The rich men want a scientist to write them a _lettre de
cachet_ as a doctor writes a prescription. And so they wish to seal up in
a public gaol the scandals of a private asylum. Yes; the writers on the
"Clarion" are indeed claiming irresponsibility for human beings. But it
is the governments that will be irresponsible, not the governed.
But I will tell them one small secret in conclusion. There is nothing
whatever wrong in the ancient and universal idea of Punishment--except
that we are not punishing the right people.
THE DREGS OF PURITANISM
One peculiarity of the genuine kind of enemy of the people is that his
slightest phrase is clamorous with all his sins. Pride, vain-glory, and
hypocrisy seem present in his very grammar; in his very verbs or adverbs
or prepositions, as well as in what he says, which is generally bad enough.
Thus I see that a Nonconformist pastor in Bromley has been talking about
the pathetic little presents of tobacco sent to the common soldiers. This
is how he talks about it. He is reported as having said, "By the help of
God, they wanted this cigarette business stopped." How one could write a
volume on that sentence, a great thick volume called "The Decline of the
English Middle Class." In taste, in style, in philosophy, in feeling, in
political project, the horrors of it are as unfathomable as hell.
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