We do not look the facts of crime fairly in the face. We do not see what heathens we are. Why, there is not a Christian nation in the world that has not a Secretary of War, armies, soldiers, and the terrible apparatus of destruction. But there is not one that has a Secretary of Peace, not one that takes half the pains to improve its own criminals which it takes to build forts and fleets! Yet it seems to me that a Christian State should be a great peace society, a society for mutual advancement in the qualities of a man!
Do we not see that by our present course we are teaching men violence, fraud, deceit, and murder? What is the educational effect of our present political conduct, of our invasions, our battles, our victories; of the speeches of "our great men?" You all know that this teaches the poor, the low, and the weak that murder and robbery are good things when done on a large scale; that they give wealth, fame, power, and honors. The ignorant man, ill-born and ill-bred, asks: "Why not when done on a small scale; why not good for me?" If it is right in the President of the United States to rob and murder, why not for the President of the United States Bank? Do famous men say, "Our country however bounded," and vote to plunder a sister State? then why shall not the poor man, hungry and cold, say, "My purse however bounded," and seize on all he can get? Give one a seat in Congress if you will, and the other a noose of hemp, there is a God before whom seats in Congress and hempen halters are of equal value, but who does justice to great and little!
To reform the dangerous classes of society, to advance those who loiter behind our civilization, we need a special work designed directly for the good of the criminals and such as stand on that perilous ground which slopes towards crime. Some good men undertook this work long ago. They found much to do; a good deal to encourage them. Some of them are well known to you, are laboring here in the midst of us. They need counsel, encouragement, and aid. We must not look coldly on their enterprise nor on them. They can tell far better than I what specific plans are best for their specific work. Already have they accomplished much in this noble enterprise. The society for aiding discharged convicts is a prophecy of yet better things. Soon I trust it will extend its kind offices to all the prisons, and its work be made the affair of the State. The plan now before your Legislature for a "State Manual Labor School," designed to reform vicious children, is also full of promise. The wise and anonymous charity which so beautifully and in silence has dropped its gold into the chest for these poor outcasts, is itself its hundred-fold reward. Institutions like that which we contemplate have been found successful in England, Germany, and France. They actually reform the juvenile delinquent and bring up useful men, not hardened criminals.[35] We are beginning to attend to this special work of removing the causes of crime, and restoring at least the young offenders.
However, the greater portion of this work is not special and for the criminal, but general and for society. To change the treatment of criminals, we must change every thing else. The dangerous class is the unavoidable result of our present civilization; of our present ideas of man and social life. To reform and elevate the class of criminals, we must reform and elevate all other classes. To do that, we must educate and refine men. We must learn to treat all men as brothers. This is a great work and one of slow achievement. It cannot be brought about by legislation, nor any mechanical contrivance and reorganization alone. There is no remedy for this evil and its kindred but keeping the laws of God; in one word, none but Christianity, goodness, and piety felt in the heart, applied in all the works of life, individually, socially, and politically. While educated and abounding men acknowledge no rule of conduct but self-interest, what can you expect of the ignorant and the perishing? While great men say without rebuke that we do not look at "the natural justice of a war," do you expect men in the lowest places of society, ignorant and brutish, pinched by want, to look at the natural justice of theft, of murder? It were a vain expectation. We must improve all classes to improve one; perhaps the highest first. Different men acting in the most various directions, without concert, often jealous one of another, and all partial in their aims, are helping forward this universal result. While we are contending against slavery, war, intemperance, or party rage, while we are building up hospitals, colleges, schools, while we are contending for freedom of conscience, or teaching abstractly the love of man and love of God, we are all working for the welfare of this neglected class. The gallows of the barbarian and the Gospel of Christianity cannot exist together. The times are full of promise. Mankind slowly fulfils what a man of genius prophesies; God grants what a good man asks, and when it comes, it is better than what he prayed for.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] The allusion is to the following passages of Scripture, which were read as the lesson for the day: Numb. xiv.; 2 Kings, ii. 23-25; and Luke, xv.
[32] See other statistics in "Sermon of the Perishing Classes," pp. 205, 206.
[33] Mr. Horace Mann.
[34] The period of confinement in our States' Prisons differs a good deal in the various States, as will appear from the following Table.