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?