Slavery and the Penal System

By J. Thorsten Sellin

The classic and groundbreaking study of penal slavery throughout the ages is finally available again. Previously a rare book, despite the fact that it is widely quoted and cited by scholars in the field of sociology, penology, and criminology, this book can now be accessed easily worldwide and be assigned again to classes.

Now in its fortieth anniversary edition, Sellin's classic book adds a new Foreword by researcher Barry Krisberg at Berkeley, and incorporates changes the author originally planned for a second printing, provided to Quid Pro Books by the Special Collections Library at Penn and authorized by his family. Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series from Quid Pro Books, this edition also includes explanatory Notes of the Series Editor by Steven Alan Childress, senior professor of law at Tulane.

A book that has become a standard part of the canon in its field, but became too expensive for researchers and libraries to obtain, is now easily downloaded in a well-formatted ebook. Other features include linked Contents and notes, fully linked and paginated Index, and close reading of the text against the original so that its legacy is properly presented.

This book traces the direct and indirect influences of the social institution of chattel slavery on the evolution of penal systems and practices in Europe and the United States -- a dismal story. The author reveals the darkest and most brutal aspects of penal history and the social forces that resisted or nullified the efforts of reformers who sought to bring about humanization of the punishment. The book shows that domestic punishments inflicted on slaves by masters later become legal punishments for crimes committed by low-class freemen ... eventually to become legal sanctions against offenders regardless of social status. A dominant force is the class and caste structure of society that is reflected in the determination of what conduct should be defined as criminal, who should be punished, and what the punishment should be. Topics include ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages in Europe, galley slaves and naval arsenal prisons in maritime countries, penal creation of public works, the rise of houses of correction, invention of the treadmill, practices in England and Russia, slavery in the antebellum South, and later U.S. chain gangs, penal farms, and convict-lease system.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quid Pro, LLC
• Release date: Apr 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781610273398

J. Thorsten Sellin

J. Thorsten Sellin (1896–1994) was a renowned sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, recognized for his work as a penologist and as one of the pioneers of scientific criminology. He taught at Penn from 1922 until he retired in 1967. Sellin was an expert in crime statistics and consulted with the FBI, the Bureau of the Census, and the UN to improve crime reporting. A long-time president of the International Society of Criminology, Sellin also edited the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for 39 years. Penn's Sellin Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law was named for him.

Book preview

SLAVERY

AND THE

PENAL SYSTEM

SLAVERY

AND THE

PENAL SYSTEM

~

by

J. Thorsten Sellin

CLASSICS OF LAW & SOCIETY

qp

QUID PRO BOOKS

New Orleans, Louisiana

Smashwords Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Theodore Sellin, new Foreword © 2016 by Barry Krisberg, and Notes of the Series Editor © 2016 by Steven Alan Childress. All rights reserved. Not to be copied, reproduced, digitized, or transmitted in any manner—in whole or in part—without the written permission of the current publisher, Quid Pro Books.

Previously published in 1976 by Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., Inc., New York and Amsterdam; and copyright © 1976 by Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., Inc.

Published in 2016, in the Revised Fortieth Anniversary Edition, by Quid Pro Books, at Smashwords. Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series.

ISBN 978‐1‐61027‐339‐8 (ePUB)

ISBN 978‐1‐61027‐336‐7 (pbk.)

QUID PRO BOOKS

Quid Pro, LLC

5860 Citrus Blvd., Suite D-101

New Orleans, Louisiana 70123

www.quidprobooks.com

Publisher’s Cataloging in Publication

Sellin, J. Thorsten (Johan Thorsten).

          Slavery and the penal system / J. Thorsten Sellin.

            (previously published, 1976).

              p. cm. — (Classics of law & society)

          Includes bibliographical references and index; includes new foreword and notes.

          Fortieth anniversary edition, revised.

1. Punishment—History. 2. Slavery—History. 3. Corrections—History. I. Title. II. Series.

HV8501 .S43 2016

367.43’1’0124

2016079447

Additional editorial consulting for the anniversary edition was provided by Eric Sellin. Original author annotations, notes, and corrections were provided by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries Special Collections.

