The State, which is responsible
for not having been able to prevent crime, and to give a better
guarantee to the citizens, arrests the criminal (if it can arrest
him--and seventy per cent. of DISCOVERED crimes go unpunished).
Then, with the accused person before it, the State, ``which ought
to concern itself with the lofty interests of eternal justice,''
does not concern itself with the victims of the crime, leaving the
indemnification to their prosaic ``private interest,'' and to a
separate invocation of justice. And then the State, in the name
of eternal justice, exacts from the criminal, in the shape of a
fine payable into the public treasury, a compensation for its own
defence--which it does not secure, even when the crime is only a
trespass upon private property!
Thus the State, which cannot prevent crime, and can only repress
it in a small number of cases, and which fails accordingly
in its first duty, for which the citizens pay it their taxes,
demands a price for all this! And then again the State,
sentencing a million and a half to imprisonment within ten years,
puts the cost of food and lodging on the shoulders of the same
citizens, whom it has failed either to defend or to indemnify for
the loss which they have suffered! And all in the name of eternal
retributive justice.
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