Chapter VIII (1)

A SERMON OF THE DANGEROUS CLASSES IN SOCIETY.--PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 31, 1847.

MATTHEW XVIII. 12.

If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone
astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into
the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?

We are first babies, then children, then youths, then men. It is so with the nation; so with mankind. The human race started with no culture, no religion, no morals, even no manners, having only desires and faculties within, and the world without. Now we have attained much more. But it has taken many centuries for mankind to pass from primeval barbarism to the present stage of comfort, science, civilization, and refinement. It has been the work of two hundred generations; perhaps of more. But each new child is born at the foot of the ladder, as much as the first child; with only desires and faculties. He may have a better physical organization than the first child; he certainly has better teachers; but he, in like manner, is born with no culture, no religion, no morals, even with no manners; born into them, not with them; born bare of these things and naked as the first child. He must himself toil up the ladder which mankind have been so long in constructing and climbing up. To attain the present civilization he must pass over every point which the race passed through. The child of the civilized man, born with a good organization and under favorable circumstances, can do this rapidly, and in thirty or forty years attains the height of development which it took the whole human race sixty centuries or more to arrive at. He has the aid of past experience and the examples of noble men; he travels a road already smooth and beaten. The world's cultivation, so slowly and painfully achieved, helps civilize him. He may then go further on, and cultivate himself; may transcend the development of mankind, adding new rounds to the ladder. So doing he aids future children, who will one day climb above his head, he possibly crying against them,--that they climb only to fall, and thereby sweep off him and all below; that no new rounds can be added to the old ladder.

Still, after all the helps which our fathers have provided, every future child must go through the same points which we and our predecessors passed through, only more swiftly. Every boy has his animal period, when he can only eat and sleep, intelligence slowly dawning on his mind. Then comes his savage period, when he knows nothing of rights, when all thine is mine to him, if he can get it. Then comes his barbarous period, when he is ignorant and dislikes to learn; study and restraint are irksome. He hates the school, disobeys his mother; has reverence for nobody. Nothing is sacred to him--no time, nor place, nor person. He would grow up wild. The greater part of children travel beyond this stage. The unbearable boy becomes a tolerable youth; then a powerful man. He loves his duty; outstrips the men that once led him so unwilling and reluctant, and will set hard lessons for his grandsire which that grandsire, perhaps, will not learn. The young learns of the old, mounts the ladder they mounted and the ladder they made. The reverse is seldom true, that the old climbs the ladder which the young have made, and over that storms new heights. Now and then you see it, but such are extraordinary and marvellous men. In the old story Saturn did not take pains to understand his children, nor learn thereof; he only devoured them up, till some outgrew and overmastered him. Did the generation that is passing from the stage ever comprehend and fairly judge the new generation coming on? In the world, the barbarian passes on and becomes the civilized, then the enlightened.

In the physical process of growth from the baby to the man, there is no direct intervention of the will. Therefore the process goes on regularly, and we do not see abortive men who have advanced in years, but stopped growth in their babyhood, or boyhood. But as the will is the soul of personality, so to say, the heart of intellect, morals and religion, so the force thereof may promote, retard, disturb, and perhaps for a time completely arrest the progress of intellectual, moral and religious growth. Still more, this spiritual development of men is hindered or promoted by subtle causes hitherto little appreciated. Hence, by reason of these outward or internal hinderances, you find persons and classes of men who do not attain the average culture of mankind, but stop at some lower stage of this spiritual development, or else loiter behind the rest. You even find whole nations whose progress is so slow, that they need the continual aid of the more civilized to quicken their growth. Outward circumstances have a powerful influence on this development. If a single class in a nation lingers behind the rest, the cause thereof will commonly be found in some outward hinderance. They move in a resisting medium, and therefore with abated speed. No one expects the same progress from a Russian serf and a free man of New England. I do not deny that in the case of some men personal will is doubtless the disturbing force. I am not now to go beyond that fact, and inquire how the will became as it is. Here is a man who, from whatever cause, is bodily ill-born, with defective organs. He stops in the animal period; is incapable of any considerable degree of development, intellectual, moral, or religious. The defect is in his body. Others disturbed by more occult causes do not attain their proper growth. This man wishes to stop in his savage period, he would be a freebooter, a privateer against society, having universal letters-of-marque and reprisal; a perpetual Arab, his rule is to get what he can, as he will and where he pleases, to keep what he gets. Another stops at the barbarous age. He is lazy and will not work, others must bear his share of the general burden of mankind. He claims letters patent to make all men serve him. He is not only indolent, constitutionally lazy, but lazy, consciously and wilfully idle. He will not work, but in one form or another will beg or steal. Yet a fourth stops in the half-civilized period. He will work with his hands, but no more. He cannot discover; he will not study to learn; he will not even be taught what has been invented and taught before. None can teach him. The horse is led to the water, or the water brought to the horse, but the beast will not drink. "The idle fool is whipt at school," but to no purpose. He is always an oaf. No college or tutor mends him. The wild ass will go out free, wild, and an ass.

