"Such a thing is unknown," said he. "In a society where there is no punishment to evade, no law to triumph over, remorse will certainly follow transgression." "And lesser outbreaks of violence," said I, "how do you deal with them? for hitherto we have been talking of great tragedies, I suppose?" Said Hammond: "If the ill-doer is not sick or mad (in which case he must be restrained till his sickness or madness is cured) it is clear that grief and humiliation must follow the ill-deed; and society in general will make that pretty clear to the ill-doer if he should chance to be dull to it; and again, some kind of atonement will follow,--at the least, an open acknowledgement of the grief and humiliation. Is it so hard to say, I ask your pardon, neighbour?--Well, sometimes it is hard--and let it be." "You think that enough?" said I. "Yes," said he, "and moreover it is all that we _can_ do. If in addition we torture the man, we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he would otherwise feel for _his_ wrong-doing is swallowed up by a hope of revenge for _our_ wrong-doing to him. He has paid the legal penalty, and can 'go and sin again' with comfort. Shall we commit such a folly, then? Remember Jesus had got the legal penalty remitted before he said 'Go and sin no more.' Let alone that in a society of equals you will not find any one to play the part of torturer or jailer, though many to act as nurse or doctor." "So," said I, "you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which requires no body of criminal law to deal with it?" "Pretty much so," said he; "and since, as I have told you, we are a healthy people generally, so we are not likely to be much troubled with _this_ disease." "Well, you have no civil law, and no criminal law. But have you no laws of the market, so to say--no regulation for the exchange of wares? for you must exchange, even if you have no property." Said he: "We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the markets, varying according to the circumstances and guided by general custom. But as these are matters of general assent, which nobody dreams of objecting to, so also we have made no provision for enforcing them: therefore I don't call them laws. In law, whether it be criminal or civil, execution always follows judgment, and someone must suffer. When you see the judge on his bench, you see through him, as clearly as if he were made of glass, the policeman to emprison, and the soldier to slay some actual living person. Such follies would make an agreeable market, wouldn't they?" "Certainly," said I, "that means turning the market into a mere battle- field, in which many people must suffer as much as in the battle-field of bullet and bayonet. And from what I have seen I should suppose that your marketing, great and little, is carried on in a way that makes it a pleasant occupation."