Spencer Heath Archive

Item 741

Taping by Spencer MacCallum during conversation with Heath.

March 23, 1956

 

White envelope has items 741-743.

 

PENALTIES

 

     Penalties are imposed supposedly for the correction of misdoing or in retribution for crime. All penalties imposed by political authority are artificial and irrational. Apart from the political realm, all penalties are imposed by nature spontaneously and unerringly, and among the voluntary institutions of men, there is only one penalty, and this not involving force. This one penalty is banishment.

 

     The pirates who became medieval traders on the Baltic, the Mediterranean and out on the Atlantic were not dependent on any political powers for permission to trade. There were no widespread sovereignties then. The only law under which they operated was that supplied to them by nature, enforced by voluntary custom and called the “Law Merchant.” When a merchant defaulted on his obligation, he was not hailed before a political court and thrown into jail or into bankruptcy. He was called to account by a court composed of his fellow merchants, who decided whether or not he was guilty of default. If he was not guilty, he was still a trader; for he had not ceased to be. If he was guilty, he had ceased to be a trader. The verdict that he had ceased to trade was notorious, and he was no longer a trader. He was banished from the trading community.

 

     Under the English Common Law, the law of the land corresponded with the law of the sea. A person accused of default was served notice by a guild magistrate or other non-political officer inviting him to answer the charge. If he did not answer, or if found guilty upon answering, he was banished from the civilized community, forfeiting all the rights and advantages of community life.

     To take a third instance:  An inhabitant of a modern hotel obviously misbehaves or is accused of doing so. He must either exculpate himself or he is invited to leave. He is banished from the hotel community as the medieval citizen was banished from his village community and medieval trader banished from the community of commerce. Banishment is the one penalty that nature herself imposes among the voluntary institutions of men.⁷⁴¹