These four, the idiot, the pirate, the thief, and the clown are exceptional men. They remain stationary. Meanwhile, mankind advances, continually, but not with an even front. The human race moves not by column or line, but by _echelon_ as it were. We go up by stairs, not by slopes. Now comes a great man, of far-reaching and prospective sight, a Moses, and he tells men that there is a land of promise, which they have a right to who have skill to win it. Then lesser men, the Calebs and Joshuas, go and search it out, bringing back therefrom new wine in the cluster and alluring tales. Next troops of pioneers advance, yet lesser men; then a few bold men who love adventure. Then comes the army, the people with their flocks and herds, the priesthood with their ark of the covenant and the tabernacle, the title-deeds of the new lands which they have heard of but not seen. At last there comes the mixed multitude, following in no order, but not without shouting and tumult, men treading one another under foot, cowards looking back and refusing to march, old men dying without seeing their consolation. If you will lie down on the ground and take the profile of a great city, and see how hill, steeple, dome, tower, the roof of the tall house, gain on the sky, and then come whole streets of warehouses and shops, then common dwellings, then cheap, low tenements, you will have a good profile of man's march to gain new conquests in science, art, morals, religion, and general development. It is so in the family, a bright boy shooting before all the rest, and taking the thunder out of the adverse cloud for his brothers and sisters, who follow and grow rich with unscathed forehead. It is so in the nation, a few great men bearing the brunt of the storm, and wading through the surges to set their weaker brothers, screaming and struggling, with dry feet, in safety, on the firm land of science or religion. It is so in the world, a tall nation achieving art, science, law, morals, religion, and by the fact revealing their beauty to the barbarian race.

In all departments of human concern there are such pioneers for the family, the nation or mankind. It is instructive to study this law of human progress, to see the De Gamas and Columbuses, aspiring men who dream of worlds to come and lead the perilous van; to see the Vespuccis, the Cortezes, the Pizarros, who get rank and fame by following in their track; to see next the merchant adventurers, soldiers, sutlers and the like, who make money out of the new conquest, while the great discoverers had for meet reward the joy of their genius, the nobleness of their work, a sight of the world's future welfare from the prophet's mountain--a hard life, a bad name, and a grave unknown.

Now while there are those men in the van of society, who aspire at more, chiding and taxing mankind with idleness, cowardice, and even sin, there are yet those others who loiter on the way, from weakness or wilfulness, refusing to advance--idlers, cowards, sinners. If born in the rear, afar from civilization, they are left to die--the savages, the inferior races, the perishing classes of the world. If born in the centre of civilization, for a while they impede the march by actively hindering others, by standing in their way, or by plundering the rest--the dangerous classes of society. They too are slain and trodden under foot of men, and likewise perish.

In most large families there is a bad boy, a black sheep in the flock, an Ishmael whom Abraham will drive out into the wilderness, to meet an angel if he can find one. That story of Hagar and her son is very old, but verified anew each year in families and nations. So in society there are criminals who do not keep up with the moral advance of the mass, stragglers from the march, whom society treats as Abraham his base-born boy, but sending them off with no loaf or skin of water, not even a blessing, but a curse; sending them off as Cain went, with a bad name and a mark on their forehead! So in the world there are inferior nations, savage, barbarous, half-civilized; some are inferior in nature, some perhaps only behind us in development; on a lower form in the great school of Providence--Negroes, Indians, Mexicans, Irish, and the like, whom the world treats as Ishmael and the Gibeonites got treated: now their land is stolen from them in war; their children, or their persons, are annexed to the strong as slaves. The civilized continually preys on the savage, reannexing their territory and stealing their persons--owning them or claiming their work. Esau is rough and hungry, Jacob smooth and well fed. The smooth man overreaches the rough; buys his birthright for a mess of pottage; takes the ground from underneath his feet, thereby supplanting his brother. So the elder serves the younger, and the fresh civilization, strong, and sometimes it may be wicked also, overmasters the ruder age that is contented to stop. The young man now a barbarian will come up one day and take all our places, making us seem ridiculous, nothing but timid conservatives!

All these three, the reputed pests of the family, society, and the world, are but loiterers from the march, bad boys, or dull ones. Criminals are a class of such; savages are nations thereof--classes or nations that for some cause do not keep up with the movement of mankind. The same human nature is in us all, only there it is not so highly developed. Yet the bad boy, who to-day is a curse to the mother that bore him, would perhaps have been accounted brave and good in the days of the Conqueror; the dangerous class might have fought in the Crusades and been reckoned soldiers of the Lord whose chance for heaven was most auspicious. The savage nations would have been thought civilized in the days when "there was no smith in Israel." David would make a sorry figure among the present kings of Europe, and Abraham would be judged of by a standard not known in his time. There have been many centuries in which the pirate, the land-robber and the murderer were thought the greatest of men.