Contents

Foreword (2016)

Notes of the Series Editor (2016)

Preface (1976)

I: IN ANCIENT GREECE

II: SLAVERY AND PUNISHMENT IN ANCIENT ROME

III: IN THE MIDDLE AGES

IV: GALLEY SLAVERY

V: PUBLIC WORKS

VI: HOUSES OF CORRECTION

VII: THE BAGNE

VIII: THE BAGNES OF ENGLAND AND THEIR AFTERMATH

IX: PENAL SLAVERY IN RUSSIA

X: THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH

XI: THE CONVICT LEASE SYSTEM

XII: CHAIN GANGS AND PRISON FARMS

Postscript

Notes

Index

Foreword • 2016

It was nearly fifty years ago that I had the privilege of being Professor Thorsten Sellin’s undergraduate research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania. He assigned me to comb Penn’s vast library system to compile a comprehensive bibliography on capital punishment. The topics in my review spanned the academic areas of statistics, the social sciences, American history, economics, public policy, law, medicine, philosophy, engineering, and architecture. I learned about the many specialized collections that were at the University and I became fast friends with several very helpful librarians. The research skills that I acquired have served me well over my career. The way he demonstrated patience with and kindness to a young student still touches my heart.

More than the hours in the Penn libraries, I treasured my weekly meetings with Professor Sellin to share with him the products of my literature search. He would read many of the articles that I brought to him and would give me his perspective on their significance. A few years later, I enrolled in Professor Sellin’s graduate seminar on The Sociology of Punishment and Corrections. This class was heavily focused on the history and evolution of punishment around the world. Sellin was one of the rare American sociologists who were totally versed in the writings of European and Marxist scholars. He spoke many languages and often would share with the class his own translations of works that had never been published in English.

Thorsten Sellin was the preeminent critic of capital punishment, and he worked tirelessly to accomplish its abolition around the world. He insisted that his students gain a comprehensive understanding of the cultural and sociological foundations of the death penalty. He taught his Penn students about the contributions of world renowned international scholars such as Herman Mannheim, Leon Radzinowicz, George Rusche, and Otto Kirchheimer.

Slavery and the Penal System was first published in 1976. It did not receive wide attention in the Academy and was not reissued by Elsevier Press. Until this republished version, the book was hard to find outside of rare book collections. Interest in Sellin’s scholarship was mostly confined to those interested in critical studies of race and the law. About the same time as Slavery and the Penal System appeared, the work of the French philosopher Michael Foucault in To Punish and Discipline (1975) also helped rekindle interest in the history of punishment. More recently, the provocative scholarship of Ohio State Law Professor Michelle Alexander has energized a national policy discussion about the linkages of slavery and the Jim Crow Era to the contours of the current crisis of mass incarceration. Professor Alexander, in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), shocked many with a range of data showing that there are more African Americans in prison or on parole today than there were under the worst ravages of chattel slavery.

Sellin’s book provides a comprehensive and well-reasoned analysis of the interplay of the socio-legal institutions of slavery and the punishment of criminals. His scholarship spans most of recorded history and ranges across many cultures and civilizations. Sellin reveals the origins of many of the seemingly bizarre rituals that occur in prisons around the world. He also shows that parallels between the barbarity in U.S. prisons, the Nazi death camps, and Soviet gulags exist, as well as the horrendous practices in many nations around the world.

When I taught classes in The Law of Corrections at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, I always assigned Sellin’s classic historical treatise. This intellectual foundation helped the students interpret one of the most important judicial decisions on the rights of prisoners, Ruffin v. Commonwealth, Supreme Court of Virginia (60 Va. 790 (1871)). In that case, the Court held that, as a convicted felon, Mr. Ruffin was not a free man and that he was in a state of penal servitude. For all legal purposes the law treated Mr. Ruffin as though he were civilly dead. His wife was declared a widow and his children were defined as orphans. This is a very direct example of how criminal felons were regarded as identical to slaves—the main difference is that most slaves suffered that status forever. The Ruffin case influenced American jurisprudence about the rights of prisoners for almost the next 100 years. Sellin illustrates the long history of social and political thought that was the underpinning of this case.

