This conviction of the criminality of the honest is engrained in the criminal mind, and one meets it at every turn. "Who doesn't deserve the galleys?" was a remark often heard by Dr. Lauvergne at the convict establishment at Toulon, and the same idea was cynically expressed by Lacenaire:--
"Buvons à la sagesse, A la vertu qui soutient! Tu peux sans crainte d'ivresse, Boire à tous les gens de bien."
Most people must have observed, in talking with persons of vicious instincts, the genuine disgust which these so often feel for the slightly different vices of others and their indifference to their own. So the man in prison feels indulgence for his own offence and contempt for his more cautious brother outside who continues to retain the respect of society, feelings which the latter heartily reciprocates. Every individual, whatever his position, feels the need of a certain amount of _amour propre_. "I may be a thief, but, thank God, I am a respectable man."
Among the criminal songs still found in Sardinia there is one (quoted by Lombroso from Bouillier's _Les Dialectes et les Chants de la Sardaigne_) that may be quoted here. "Tell me," asks Achea of the priest, "if I have nothing to eat, and if I find wherewith to appease my hunger, may I take the goods of another?" "Believe me, if you have nothing to eat, and you meet with something, you would be a fool not to take it." "That is a good counsel, but here is a difficulty: what I have taken in this way, ought I to return it?" "No. The observance of the law would subject you to a fast too severe; you are a great fool if you do not understand that in the face of necessity all things belong to all." That is the morality of a lawless and primitive society, but it has points of contact with some of the latest and highest developments of social morality. Tolstoï would justify it; as, to a certain extent, a respected archbishop has justified it.
"The laws of society," remarked an educated convict to Mr. Davitt, "are framed for the purpose of securing the wealth of the world to power and calculation, thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and chances. Why should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar means from those who have taken more than they had a right to? My dear sir," said he, "I deny your contention that there is any such thing as honesty in the world at all." This man, who had a considerable acquaintance with literature and philosophy, maintained soberly that "thieving was an _honourable_ pursuit," and that religion, law, patriotism, and bodily disease were the real and only enemies of humanity. "Religion," he would observe, "robbed the soul of its independence, while society's social laws, in restraining the desires and faculties given by Nature to men for the purpose of gratification, declared war against the manifest spirit of the law of our being." Patriotism he termed "the idolatry of an idea, in the stupid worship of which the peace of the world, and the wellbeing of its inhabitants, were sacrificed by the lawmakers and others who profit thereby."