Now it becomes a serious question, What shall be done for these stragglers, or even with them? It is sometimes a terrible question to the father and mother what they shall do for their reprobate son who is an offence to the neighborhood, a shame, a reproach and a heart-burning to them. It is a sad question to society, What shall be done with the criminals--thieves, housebreakers, pirates, murderers? It is a serious question to the world, What is to become of the humbler nations--Irish, Mexicans, Malays, Indians, Negroes?

In the world and in society the question is answered in about the same way. In a low civilization, the instinct of self-preservation is the strongest of all. They are done with, not for; are done away with. It is the Old Testament answer:--The inferior nation is hewn to pieces, the strong possess their lands, their cities, their cattle, their persons, also, if they will; the class of criminals gets the prophet's curse: the two bears, the jail and the gallows, eat them up. In the family alone is the Christian answer given; the good shepherd goes forth to seek the one sheep that has strayed and gone, lost upon the mountains; the father goes out after the poor prodigal, whom the swine's meat could not feed nor fill.[31] The world, which is the society of nations, and society, which is the family of classes, still belong mainly to the "old dispensation," Heathen or Hebrew, the period of force. In the family there is a certain instinctive love binding the parent to the child, and therefore a certain unity of action, growing out of that love. So the father feels his kinship to his boy, though a reprobate; looks for the causes of his son's folly or sin, and strives to cure him; at least to do something for him, not merely with him. The spirit of Christianity comes into the family, but the recognition of human brotherhood stops mainly there. It does not reach throughout society; it has little influence on national politics or international law--on the affairs of the world taken as a whole. I know the idea of human brotherhood has more influence now than hitherto; I think in New England it has a wider scope, a higher range, and works with more power than elsewhere. Our hearts bleed for the starving thousands of Ireland, whom we only read of; for the down-trodden slave, though of another race and dyed by Heaven with another hue; yes, for the savage and the suffering everywhere. The hand of our charity goes through every land. If there is one quality for which the men of New England may be proud it is this, their sympathy with suffering man. Still we are far from the Christian ideal. We still drive out of society the Ishmaels and Esaus. This we do not so much from ill-will as want of thought, but thereby we lose the strength of these outcasts. So much water runs over the dam--wasted and wasting!

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In all these melancholy cases what is it best to do? what shall the parents do to mend their dull boy, or their wicked one? There are two methods which may be tried. One is the method of force, sometimes referred to Solomon, and recommended by the maxim, "Spare not the rod and spoil the child." That is the Old Testament way, "Stripes are prepared for the fool's back." The mischief is, they leave it no wiser than they found it. By the law of the Hebrews, a man brought his stubborn and rebellious son before the magistrates and deposed: "This our son is stubborn and rebellious: he will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard." Thereupon, the men of the city stoned him with stones and so "put away the evil from amongst them!" That was the method of force. It may bruise the body; it may fill men with fear; it may kill. I think it never did any other good. It belonged to a rude and bloody age. I may ask intelligent men who have tried it, and I think they will confess it was a mistake. I think I may ask intelligent men on whom it has been tried, and they will say, "It was a mistake on my father's part, but a curse to me!" I know there are exceptions to that reply; still I think it will be general. A man is seldom elevated by an appeal to low motives; always by addressing what is high and manly within him. Is fear of physical pain the highest element you can appeal to in a child; the most effectual? I do not see how Satan can be cast out by Satan. I think a Saviour never tries it. Yet this method of force is brief and compact. It requires no patience, no thought, no wisdom for its application, and but a moment's time. For this reason, I think, it is still retained in some families and many schools, to the injury alike of all concerned. Blows and violent words are not correction, often but an adjournment of correction: sometimes only an actual confession of inability to correct.

The other is the method of love, and of wisdom not the less. Force may hide, and even silence effects for a time; it removes not the real causes of evil. By the method of love and wisdom the parents remove the causes; they do not kill the demoniac, they cast out the demon, not by letting in Beelzebub, the chief devil, but by the finger of God. They redress the child's folly and evil birth by their own wisdom and good breeding. The day drives out and off the night.

Sometimes you see that worthy parents have a weak and sickly child, feeble in body. No pains are too great for them to take in behalf of the faint and feeble one. What self-denial of the father; what sacrifice on the mother's part! The best of medical skill is procured; the tenderest watching is not spared. No outlay of money, time, or sacrifice is thought too much to save the child's life; to insure a firm constitution and make that life a blessing. The able-bodied children can take care of themselves, but not the weak. So the affection of father and mother centres on this sickly child. By extraordinary attention the feeble becomes strong; the deformed is transformed, and the grown man, strong and active, blesses his mother for health not less than life.

