The New Life

by Tom Crewe

“What am I, Mark? Would there be no benefit to me?” John looked at him directly. They had lowered their voices, but this only had the effect of putting pressure on their words, which came out compact and hard-edged. “And what are you? You are not so oblivious as to think there are only two of us. Is the law beyond scrutiny? It is a rotten, filthy law. That is the stain. The point of my conclusion, which you single out for scandal, is that there is a benefit, as you call it, in a proper comprehension of the past. The knowledge that what we punish with hard labor—a crime for which men used to hang in our fathers’ time—was once praised, understood, practiced, by the very men whose thought we teach our sons, whose heroics we pride ourselves on matching, whose marbles we line up for our edification; may that knowledge not do some useful work in the world? How can it not?”