Today the tide of public opinion about prisons seems to be changing. More and more voices decry the adverse impact of mass incarceration, especially on communities of color, and there are growing critiques of the vestiges of the concept of civil death that still infects contemporary corrections systems. In the recent landmark decision in Brown v. Plata (563 U.S. 493 (2011)), Justice Anthony Kennedy proclaimed that the Eighth Amendment required respect for basic human decency. Translating this humanitarian goal into practice will be the challenge of current and future generations. The opportunity to read and learn from Thorsten Sellin’s masterwork, Slavery and the Penal System, will advance these urgently needed reform efforts.

BARRY KRISBERG

Visiting Scholar

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

University of California, Berkeley

January 2016

Notes of the Series Editor • 2016

As the series editor for the Classics of Law & Society at Quid Pro Books, I can say that we have tried as much as possible to recreate the Fortieth Anniversary Edition of Slavery and the Penal System as Thorsten Sellin intended it in 1976, when Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co. originally published it. Too often, the modern reproduction of such classic works of academia fail to reproduce the source accurately, particularly those created by a process of scanning and OCR. Although it is inevitable that some errors will creep into a reproduction of an earlier work converted into modern formats, we have sought to minimize these and to respect the author and his work. A republication’s presentation should not distract the reader, misstate the author’s intent, or make it difficult to assign and reference.

Thus, the principal goal of this new edition was simply to let Sellin be Sellin, and to honor his original intent as much as possible. We wanted it to be a fitting tribute to this important work and to this renowned scholar—and especially to make it readily available again worldwide, since inexplicably it has languished out of print even as it has collected scores of citations and quotations over the years and served as the basis for so much important scholarship. To that end, we have reproduced the book in digital formats, as well as a new paperback printing. In the process we have emphasized accuracy of text, proper formatting, and usefulness to readers.

Yet the new version deviates from the original 1976 printing in some telling ways. Soon after the original release, the author annotated his personal copy with corrections and further thoughts that did not make it into the original printing. Later this annotated copy was shared with the University of Pennsylvania library collection. Today it is housed at the Special Collections department of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Thanks to the support of the author’s sons, Theodore Sellin and Eric Sellin (the latter a former colleague of mine at Tulane University before his retirement), and the efforts of David McKnight of the Penn library system, the author’s personal, annotated copy was made available for the production of this anniversary edition. Its corrections and changes are now fully incorporated into this new edition, as are corrections of other obvious printing errors and typos. The differences are not enough to make the original copies—if one can be found for less than a rare book price!—obsolete, nor do they affect the fair citation of the work from either edition, but they do complete the intended vision of the author as his sons supported (an idea originating enthusiastically with Barry Krisberg of Berkeley and encouraged by his colleague Malcolm Feeley). We hope that it makes Thorsten Sellin’s legacy live on even more truly than would an exact rendition or facsimile version.

To facilitate continuity and usability, the new paperback version includes all of the original page numbers from the 1976 edition produced by Elsevier and as cited by scholars and policymakers over several decades since. The page numbers are re-introduced into text by the use of {brackets} so that the work may be accurately assigned, cited, and referenced consistent with either edition. The Index and cross-references are keyed to the original pagination, and the Table of Contents presents both pagination systems.

Despite our overarching goal, producing this classic work for the modern reader and student, to include a parallel and consistent ebook edition, has required a few alterations that were necessary today, even with the intent of carefully recreating Professor Sellin’s work. Some notes to keep in mind:

•    Subject to the above, all of Professor Sellin’s prose is reproduced as it was presented in the original edition, without editing. Any subtle variation of this text or references from the original is the product of faithfully incorporating the annotations the author made in the hopes of correcting such passages in any future printing.

•    All chapter notes and references were originally presented as endnotes, following the core text of the book, and they are included here consistent with that structure. In ebook editions, the endnotes are fully linked to the appropriate passage, as is the Index.

•    In a few passages, where the author had opted for an older spelling or usage that could unduly distract the present reader, we updated the style to be faithful to his intent. Yet this license was used rarely, and the reader will see many older phrasings and words throughout left untouched. Similarly, we left alone his nomenclature for the relevant ethnic, cultural, and national groups he discusses. His usage was appropriate to the time he wrote, and we saw no need to update it where it remained clear to the reader.