Did you ever see a robin attend to her immature and callow child which some heedless or wicked boy had stolen from the nest, wounded and left on the ground, half living; left to perish? Patiently she brings food and water, gives it kind nursing. Tenderly she broods over it all night upon the ground, sheltering its tortured body from the cold air of night and morning's penetrating dew. She perils herself; never leaves it--not till life is gone. That is nature; the strong protecting the feeble. Human nature may pause and consider the fowls of the air, whence the Greatest once drew his lessons. Human history, spite of all its tears and blood, is full of beauty and majestic worth. But it shows few things so fair as the mother watching thus over her sickly and deformed child, feeding him with her own life. What if she forewent her native instinct and the mother said, "My boy is deformed, a cripple--let him die?" Where would be the more hideous deformity?

If his child be dull, slow-witted, what pains will a good father take to instruct him; still more if he is vicious, born with a low organization, with bad propensities--what admonitions will he administer; what teachers will he consult; what expedients will he try; what prayers will he not pray for his stubborn and rebellious son! Though one experiment fail, he tries another, and then again, reluctant to give over. Did it never happen to one of you to be such a child, to have outgrown that rebellion and wickedness? Remember the pains taken with you; remember the agony your mother felt; the shame that bowed your father's head so oft, and brought such bitter tears adown those venerable cheeks. You cannot pay for that agony, that shame, not pay the hearts which burst with both--yet uttering only a prayer for you. Pay it back then, if you can, to others like yourself, stubborn and rebellious sons.

Has none of you ever been such a father or mother? You know then the sad yearnings of heart which tried you. The world condemned you and your wicked child, and said, "Let the elders stone him with stones. The gallows waiteth for its own!" Not so you! You said: "Nay, now, wait a little. Perchance the boy will mend. Come, I will try again. Crush him not utterly and a father's heart besides!" The more he was wicked, the more assiduous were you for his recovery, for his elevation. You saw that he would not keep up with the moral march of men; that he was a barbarian, a savage, yes, almost a beast amongst men. You saw this; yes, felt it too as none others felt. Yet you could not condemn him wholly and without hope. You saw some good mixed with his evil; some causes for the evil and excuses for it which others were blind to. Because you mourned most you pitied most--all from the abundance of your love. Though even in your highest hour of prayer, the sad conviction came that work or prayer was all in vain--you never gave him over to the world's reproach, but interposed your fortune, character, yes, your own person, to take the blows which the severe and tyrannous world kept laying on. At last if he would not repent, you hid him away, the best you could, from the mocking sight of other men, but never shut him from your heart; never from remembrance in your deepest prayers. How the whole family suffers for the prodigal till he returns. When he comes back, you rejoice over one recovered olive-plant more than over all the trees of your field which no storm has ever broke or bowed. How you went forth to meet him; with what joy rejoiced! "For this my son was lost and is found," says the old man; "he was dead and is alive once more. Let us pray and be glad!" With what a serene and hallowed countenance you met your friends and neighbors, as their glad hearts smiled up in their faces when the prodigal came home from riot and swine's-bread, a new man safe and sound! Many such things have I seen, and hearts long cold grew bright and warm again. Towards evening the clouds broke asunder; Simeon saw his consolation and went home in sunlight and in peace.

The general result of this treatment in the family is, that the dull boy learns by degrees, learns what he is fit for: the straggler joins the troop, and keeps step with the rest, nay, sometimes becomes the leader of the march: the vicious boy is corrected; even the faults of his organization get overcome, not suddenly, but at length. The rejected stone finds its place on the wall, and its use. Such is not always the result. Some will not be mended. I stop not now to ask the cause. Some will not return, though you go out to meet them a great way off. What then? Will you refuse to go? Can you wholly abandon a friend or a child who thus deserts himself? Is he so bad that he cannot be made better? Perhaps it is so. Can you not hinder him from being worse? Are you so good that you must forsake him? Did not God send his greatest, noblest, purest Son to seek and save the lost? send him to call sinners to repent? When sinners slew him, did God forsake mankind? Not one of those sinners did his love forget.

Does the good physician spend the night in feasting with the sound, or in watching with the sick? Nay, though the sick man be past all hope, he will look in to soothe affliction which he cannot cure; at least to speak a word of friendly cheer. The wise teacher spends most pains with backward boys, and is most bountiful himself where Nature seems most niggard in her gifts. What would you say if a teacher refused to help a boy because the boy was slow to learn; because he now and then broke through the rules? What if the mother said: "My boy is a sickly dunce, not worth the pains of rearing. Let him die!" What if the father said: "He is a born villain, to be bred only for the gallows; what use to toil or pray for him! Let the hangman take my son!"

