Volume I Part 11 (2/2)

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 a.s.siduous 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 G.o.d send his greatest, n.o.blest, purest Son to seek and save the lost? send him to call sinners to repent? When sinners slew him, did G.o.d 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 n.i.g.g.ard 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!”

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 cla.s.s. 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 G.o.d; 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d'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 cla.s.ses, 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 G.o.d; a man can make a statute, G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d!

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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d! 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 G.o.d. 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 n.o.ble acts, will soon rid herself of the stain. Let us try the experiment of abolis.h.i.+ng 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 trespa.s.ses as we forgive those that trespa.s.s 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 inst.i.tutions 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 punis.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.ses.

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 pa.s.sions, or a deficiency of other powers to balance them.

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