“Endeavouring to control the psychic storms and the physiological cravings by external terror, is very much like trying to steer a ship from the outside; it cannot be done. The mental self-searching restraints of believed religions alone really influence hidden desires; even then the great passions will mostly break through.
Meanwhile the successive attempts on the part of the State to regulate those matters of private judgment and individual conscience, which were once adjudicated upon purely theological grounds and authority,' has resulted in sequelae widely divergent from, and often directly contrary to, the wishes of empirical law makers.
The first and most obvious was the endowment of blackmail. The blackmailer is a variety of the human parasite, allied to all those others of the tribe of Judas — those traitors, sneaks, and hypocrites who, in some circumstances, may be employed by the State itself at a fixed salary, and in others may be found lurking with its most loathed criminals, for speculative and illicit gains. Particularly in an artificial and deliberate offence like blackmailing, Society suffers from the kind of criminals it deserves. Because oppressive puritanical laws serve as the potent instruments of private revenge or selfish extortion,' and a scandal-loving, prurient public taste creates the " culture " which the parasite can flourish in. (And, to continue the metaphor, how one bright beam of the sunlight of truth would kill all these unclean things !) The law-makers and politicians, as usual cheaply theorising about things, have assumed the victim of blackmail to be innocent, and have placed frightful penalties in his hands to hurl upon those who shall threaten him.
The blackmailer, being a practical person, knows the accused to be generally guilty, or at any rate compromised, and that, consequently, he will endure almost anything rather than figure in a police-court scandal. (Perhaps nine times out of ten, but not always. Older people may recollect how a distinguished statesman was once threatened, on which he instantly caused the arrest of his traducer, who was afterwards convicted. Those few who follow and study criminal cases may recall a remarkable incident where a young man, in the open street, was accused of indecency, forthwith seized, and marched towards the nearest police station. On the way, his captor suggested release upon payment, but the “prisoner" calmly elected to stand in the dock. Presently his assailants took fright and bolted, but were afterwards caught and sent to penal servitude, the magistrate warmly commending the prosecutor. Had he, however, been really an invert, the course of events might have been more profitable to the blackmailers and much less satisfactory to the public interest.)
The greater his social position, and the higher his general character and reputation — his sexual nature being really a question apart — the more will he dread the odium of publicity; the safer will the sex blackmailer feel.
And, on the whole it is to be feared with reason, these creatures are extremely hard to catch; the cases that get into the newspapers represent only unsuccessful operations. Effective deals are squared up secretly, and are never heard of, though many things are pigeonholed at Scotland Yard — In fact a number of most villainous gangs are always badly wanted by the State, whose laws these very criminals get their living by.” - George Ives, A History of Penal Methods: Criminals, Witches, Lunatics. London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1914. pp. 353-355.