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What shall be done for Criminals, the backward children of society, who refuse to keep up with the moral or legal advance of mankind? They are a dangerous class. There are three things which are sometimes confounded: there is Error, an unintentional violation of a natural law. Sometimes this comes from abundance of life and energy; sometimes from ignorance, general or special; sometimes from heedlessness, which is ignorance for the time. Next there is Crime, the violation of a human statute. Suppose the statute also represents a law of God; the violation thereof may be the result of ignorance, or of design, it may come from a bad heart. Then it becomes a Sin--the wilful violation of a known law of God. There are many errors which are not crimes; and the best men often commit them innocently, but not without harm, violating laws of the body or the soul, which they have not grown up to understand. There have been many crimes; yes, conscious violations of man's law which were not sins, but rather a keeping of God's law. There are still a great many sins not forbidden by any human statute, not considered as crimes. It is no crime to go and fight in a wicked war; nay, it is thought a virtue. It was a crime in the heroes of the American Revolution to demand the unalienable rights of man--they were "traitors" who did it; a crime in Jesus to sum up the "Law and the Prophets," in one word, Love; he was reckoned an "infidel," guilty of blasphemy against Moses! Now to punish an error as a crime, a crime as a sin, leads to confusion at the first, and to much worse than confusion in the end.

But there are crimes which are a violation of the eternal principles of justice. It is of such, and the men who commit them, that I am now to speak. What shall be done for the dangerous classes, the criminals?

The first question is, What end shall we aim at in dealing with them? The means must be suited to accomplish that end. We may desire vengeance; then the hurt inflicted on the criminal will be proportioned to the loss or hurt sustained by society. A man has stolen my goods, injured my person, traduced my good name, sought to take my life. I will not ask for the motive of his deeds, or the cause of that motive. I will only consider my own damage, and will make him smart for that. I will use violence--having an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I will deliver him over to the tormentors till my vengeance is satisfied. If he slew my friend, or sought to slay but lacked the power, as I have the ability I will kill him! This desire of vengeance, of paying a hurt with a hurt, has still very much influence on our treatment of criminals. I fear it is still the chief aim of our penal jurisprudence. When vengeance is the aim, violence is the most suitable method; jails and the gallows most appropriate instruments! But is it right to take vengeance; for me to hurt a man to-day solely because he hurt me yesterday? If so, the proof of that right must be found in my nature, in the law of God; a man can make a statute, God only a right. As I study my nature, I find no such right; reason gives me none; conscience none; religion quite as little. Doubtless I have a right to defend myself by all manly means; to protect myself for the future no less than for the present. In doing that, it may be needful that I should restrain, and in restraining seize and hold, and in holding incidentally hurt my opponent. But I cannot see what right I have in cold blood wilfully to hurt a man because he once hurt me, and does not intend to repeat the wrong. Do I look to the authority of the greatest Son of man? I find no allusion to such a right. I find no law of God which allows vengeance. In his providence I find justice everywhere as beautiful as certain; but vengeance nowhere. I know this is not the common notion entertained of God and his providence. I shudder to think at the barbarism which yet prevails under the guise of Christianity; the vengeance which is sought for in the name of God!

The aim may be not to revenge a crime, but to prevent it; to deter the offender from repeating the deed, and others from the beginning thereof. In all modern legislation the vindictive spirit is slowly yielding to the design of preventing crime. The method is to inflict certain uniform and specific penalties for each offence, proportionate to the damage which the criminal has done; to make the punishment so certain, so severe, or so infamous, that the offender shall forbear for the future, and innocent men be deterred from crime. But have we a right to punish a man for the example's sake? I may give up my life to save a thousand lives, or one if I will. But society has no right to take it, without my consent, to save the whole human race! I admit that society has the right of eminent domain over my property, and may take my land for a street; may destroy my house to save the town; perhaps seize on my store of provisions in time of famine. It can render me an equivalent for those things. I have not the same lien on any portion of the universe as on my life, my person. To these I have rights which none can alienate except myself, which no man has given, which all men can never justly take away. For any injustice wilfully done to me, the human race can render me no equivalent.

