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WHY MEN ARE HANGED
by prophets who would make omelette without breaking even one single egg, or practised by a niggardly Government whose hands are tied by its own nature. The latter's cfforts are bound to be as ludicrously ineffective as the effort of pulling oneself up by his own boot-strings. Meanwhile, crimes of all kind must spred as ugly symptoms of a chronic diseasc. The legal punishment of these crimes is morally as justifiable as penalising the victims of a contagious disease.
In the second place, granted the contention that the indebtedness of the masses is to some extent due to the expenditure on ceremonials, the seekers after the root-cause of the disease must ask : \Vhose fault is that? If those, often without the means of bare subsistence, are found as a rule to incur occasional expenditures which aggravate their plight, already hopcless, they must be acting under compulsion. Expenditure for cercmonial purposes are socially compelled. They are seldlom made voluntarily. Therefore, the responsibility on that account cannot be laid at the door of the people who practise them. It belongs to religious legislation, social custom, and cultural tradition.
Religion teaches that it is the duty of children to perform certain ceremonies on the death of their parents, the default in which would not only cause inconvenience to the dead, but prejudice the postmortem position of the defaulters themselves. These ceremonies, prescribed as religious practices,
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