As noted, this edition was designed to include a digital platform, where the gap in availability is stark and the quality of available formats for such classics is often poor. The ebook version is consistent with this print one (though without the embedded pagination, as is typical for ebooks, but nonetheless many original page cites can be inferred from the Index, which retains the original page references). Such ebooks are found at leading book sites. Other foundational works in the Classics of Law & Society Series, in digital and print formats, are likewise available at multiple retail sites and at www.quidprobooks.com. They represent great works from the giants of the field, which undoubtedly includes this author and this book.

STEVEN ALAN CHILDRESS

Conrad Meyer III Professor of Law

Tulane University School of Law

January 2016

Preface • 1976

In 1938, two notable historical works were completed. One of them, by Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, examined punishment in its specific manifestations, the causes of its changes and development [and] the grounds for the choice or rejection of specific methods in specific historical periods.¹ The authors were looking for the social forces that shape penal systems, and they concluded that among these forces, economic and fiscal considerations dominated.

That specific forms of punishment correspond to a given stage of economic development is a truism. It is self-evident that enslavement as a form of punishment is impossible without a slave economy, that prison labor is impossible without manufacture or industry, that monetary fines for all classes of society are impossible without a money economy. On the other hand, the disappearance of a given system of production makes its corresponding punishments inapplicable. Only a specific development of the productive forces permits the introduction or rejection of corresponding penalties. But before these potential methods can be introduced, society must be in a position to incorporate them as integrated parts of the whole social and economic system. Thus, if a slave economy finds the supply of slaves meager and the demand pressing, it cannot neglect penal slavery. In feudalism, on the other hand, not only could this form of punishment no longer be used but no other method was discovered for the proper use of the labor power of the convict. A return to the old methods, capital and corporal punishment, was therefore necessary, since the introduction of monetary fines for all classes was impossible on economic grounds. The house of correction reached a peak under mercantilism and gave great impetus to the development of the new method of production. The economic importance of the houses of correction then disappeared with the rise of the factory system.... The transition to modern industrial society, which demands the freedom of labor as a necessary condition for the productive employment of labor power, reduced the economic role of convict labor to a minimum.²

In short, the demands of the labor market shaped the penal system and determined its transformation over the years, more or less unaffected by theories of punishment in vogue.

The second work was an essay published by Professor Gustav Radbruch.³ Several German historians of law had previously cursorily noted that the capital and corporal punishments that marked the criminal laws of early ages were originally domestic punishments meted out to erring slaves by their masters. Radbruch elaborated on the idea, showing that as the structure of Germanic society changed over the centuries, punishments originally reserved for those in bondage were later inflicted for crimes committed by low-class freemen, and ultimately on offenders regardless of their social status.

To this day, the criminal law bears the traits of its origin in slave punishments.... To be punished means to be treated like a slave. That was symbolically underscored in olden times when to flogging was joined the shearing of the head, because the shorn head was the mark of the slave.... Slavish treatment meant ... not just a social but also a moral degradation. Baseness is thus simultaneously and inseparably a social, moral and even an aesthetic value judgment. The lowly born is also a mean fellow. ... In both French and English the unfree peasant and the scoundrel are called villains.... In the illustrations in the Sachsenspiegel the faces of the common people are pictured as ugly and coarse. The diminution of honor, which ineradicably inheres in punishment to this day, derives from slave punishments.⁴

Both of these works have spurred me to write this book, which specifically examines the validity of Radbruch’s thesis by tracing the influence of the social institution of chattel slavery on the evolution of penal practices in Europe and the United States from ancient time to the present. It is a dismal story, revealing the darkest and most brutal aspects of penal history and the social forces which resisted or nullified the labor of reformers seeking to humanize the treatment of adult major offenders. Considering the focus of the book, it seemed proper to begin it with a study of slavery and punishment in two great ancient societies, Greece and Rome, and to end it with a look at the subject in the two greatest slaveholding nations of the nineteenth century, Russia and the United States.