I know society claims the right of eminent domain over person and life not less than over house and land--to take both for the Commonwealth. I deny the right--certainly it has never been shown. Hence to me, resting on the broad ground of natural justice, the law of God, capital punishment seems wholly inadmissible, homicide with the pomp and formality of law. It is a relic of the old barbarism--paying hurt for hurt. No one will contend that it is inflicted for the offender's good. For the good of others I contend we have no right to inflict it without the sufferer's consent. To put a criminal to death seems to me as foolish as for the child to beat the stool it has stumbled over, and as useless too. I am astonished that nations with the name of Christian ever on their lips, continue to disgrace themselves by killing men, formally and in cold blood; to do this with prayers--"Forgive us as we forgive;" doing it in the name of God! I do not wonder that in the codes of nations, Hebrew or heathen, far lower than ourselves in civilization, we should find laws enforcing this punishment; laws too enacted in the name of God. But it fills me with amazement that worthy men in these days should go back to such sources for their wisdom; should walk dry-shod through the Gospels and seek in records of a barbarous people to justify this atrocious act! Famine, pestilence, war, are terrible evils, but no one is so dreadful in its effects as the general prevalence of a great theological idea that is false.

It makes me shudder to recollect that out of the twenty-eight States of this Union twenty-seven should still continue the gallows as a part of the furniture of a Christian Government. I hope our own State, dignified already by so many noble acts, will soon rid herself of the stain. Let us try the experiment of abolishing this penalty, if we will, for twenty years, or but ten, and I am confident we shall never return to that punishment. If a man be incapable of living in society, so ill-born or ill-bred that you cannot cure or mend him, why, hide him away out of society. Let him do no harm, but treat him kindly, not like a wolf but a man. Make him work, to be useful to himself, to society, but do not kill him. Or if you do, never say again, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." What if He should take you at your word! What would you think of a father who to-morrow should take the Old Testament for his legal warrant, and bring his son before your Mayor and Aldermen because he was "stubborn and rebellious, a drunkard and a glutton," and they should stone him to death in front of the City Hall! But there is quite as good a warrant in the Old Testament for that as for hanging a man. The law is referred to Jehovah as its author. How much better is it to choke the life out of a man behind the prison wall? Is not society the father of us all, our protector and defender? Hanging is vengeance; nothing but vengeance. I can readily conceive of that great Son of man, whom the loyal world so readily adores, performing all needful human works with manly dignity. Artists once loved to paint the Saviour in the lowly toil of lowly men, his garments covered with the dust of common life; his soul sullied by no pollution. But paint him to your fancy as an executioner; legally killing a man; the halter in his hands, hanging Judas for high treason! You see the relation which that punishment bears to Christianity. Yet what was unchristian in Jesus does not become Christian in the sheriff. We call ourselves Christians; we often repeat the name, the words of Christ,--but his prayer? oh no--not that.

There are now in this land, I think, sixteen men under sentence of death; sixteen men to be hanged till they are dead! Is there not in the nation skill to heal these men? Perhaps it is so. I have known hearts which seemed to me cold stones, so hard, so dry. No kindly steel had alchemy to win a spark from them. Yet their owners went about the streets and smiled their hollow smiles; the ghastly brother cast his shadow in the sun, or wrapped his cloak about him in the wintry hour, and still the world went on though the worst of men remained unhanged. Perhaps you cannot cure these men!--is there not power enough to keep them from doing harm; to make them useful? Shame on us that we know no better than thus to pour out life upon the dust, and then with reeking hands turn to the poor and weak and say, "Ye shall not kill."

But if the prevention of crime be the design of the punishment, then we must not only seek to hinder the innocent from vice, but we must reform the criminal. Do our methods of punishment effect that object? During the past year we have committed to the various prisons in Massachusetts five thousand six hundred sixty-nine persons for crime. How many of them will be reformed and cured by this treatment, and so live honest and useful lives hereafter? I think very few. The facts show that a great many criminals are never reformed by their punishment. Thus in France, taking the average of four years, it seems that twenty-two out of each hundred criminals were punished oftener than once; in Scotland thirty-six out of the hundred. Of the seventy-eight received at your State's prison the last year--seventeen have been sent to that very prison before. How many of them have been tenants of other institutions I know not, but as only twenty-three of the seventy-eight are natives of this State, it is plain that many, under other names, may have been confined in jail before. Yet of these seventy-eight, ten are less than twenty years old.[32] Of thirty-five men sent from Boston to the State's prison in one year, fourteen had been there before. More than half the inmates of the House of Correction in this city are punished oftener than once! These facts show that if we aim at the reformation of the offender we fail most signally. Yet every criminal not reformed lives mainly at the charge of society; and lives too in the most costly way, for the articles he steals have seldom the same value to him as to the lawful owner.

It seems to me that our whole method of punishing crimes is a false one; that but little good comes of it, or can come. We beat the stool which we have stumbled over. We punish a man in proportion to the loss or the fear of society; not in proportion to the offender's state of mind; not with a careful desire to improve that state of mind. This is wise if vengeance be the aim; if reformation, it seems sheer folly. I know our present method is the result of six thousand years' experience of mankind; I know how easy it is to find fault--how difficult to devise a better mode. Still the facts are so plain that one with half an eye cannot fail to see the falseness of the present methods. To remove the evil, we must remove its cause,--so let us look a little into this matter, and see from what quarter our criminals proceed.

