reporters are baffled and dejected, and the State Department (thank heaven!) is as wise as it was before. Ah, well, there comes a last fateful day, when the sea shall give up its dead and the devil his fight, and all that was dark shall be made clear. When that day arrives—in the words of the famous Latin hymn—
“When the mighty Judge is raping
From the truth its gorgeous draping,
Cats from every bag escaping—”
The astonished immortal part of many an unsuccessful guesser may have its delinquent attention recalled to the overlooked circumstance that there was a Mrs. Macrum.
No sooner had I intimated last Sunday that United States Senators would have more elbow room it they would keep their hands in their own pockets than Providence “raised up” an indignant correspondent to inquire austerely into whose pockets they put their hands? Well, into his, for example. By the annual report of the Secretary of the Senate it appears that that worthy body of rather well-to-do patriots cost the country last year, in addition to their salaries, the tidy sum of $810,555.26—about $10,000 for each member. This pretty penny went for such things as carriage hire, medicines, bootblacking, hair-cutting, shaving, periodicals and newspapers, stationery, mineral water, lemons, ice, sugar, more mineral water and more lemons, ice and sugar. Doubtless all this is in due and fit conformity to law, and shows that the Senate is an important part of the law-making power; but it is an outrage, quite the same. The law should be so amended that a thief and a United States Senator could meet without smiling. In pointing out how the law can be amended without first amending the Senate I should probably err widely, but if I were a member of the Slower House I think I could somehow find a plug that would fit that leak. If not, I should offer a bill appropriating a contingent fund for the House. Representatives, too, are human, though Senators seem to regard them as a breed of anthropoid apes. They, too, have hair that needs trimming very badly, boots that shriek for polish and a thirst that is the eighth wonder of the world and serves them in place of a religion. I am persuaded that the awful dignity of a United States Senator resides partly in his well-fatted hair, if he has any; partly in the glint and glimmer of his boots (ex pede herculem), and partly in the spacious rotundity of his beetling paunch. As to that noble organ, it is a disillusion to learn that he tucks it out artificially with carbonic acid gas—is, in brief, a Distensionist. If the prosperous fellow cannot give himself a more substantial and permanent dignity than that, we would prefer him in his primal simplicity—with his belly sticking to his back, just as God made him.
The most formidable fact that the Goebelites are “up against” is Governor Roosevelt’s support of Mr. Taylor. Gentlemen of the Kentucky Democracy, ground arms! A man in Albany loves his party better than his honor.
Conjecture is throwing forward her ears for an explanation of Mr. Rockefeller’s retirement from the Presidency of the Standard Oil Company. Is it possible that the gentleman has left the church and become acquainted with the Christian religion?
The true value of “popular feeling” in international affairs is curiously, if unconsciously, appraised in a recent dispatch from Berlin. It predicts a “complete change” in “German sentiment regarding Great Britain in her South African difficulties.” This change of heart is to be brought about, not by taking thought, not by better knowledge, not even by such uncommon influences as wrought the celebrated “flop” of Saul of Tarsus, but by Russian aggression in Persia, in which the German press sees a grave danger to German commercial Interests. The dispatch quotes from the Berlin press to show that a revulsion of feeling toward the English is already under way. Charming! Great Britain is Russia’s hereditary foe and sole restraint in Asia. A Russian touch upon the German pocket and Lo! A magic metamorphosis—the hateful Englishman stands transfigured, a child of light! The author of that half dispatch probably builded it better than he knew. Being, I judge, an American, he is doubtless a devout believer in the righteousness and reasonableness of popular sentiment, and if he could not cheer when told that the voice of the people is the voice of God, he would be sick.
To Senator Tom said Governor Ted:
“Vice President? No, that would kill me dead!”
Said Senator Tommy to Governor Teddy:
“You’re dead as a mackerel, neighbor, already.”
Kneel, all ye good Christians, old and young,
And pray for eternal repose of his tongue.
I venture to advise my esteemed neighbor of the Baltimore News to catch a corporal. When a person, of whatever worth, devoid of military education or training gives himself the happiness to write of matters martial It Is a red letter day for humor, but the angels cover their faces with their wings and weep. With a kept corporal my good friend in the shadow of The Only Monument could banish sorrow from heaven without injuriously affecting his superior interests in Baltimore. In a recent issue of his admirable journal one of his men, a member doubtless of the Peace Society, writes as followeth here:
“The fine marksmanship of the Boers is attested by the fact that of 303 men wounded by them in the battle of the Tugela in December, 194, or more than half, were hit in the extremities, for which soldiers usually aim.”
The notion that soldiers in battle aim at their enemies’ feet is singularly fascinating. Now that one has it one would not willingly forego it. But under a strict military censorship it would have had to take its place in the limbo of Things otherwise, along with the saw-edged sabre, the poisoned bayonet, the explosive bullet, the gunpowder and rum ration and other charming but unavailable works of the civilian exuberant imagination. Wherefore, the good angels, driven upward with a great thunder of wings by fear to look upon a life, would have sailed smiling back down through the illimited inane and dwelt again in Baltimore.
By the Senate’s ratification of The Hague Peace Treaty, President McKinley has now an indubitable right to proffer mediation in the South African war, and Senator Mason is Jubilant. But, dear me, Senator, have you all this time thought that the President lacked opportunities to make himself ridiculous? Life at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue is as rich in possibilities as it is at the other. For sentimentaliters and futllitarians there is always a way to break into, the pantheon of clowns. The only difficulty (and that does not affect the President) lies In breaking out again and going back to Illinois.
“It is most unfortunate,” says Citizen Russell Alger; “and in exceedingly bad taste for public men of the United States to mix up affairs of South Africa at the present time.” Bravo! Let the Recording Angel cross off two cases of embalmed beef and one of yellow fever.
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