The one crime which society judges hardly, for which it holds no penalty too severe, is treachery. Of other sins the world is a lenient critic. It deals very gently with the profligate; it is full of excuses for the self-willed and violent. It has a sympathy with passion-the passion of the sensualist, or the passion of the headstrong-which softens its judgment. But the traitor receives no mercy at the bar of public opinion. The instinct of self-preservation does not leave society a choice. It could not hold together, if perfidy were overlooked. The betrayal of a friend, the betrayal of a cause, the betrayal of one's country-these are unforgiven and unforgotten crimes. Even treachery to a treacherous cause is barely tolerated. The law employs it, and disguises it with a specious title. We call it “turning King's evidence,” but still it is repulsive. We avail ourselves of the treachery, but we loathe the traitor. It is an ugly name and an ugly thing, to which no social or political necessity can altogether reconcile us.
Address the next man you meet as Judas, and he will probably be angry. Address him as Peter or Thomas, and, unless coincidence is at work, the probabilities are that he will simply be amused at your mistake. Why the difference? It is because the career of Judas has indelibly stained his name with the suggestion of treachery; and all the world hates a traitor. In a large upper room in the Palace of the Doges in Venice there is a series of portraits of past rulers of the city. One of the lines of these portraits is broken by a sudden blank. It confronts you black and sinister; and naturally you ask for an explanation. “There,” answers the guide, “was once a portrait of one of the doges. But he sold the city to her enemies; and so they blackened his picture out.” The action of the civic authorities expressed dramatically the attitude of most of us towards a traitor.
We shudder at the associations called up by the memory of Judas Iscariot, whose very name has become a byword; and whose person and character an eternal type of impiety, treachery, and ingratitude; his crime, without a name, so distances all possible human turpitude that he cannot even be held forth as a terror to evil-doers; we set him aside as one cut off; we never think of him but in reference to the sole and unequalled crime recorded of him. Not so our ancestors; one should have lived in the middle ages, to conceive the profound, the ever-present, horror with which Judas Iscariot was then regarded. The devil himself did not inspire the same passionate hatred and indignation. Being the devil, what could he be but devilish? His wickedness was according to his infernal nature; but the crime of Judas remains the perpetual shame and reproach of our humanity. The devil betrayed mankind, but Judas betrayed his God.1 [Note: Mrs. Jameson, The Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art, i. 255.]
For what wilt thou sell thy Lord?
“For certain pieces of silver, since wealth buys the world's good word.”
But the world's word, how canst thou hear it, while thy brothers cry scorn on thy name?
And how shall thy bargain content thee, when thy brothers shall clothe thee with shame?
For what shall thy brother be sold?
“For the rosy garland of pleasure, and the coveted crown of gold.”
But thy soul will turn them to thorns, and to heaviness binding thy head,
While women are dying of shame, and children are crying for bread.
For what wilt thou sell thy soul?
“For the world.” And what shall it profit, when thou shalt have gained the whole?
What profit the things thou hast, if the thing thou art be so mean?
Wilt thou fill with the husks of having the void of the might-have-been?1 [Note: E. Nesbit, Ballads and Verses of the Spiritual Life, 91.]