Here are two classes.

I. There are the foes of society; men that are criminals in soul, born criminals, who have a bad nature. The cause of their crime therefore is to be found in their nature itself, in their organization if you will. All experience shows that some men are born with a depraved organization, an excess of animal passions, or a deficiency of other powers to balance them.

II. There are the victims of society; men that become criminals by circumstances, made criminals, not born; men who become criminals, not so much from strength of evil in their soul, or excess of evil propensities in their organization, as from strength of evil in their circumstances. I do not say that a man's character is wholly determined by the circumstances in which he is placed, but all experience shows that circumstances, such as exposure in youth to good men or bad men, education, intellectual, moral, and religious, or neglect thereof entire or partial, have a vast influence in forming the character of men, especially of men not well endowed by nature.

Now the criminals in soul are the most dangerous of men, the born foes of society. I will not at this moment undertake to go behind their organization and ask, "How comes it that they are so ill-born?" I stop now at that fact. The cause of their crime is in their bodily constitution itself. This is always a small class. There are in New England perhaps five hundred men born blind or deaf. Apart from the idiots, I think there are not half so many who by nature and bodily constitution are incapable of attaining the average morality of the race at this day; not so many born foes of society as are born blind or deaf.

The criminals from circumstances become what they are by the action of causes which may be ascertained, guarded against, mitigated, and at last overcome and removed. These men are born of poor parents, and find it difficult to satisfy the natural wants of food, clothing, and shelter. They get little culture, intellectual or moral. The school-house is open, but the parent does not send the children, he wants their services, to beg for him, perhaps to steal, it may be to do little services which lie within their power. Besides, the child must be ill-clad, and so a mark is set on him. The boy of the perishing classes, with but common endowments, cannot learn at school as one of the thrifty or abounding class. Then he receives no stimulus at home; there every thing discourages his attempts. He cannot share the pleasure and sport of his youthful fellows. His dress, his uncleanly habits, the result of misery, forbid all that. So the children of the perishing herd together, ignorant, ill-fed, and miserably clad. You do not find the sons of this class in your colleges, in your high schools where all is free for the people; few even in the grammar schools; few in the churches. Though born into the nineteenth century after Christ, they grow up almost in the barbarism of the nineteenth century before him. Children that are blind and deaf, though born with a superior organization, if left to themselves become only savages, little more than animals. What are we to expect of children, born indeed with eyes and ears, but yet shut out from the culture of the age they live in? In the corruption of a city, in the midst of its intenser life, what wonder that they associate with crime, that the moral instinct, baffled and cheated of its due, becomes so powerless in the boy or girl; what wonder that reason never gets developed there, nor conscience, nor that blessed religious sense learns ever to assert its power? Think of the temptations that beset the boy; those yet more revolting which address the other sex. Opportunities for crime continually offer. Want impels, desire leagues with opportunity, and the result we know. Add to all this the curse that creates so much disease, poverty, wretchedness, and so perpetually begets crime; I mean intemperance! That is almost the only pleasure of the perishing class. What recognized amusement have they but this, of drinking themselves drunk? Do you wonder at this? with no air, nor light, nor water, with scanty food and a miserable dress, with no culture, living in a cellar or a garret, crowded, stifling, and offensive even to the rudest sense, do you wonder that man or woman seeks a brief vacation of misery in the dram-shop and in its drunkenness? I wonder not. Under such circumstances how many of you would have done better? To suffer continually from lack of what is needful for the natural bodily wants of food, of shelter, of warmth, that suffering is misery. It is not too much to say, there are always in this city thousands of persons who smart under that misery. They are indeed a perishing class.

Almost all our criminals, victims and foes, come from this portion of society. Most of those born with an organization that is predisposed to crime are born there. The laws of nature are unavoidably violated from generation to generation. Unnatural results must follow. The misfortunes of the father are visited on his miserable child. Cows and sheep degenerate when the demands of nature are not met, and men degenerate not less. Only the low, animal instincts, those of self-defence and self-perpetuation get developed; these with preternatural force. The animal man wakes, becomes brutish, while the spiritual element sleeps within him. Unavoidably then the perishing is mother of the dangerous class.

I deny not that a portion of criminals come from other sources, but at least nine tenths thereof proceed from this quarter. Of two hundred and seventy-three thousand, eight hundred and eighteen criminals punished in France from 1825 to 1839, more than half were wholly unable even to read, and had been brought up subject to no family affections. Out of seventy criminals in one prison at Glasgow who were under eighteen, fifty were orphans having lost one or both parents, and nearly all the rest had parents of bad character and reputation. Taking all the criminals in England and Wales in 1841, there were not eight in a hundred that could read and write well. In our country, where everybody gets a mouthful of education, though scarce any one a full meal, the result is a little different. Thus of the seven hundred and ninety prisoners in the Mount Pleasant State's Prison in New York, one hundred it is said could read and understand. Yet of all our criminals only a very small proportion have been in a condition to obtain the average intellectual and moral culture of our times.