Two of the chapters have already been published, Chapter II in French translation in Volume Two of a Festschrift honoring Justice Marc Ancel (Études de science pénale et de politique criminelle, Paris, 1975), and Chapter III in one honoring Sir Leon Radzinowicz (Crime, Criminology and Public Policy, London, 1974). I am grateful for the permission to include them here. I also appreciate the care shown by Ms. Selma Pastor in typing the manuscript, and the fruitful discussions I have had with Professor Marvin E. Wolfgang concerning its contents.

J. Thorsten Sellin

Gilmanton, N.H.

March, 1976

SLAVERY

AND THE

PENAL SYSTEM

I: IN ANCIENT GREECE

Slavery was regarded as a natural and legitimate social institution in all ancient civilizations. Supplying manpower that could be exploited by the slave owners—private persons or religious, state, or municipal bodies—it served primarily an economic function. Information about slavery in antiquity is generally scant. Little is known about the practice in ancient Greece, except as it functioned in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

Athens was the most important of the city-states. Its political history has been immortalized by Herodotus and Thucydides, and its philosophers, poets, orators, and dramatists have cast some light on its social problems. Because of the character of this state, in which the working classes—commoners, alien resident craftsmen, freedmen, and slaves—had little or no voice in government, contemporary historians and social commentators were naturally more concerned with the activities of the ruling classes—noble, propertied, military—than with the life of the common people, and especially of the slaves. This holds true also for Sparta, Athens’ great rival, whose helots, though technically serfs, were in reality slaves.

The Slave Population

No one knows how many slaves there were in ancient Greece at any one time. Estimates by modern historians are based on partial and often fantastic figures in the writings of the ancients. It must be remembered that classical Greece was not one nation but a congeries of hundreds of independent or semi-independent city-states, i.e., communities of people living under one rule in a defined area that included the fortified seat of the religious cult and the government as well as the surrounding hinterland of farms and villages. Classical Athens was synonymous with Attica, an area of about 1,000 square miles, or half the size of the state of Delaware. Probably no more than half of its population lived in the town of Athens and its seaport, Peiraeus. In the early part of the fourth century, Sparta had an area of 3,300 square miles in the Peloponnesus, equal to the combined areas of Delaware and Rhode Island. It is doubtful that any of the other city-states occupied as much as 400 square miles, and some were no larger than present-day Andorra or Liechtenstein. It is thus not surprising, that population data cited by authors pertain to only a few of the largest and most important city-states.

A. H. M. Jones has made an ingenious analysis of the population of Athens, noting that until the last half of the fourth century even the most rudimentary statistics are lacking. For that time he calculated that there were about 20,000 slaves in a total population of circa 144,000.¹ Other estimates for the same period are cited by Victor Ehrenberg. One of them, attributed to A. W. Gomme, gives a total population of 258,000, including 104,000 slaves. Another estimates the population at between 140,000 and 190,000, including between 30,000 and 60,000 slaves.² William Westermann concluded that the slaves of Attica, during the early part of the Peloponnesian War, which began in 431 B.C., numbered from 60,000 to 80,000, or about a third or possibly a fourth of the population, but he added that it must be granted that this statement is no more than a reasonable suggestion.³ In other words, the size and the composition of the population of Athens are not known very accurately even though much is known about Attican slavery.

For Sparta, data are even more meager. Gustave Glotz assumes that it had a population of about 400,000, including 275,000 helots, but he fails to specify the date.⁴ Ehrenberg cites an estimate for the fourth century, which gave corresponding figures of 270,000 and 200,000.⁵ They apparently apply to a period antedating the loss of Messenia, which considerably reduced the territory of Sparta. In any case, the figures are speculative.

Sources of Supply

Slaves were acquired in a variety of ways. Wars brought captives, the spoils of the victors, who, if not ransomed, could be sold to the traders who followed the armies or in the open market or, if kept, bought their lives with their freedom. Most slaves, however, were purchased in special slave markets. These were largely provisioned by sea-faring merchants or by pirates who raided the Mediterranean shores as far as Libya for human merchandise. The areas bordering on the Black Sea and Asia Minor were favored sources of supply.

There were other ways too of acquiring slaves. Children born to female slaves became the property of the mother’s owner. Infants, abandoned by those too poor to support them, might either be raised or sold by the finder. Farmers in debt to a landlord could be enslaved with their families if they defaulted on their debts. Slaves could be inherited like other property. Finally, enslavement might, in certain cases, be a punishment for crime.

