Part 19

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.