Our present mode of treating criminals does no good to this class of men, these victims of circumstances. I do not know that their improvement is even contemplated. We do not ask what causes made this man a criminal, and then set ourselves to remove those causes. We look only at the crime; so we punish practically a man because he had a wicked father; because his education was neglected, and he exposed to the baneful influence of unholy men. In the main we treat all criminals alike if guilty of the same offence, though the same act denotes very different degrees of culpability in the different men, and the same punishment is attended with quite opposite results. Two men commit similar crimes, we sentence them both to the State Prison for ten years. At the expiration of one year let us suppose one man has thoroughly reformed, and has made strict and solemn resolutions to pursue an honest and useful life. I do not say such a result is to be expected from such treatment; still it is possible, and I think has happened, perhaps many times. We do not discharge the man; we care nothing for his penitence; nothing for his improvement; we keep him nine years more. That is an injustice to him; we have robbed him of nine years of time which he might have converted into life. It is unjust also to society, which needs the presence and the labor of all that can serve. The man has been a burden to himself and to us. Suppose at the expiration of his ten years the other man is not reformed at all; this result, I fear, happens in the great majority of cases. He is no better for what he has suffered; we know that he will return to his career of crime, with new energy and with even malice. Still he is discharged. This is unjust to him, for he cannot bear the fresh exposure to circumstances which corrupted him at first, and he will fall lower still. It is unjust to society, for the property and the persons of all are exposed to his passions just as much as before. He feels indignant as if he had suffered a wrong. He says, "Society has taken vengeance on me, when I was to be pitied more than blamed. Now I will have my turn. They will not allow me to live by honest toil. I will learn their lesson. I will plunder their wealth, their roof shall blaze!" He will live at the expense of society, and in the way least profitable and most costly to mankind. This idle savage will levy destructive contributions on the rich, the thrifty, and the industrious. Yes, he will help teach others the wickedness which himself once, and perhaps unavoidably learned. So in the very bosom of society there is a horde of marauders waging perpetual war against mankind.

Do not say my sympathies are with the wicked, not the industrious and good. It is not so. My sympathies are not confined to one class, honorable or despised. But it seems to me this whole method of keeping a criminal a definite time and then discharging him, whether made better or worse is a mistake. Certainly it is so if we aim at his reformation. What if a shepherd made it a rule to look one hour for each lost sheep, and then return with or without the wanderer? What if a smith decreed that one hour and no more should be spent in shoeing a horse, and so worked that time on each, though half that time were enough--or sent home the beast with but three shoes, or two, or one, because the hour passed by? What if the physicians decreed, that all men sick of some contagious disease, should spend six weeks in the hospital, then, if the patient were found well the next day after admission, still kept him the other forty; or, if not mended at the last day, sent him out sick to the world? Such a course would be less unjust, less inhuman, only the wrong is more obvious.

To aggravate the matter still more, we have made the punishment more infamous than the crime. A man may commit great crimes which indicate deep depravity; may escape the legal punishment thereof by gold, by flight, by further crimes, and yet hold up his head unblushing and unrepentant amongst mankind. Let him commit a small crime, which shall involve no moral guilt, and be legally punished--who respects him again? What years of noble life are deemed enough to wipe the stain out of his reputation? Nay, his children after him, to the third generation, must bear the curse!

The evil does not stop with the infamy. A guilty man has served out his time. He is thoroughly resolved on industry and a moral life. Perhaps he has not learned that crime is wrong, but found it unprofitable. He will live away from the circumstances which before led him to crime. He comes out of prison, and the jail-mark is on him. He now suffers the severest part of his punishment. Friends and relations shun him. He is doomed and solitary in the midst of the crowd. Honest men will seldom employ him. The thriving class look on him with shuddering pity; the abounding loathe the convict's touch. He is driven among the dangerous and the perishing; they open their arms and offer him their destructive sympathy. They minister to his wants; they exaggerate his wrongs; they nourish his indignation. His direction is no longer in his own hands. His good resolutions--he knows they were good, but only impossible. He looks back, and sees nothing but crime and the vengeance society takes for the crime. He looks around, and the world seems thrusting at him from all quarters. He looks forward, and what prospect is there? "Hope never comes that comes to all." He must plunge afresh into that miry pit, which at last is sure to swallow him up. He plunges anew, and the jail awaits him; again; deeper yet; the gallows alone can swing him clear from that pestilent ditch. But he is a man and a brother, our companion in weakness. With his education, exposure, temptation, outward and from within, how much better would the best of you become?