Except for the indigenous Spartan helots, most slaves were imported non-Greek foreigners. Plato (429-347 B.C.) in his Republic voiced the sentiment that no Hellene should own another Hellene, but there were exceptions. Thucydides (471-391 B.C.) gives many examples of internecine wars between city-states that resulted in the conquest of a fortified town, the killing of all able-bodied defenders by the victors, and the sale of the women and children into slavery, but it is not clear whether this merchandise was destined for foreign markets or retained at home. By and large, Plato’s sentiment was shared by his fellow Greeks, who considered themselves superior to the barbarians—i.e., all whose mother tongue was not Greek—and who found in their superiority ample justification for enslaving their inferiors. Plato’s Statesman noted that most people in this part of the world assumed that Greeks are a class apart, and they group all other nations together as a class.⁶

Aristotle on Slavery

This snobbish belief engendered many myths about the characteristics of foreigners. Aristotle (c. 384-322 B.C.), in line with then current ideas about geographical and climatic influences on the constitution and nature of man, thought that peoples of cold countries, especially in Europe, were of poor intelligence and skills although spirited, and that they, though comparatively free, were incapable of governing others. Asians, on the other hand, were both skilled and intelligent, but their lack of spirit made them fit for subjection and slavery. The Greeks, who lived in an intermediate geographical environment, possessed all admirable qualities.⁷

Among Greek thinkers, Aristotle supplied the finest analysis of slavery in a society where the family was the basic social institution and kinship was of fundamental importance in the organization and life of the state. His view of slavery as a natural component of the social structure is attested to by the fact that he regarded a household without slaves as incomplete. A complete household would have a stock of property consisting of instruments both inanimate and animate. The slave was an animate article of property, and like any other such article an instrument intended for the purpose of action and separable from its possessor, i.e., could be sold or otherwise disposed of. The use which is made of the slave diverges but little from the use made of tame animals; both he and they supply their owner with bodily help in meeting his daily requirements.⁸

The basic condition of slavery in a community like the city-state was the presence of two elements, one able by virtue of its intelligence to exercise forethought and, therefore naturally a ruling and master element, and another able by virtue of its bodily power to do what the other element plans; a ruled element, which is naturally in a state of slavery. For one who was a slave by nature, his condition was both beneficial and just. He was mentally fitted for this condition if he is capable of becoming (and this is the reason why he also actually becomes) the property of another and if he participates in reason to the extent of apprehending it in another though destitute of it himself, being entirely without the faculty of deliberation. He was also different from the freeman physically, having a body with strength for the menial duties of life, while the freeman possessed a physique upright in carriage and useful for the various purposes of civil life—a life which tends, as it develops, to be divided into military service and the occupations of peace. The irony of nature was not lost on Aristotle, for the contrary of nature’s intention often happens; there are some slaves who have the bodies of freemen—as there are others who have a freeman’s soul. But if nature’s intentions were realized ... it is obvious that we should all agree that the inferior class ought to be the slaves of the superior.⁹

Who were these people who were by nature slaves? Barbarians, of course. Being incapable of governing others, they had no naturally ruling element in their communities and thus were slaves by nature. That, said Aristotle, is why our poets have said, Meet it is that barbarous people should be governed by the Greeks—the assumption being that barbarian and slave are by nature one and the same....¹⁰

Aristotle was familiar with arguments against slavery advanced by legal scholars and philosophers. He acknowledged that they had some justification, considering that beside natural slavery there existed another kind, based on convention. The law that regarded an enemy captured in war as booty belonging to the victor was, in fact, a convention claimed by many jurists to be contrary to law. They regard it as a debatable notion that any one who is subjugated by superior power should become the slave and subject of the person who is his superior in power. If a war were unjust, for instance, it would be unjust to make captives slaves. If a person did not deserve to be a slave—presumably because he was not one by nature—he was not really a slave. Otherwise, "men reputed to be of the highest rank would be turned into slaves ... if it happened to them ... to be captured and sold.... This is the reason why Greeks do not like to call such persons slaves, but prefer to confine the term to barbarians. But by this use of terms they are ... driven ... to admit that