Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/27

Rh and it is really difficult to find any evidence that the people were thought of at all, except in the relation of obedience." "The Government regarded the people with little other view than as a taxable and soldier-yielding mass." While the militant part of the community had greatly developed, the industrial part had approached toward the condition of a permanent commissariat. By conscription and by press gangs was carried to a relatively vast extent that sacrifice of the citizen in life and liberty which war entails; and the claims to property were trenched upon by merciless taxation, weighing down the middle classes so grievously that they had greatly to lower their rate of living, while the people at large were so distressed (partly no doubt by bad harvests) that "hundreds ate nettles and other weeds." With these major aggressions upon the individual by the state went numerous minor aggressions. Irresponsible agents of the executive were empowered to suppress public meetings and seize their leaders; death being the punishment for those who did not disperse when ordered. Libraries and news-rooms could not be opened without license; and it was penal to lend books without permission. There were "strenuous attempts made to silence the press"; and booksellers dared not publish works by obnoxious authors. "Spies were paid, witnesses were suborned, juries were packed, and, the habeas corpus act being constantly suspended, the crown had the power of imprisoning without inquiry and without limitation." While the Government taxed and coerced and restrained the citizen to this extent, its protection of him was inefficient. It is true that the penal code was made more extensive and more severe: the definition of treason was enlarged, and many transgressions were made capital which were not capital before; so that there was "a vast and absurd variety of offenses for which men and women were sentenced to death by the score": there was "a devilish levity in dealing with human life." But at the same time there was not increase but rather decrease of security. As says Mr. Pike, in his "History of Crime," "It became apparent that the greater the strain of the conflict the greater is the danger of a reaction toward violence and lawlessness." Turn now to the opposite picture. After recovery from the prostration which prolonged wars had left, and the dying away of those social perturbations caused by impoverishment, there began a revival of traits proper to the industrial type. Coercion of the citizen by the state decreased in various ways. Voluntary enlistment replaced compulsory military service; and there disappeared some minor restraints over personal freedom, as instance the repeal of laws which forbade artisans to travel where they pleased, and which interdicted trades-unions. With these manifestations of greater respect for personal freedom may be joined those shown in the amelioration of the penal code: the public whipping of females being first abolished, then the long list of capital offenses being reduced until there finally remained but one, and eventually the pillory and