but the mildly incompetent, the spiritless and dull, the poorer sort who are ill, do not exhaust our utopian problem. there remain idiots and lunatics, there remain perverse and incompetent persons, there are people of weak character who become drunkards, drug takers, and the like. then there are persons tainted with certain foul and transmissible diseases. all these people spoil the world for others. they may become parents, and with most of them there is manifestly nothing to be done but to seclude them from the great body of the population. you must resort to a kind of social surgery. you cannot have social freedom in your public ways, your children cannot speak to whom they will, your girls and gentle women cannot go abroad while some sorts of people go free. and there are violent people, and those who will not respect the property of others, thieves and cheats, they, too, so soon as their nature is confirmed, must pass out of the free life of our ordered world. so soon as there can be no doubt of the disease or baseness of the individual, so soon as the insanity or other disease is assured, or the crime repeated a third time, or the drunkenness or misdemeanour past its seventh occasion (let us say), so soon must he or she pass out of the common ways of men.
the dreadfulness of all such proposals as this lies in the possibility of their execution falling into the hands of hard, dull, and cruel administrators. but in the case of a utopia one assumes the best possible government, a government as merciful and deliberate as it is powerful and decisive. you must not too hastily imagine these things being done — as they would be done on earth at present — by a number of zealous half-educated people in a state of panic at a quite imaginary “rapid multiplication of the unfit.”
no doubt for first offenders, and for all offenders under five-and-twenty, the modern utopia will attempt cautionary and remedial treatment. there will be disciplinary schools and colleges for the young, fair and happy places, but with less confidence and more restraint than the schools and colleges of the ordinary world. in remote and solitary regions these enclosures will lie, they will be fenced in and forbidden to the common run of men, and there, remote from all temptation, the defective citizen will be schooled. there will be no masking of the lesson; “which do you value most, the wide world of humanity, or this evil trend in you?” from that discipline at last the prisoners will return.
but the others; what would a saner world do with them?
our world is still vindictive, but the all-reaching state of utopia will have the strength that begets mercy. quietly the outcast will go from among his fellow men. there will be no drumming of him out of the ranks, no tearing off of epaulettes, no smiting in the face. the thing must be just public enough to obviate secret tyrannies, and that is all.
there would be no killing, no lethal chambers. no doubt utopia will kill all deformed and monstrous and evilly diseased births, but for the rest, the state will hold itself accountable for their being. there is no justice in nature perhaps, but the idea of justice must be sacred in any good society. lives that statesmanship has permitted, errors it has not foreseen and educated against, must not be punished by death. if the state does not keep faith, no one will keep faith. crime and bad lives are the measure of a state’s failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community. even for murder utopia will not, i think, kill.
i doubt even if there will be jails. no men are quite wise enough, good enough and cheap enough to staff jails as a jail ought to be staffed. perhaps islands will be chosen, islands lying apart from the highways of the sea, and to these the state will send its exiles, most of them thanking heaven, no doubt, to be quit of a world of prigs. the state will, of course, secure itself against any children from these people, that is the primary object in their seclusion, and perhaps it may even be necessary to make these island prisons a system of island monasteries and island nunneries. upon that i am not competent to speak, but if i may believe the literature of the subject — unhappily a not very well criticised literature — it is not necessary to enforce this separation. [footnote: see for example dr. w. a. chapple’s the fertility of the unfit.]
about such islands patrol boats will go, there will be no freedoms of boat building, and it may be necessary to have armed guards at the creeks and quays. beyond that the state will give these segregated failures just as full a liberty as they can have. if it interferes any further it will be simply to police the islands against the organisation of serious cruelty, to maintain the freedom of any of the detained who wish it to transfer themselves to other islands, and so to keep a check upon tyranny. the insane, of course, will demand care and control, but there is no reason why the islands of the hopeless drunkard, for example, should not each have a virtual autonomy, have at the most a resident and a guard. i believe that a community of drunkards might be capable of organising even its own bad habit to the pitch of tolerable existence. i do not see why such an island should not build and order for itself and manufacture and trade. “your ways are not our ways,” the world state will say; “but here is freedom and a company of kindred souls. elect your jolly rulers, brew if you will, and distil; here are vine cuttings and barley fields; do as it pleases you to do. we will take care of the knives, but for the rest — deal yourselves with god!”
and you see the big convict steamship standing in to the island of incurable cheats. the crew are respectfully at their quarters, ready to lend a hand overboard, but wide awake, and the captain is hospitably on the bridge to bid his guests good-bye and keep an eye on the movables. the new citizens for this particular alsatia, each no doubt with his personal belongings securely packed and at hand, crowd the deck and study the nearing coast. bright, keen faces would be there, and we, were we by any chance to find ourselves beside the captain, might recognise the double of this great earthly magnate or that, petticoat lane and park lane cheek by jowl. the landing part of the jetty is clear of people, only a government man or so stands there to receive the boat and prevent a rush, but beyond the gates a number of engagingly smart-looking individuals loiter speculatively. one figures a remarkable building labelled custom house, an interesting fiscal revival this population has made, and beyond, crowding up the hill, the painted walls of a number of comfortable inns clamour loudly. one or two inhabitants in reduced circumstances would act as hotel touts, there are several hotel omnibuses and a bureau de change, certainly a bureau de change. and a small house with a large board, aimed point-blank seaward, declares itself a gratis information office, and next to it rises the graceful dome of a small casino. beyond, great hoardings proclaim the advantages of many island specialities, a hustling commerce, and the opening of a public lottery. there is a large cheap-looking barrack, the school of commercial science for gentlemen of inadequate training. . . .
altogether a very go-ahead looking little port it would be, and though this disembarkation would have none of the flow of hilarious good fellowship that would throw a halo of genial noise about the islands of drink, it is doubtful if the new arrivals would feel anything very tragic in the moment. here at last was scope for adventure after their hearts.
this sounds more fantastic than it is. but what else is there to do, unless you kill? you must seclude, but why should you torment? all modern prisons are places of torture by restraint, and the habitual criminal plays the part of a damaged mouse at the mercy of the cat of our law. he has his little painful run, and back he comes again to a state more horrible even than destitution. there are no alsatias left in the world. for my own part i can think of no crime, unless it is reckless begetting or the wilful transmission of contagious disease, for which the bleak terrors, the solitudes and ignominies of the modern prison do not seem outrageously cruel. if you want to go so far as that, then kill. why, once you are rid of them, should you pester criminals to respect an uncongenial standard of conduct? into such islands of exile as this a modern utopia will have to purge itself. there is no alternative that i can contrive.
