The Chartered Libertine

I find myself in agreement with Mr. Robert Lynd for his most just remark
in connection with the Malatesta case, that the police are becoming a
peril to society. I have no attraction to that sort of atheist asceticism
to which the purer types of Anarchism tend; but both an atheist and an
ascetic are better men than a spy; and it is ignominious to see one's
country thus losing her special point of honour about asylum and liberty.
It will be quite a new departure if we begin to protect and whitewash
foreign policemen. I always understood it was only English policemen who
were absolutely spotless. A good many of us, however, have begun to feel
with Mr. Lynd, and on all sides authorities and officials are being
questioned. But there is one most graphic and extraordinary fact, which
it did not lie in Mr. Lynd's way to touch upon, but which somebody really
must seize and emphasise. It is this: that at the very time when we are
all beginning to doubt these authorities, we are letting laws pass to
increase their most capricious powers. All our commissions, petitions,
and letters to the papers are asking whether these authorities can give an
account of their stewardship. And at the same moment all our laws are
decreeing that they shall not give any account of their stewardship, but
shall become yet more irresponsible stewards. Bills like the
Feeble-Minded Bill and the Inebriate Bill (very appropriate names for
them) actually arm with scorpions the hand that has chastised the
Malatestas and Maleckas with whips. The inspector, the doctor, the police
sergeant, the well-paid person who writes certificates and "passes" this,
that, or the other; this sort of man is being trusted with more authority,
apparently because he is being doubted with more reason. In one room we
are asking why the Government and the great experts between them cannot
sail a ship. In another room we are deciding that the Government and
experts shall be allowed, without trial or discussion, to immure any one's
body, damn any one's soul, and dispose of unborn generations with the
levity of a pagan god. We are putting the official on the throne while he
is still in the dock.

The mere meaning of words is now strangely forgotten and falsified; as
when people talk of an author's "message," without thinking whom it is
from; and I have noted in these connections the strange misuse of another
word. It is the excellent mediaeval word "charter." I remember the Act
that sought to save gutter-boys from cigarettes was called "The Children's
Charter." Similarly the Act which seeks to lock up as lunatics people who
are not lunatics was actually called a "charter" of the feeble-minded.
Now this terminology is insanely wrong,