Edward is an unpleasant shadow, because he has discarded his harmless waxwork and engaged himself to Lucy Steele, who is coarse, ignorant, vicious, brainless, heartless, a flatterer, a sneak—and is described by the supplanted waxwork as being “a woman superior in person and understanding to half her sex;” and “time and habit will teach Edward to forget that he ever thought another superior to her.” Elinor knows Lucy quite well. Are those sentimental falsities put into her mouth to make us think she is a noble and magnanimous waxwork, and thus exalt her in our estimation? And do they do it?
Willoughby is a frankly cruel, criminal and filthy society-gentleman.
Old Mrs. Ferrars is an execrable gentlewoman and unsurpassably coarse and offensive.
Mr. Dashwood, gentleman, is a coarse and cold-hearted money-worshipper; his Fanny is coarse and mean. Neither of them ever says or does a pleasant thing.
Mr. Robert Ferrars, gentleman, is coarse, is a snob, and an all-round offensive person.
Mr. Palmer, gentleman, is coarse, brute-mannered, and probably an ass, though we cannot tell, yet, because he cloaks himself behind silences which are not often broken by speeches that contain material enough to construct an analysis out of.
His wife, lady, is coarse and silly.
Lucy Steele’s sister is coarse, foolish, and disagreeable.
If a wave of incendiarism were sweeping the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the lakes to the Gulf, and you knew the names and addresses of every one of the incendiaries, what would you do—double the strength of the 2,000 fire departments?
That would be one way. Another would be, to put the incendiaries under bonds to stop setting fires.
“Suggestion,” as an impelling and compelling force, is not confined to the hypnotist—the most of our daily acts proceed from it. If a newspaper tells of a starving family, the bare suggestion is sufficient, it does not need to solicit help for it, the donations will begin to flow in, without that; if a newspaper tells of a child that has been abandoned by its parents, there is no need to ask for succor, fifty childless homes are eagerly flung open for the waif; if a newspaper gathers from the police court the inflaming particulars of how a young girl has been captured in a lonely place by one or a dozen ruffians and outraged—
What follows? We all know what follows—we know it well: the inflaming particulars excite a thousand ruffian readers, and they frenziedly hunt for opportunities to duplicate that crime.
If the published case be very liberally spiced with salacious particulars, the 2,000 daily journals of the United States will print it, and some hundreds of thousands of ruffians will be set on fire by it, driven temporarily insane by it, rendered practically irresponsible by it; and while this frenzy lasts they will take the most desperate chances to duplicate that crime.
How many attempts that fall short of complete success will ensue? Certainly hundreds upon hundreds that will be hushed up and never heard of—because the parents cannot get private justice, but must carry their shame into a public court and have it laid bare to the world—the newspapers, and the pictures of themselves and their ruined child along with it. If the case were yours would you carry it to the public court and the newspaper? Would I? No. We would suffer any death first.
How many successes reach the courts? One in a hundred? Possibly; but not any more than that. How many unsuccessful attempts reach the courts? One in ten thousand? Possibly; but not any more than that.
When a drinker is trying to reform, we hasten to put the bottle out of sight when he enters our house—for we know the transcendent force of suggestion; when the gambler is trying to reform we keep the cards out of his sight; the law closes the mails against salacious books, lest they get into the hands of the young and undermine their morals. Then—isn’t it strange!—we open the mails every day to 2,000 newspapers, and privilege them to incite the impressible young, and many evil-minded adults among millions of readers, to think poisonous thoughts, and imagine unwholesome scenes and episodes, and meditate deeds perilous to themselves and to society. And to this unwisdom we add the public court, and thus do our very best to utterly complete the debauching of the public mind, and at the same time totally defeat certain of the very ends for which the courts have been established.
The present “wave of crime” is a perfectly natural thing. It was created by the open court and the newspaper. This result was unavoidable. So long as the court remains open it will be the newspaper’s business to print the cases, and it will be obliged to do it.
I think it likely that if for a couple of months the cases were examined in secret and kept out of the newspapers—this by way of experiment—the “wave” would quiet down, the heated ruffian mind would cool off, and crimes against women and girls would become practically infrequent.
We know one thing for sure: five million policemen could not abolish this wave, in America, nor even modify it. These crimes are not committed in the presence of policemen.
MARK TWAIN
Its occupant has one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really without this privilege—strictly speaking—but as he possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always—when committed. Which is seldom. There are not fewer than five thousand murders to one (unpopular) free utterance. There is justification for this reluctance to utter unpopular opinions: the cost of utterance is too heavy; it can ruin a man in his business, it can lose him his friends, it can subject him to public insult and abuse, it can ostracise his unoffending family, and make his house a despised and unvisited solitude. An unpopular opinion concerning politics or religion lies concealed in the breast of every man; in many cases not only one sample, but several. The more intelligent the man, the larger the freightage of this kind of opinions he carries, and keeps to himself. There is not one individual—including the reader and myself—who is not the possessor of dear and cherished unpopular convictions which common wisdom forbids him to utter. Sometimes we suppress an opinion for reasons that are a credit to us, not a discredit, but oftenest we suppress an unpopular opinion because we cannot afford the bitter cost of putting it forth.
1 comment